The U.S. Department of Education recently updated some of their Title IX regulations which went into affect in August.
The main update catching people’s attention is one making the definition of sexual harassment stricter.
See our article here for more information on the Title IX updates.
People are concerned about who exactly these regulations are for. They only seem to serve the side of the potential offender. While this could prevent cases in which individuals make fake claims against an alleged offender, cases such as those happen less often than cases where victims are telling the truth. The new regulations make it easier for colleges or universities to simply ignore more cases of sexual harassment on the campus, so it seems the updates are more keen on protecting the alleged offenders and universities rather than victims of harassment.
This doesn’t mean that OCU is going to overlook victims of sexual harassment, but these new regulations make it more difficult to remove harassers from positions of power. Even if the university wants to do something about the harasser, the updates to Title IX protect their actions as long as they only apply to two or fewer of the criteria for sexual harassment.
In a collegiate setting, maintaining a sense of trust between the administration and vulnerable students who may be the target for sexual harassment is crucial to fostering safety across campus.
The changes to the regulations also present a danger to the reporting system for incidents of sexual harassment. It already takes extreme courage to bring allegations of harassment or assault forward in a country that has entrenched itself in misogynistic, patriarchal values, and the reporting process may now seem less reliable.
However, OCU can still take measures to try to counteract this new update. OCU, first and foremost, needs to take every person who comes forward with these allegations seriously, even if their allegations don’t meet the new criteria standards of sexual harassment. OCU also needs to continue taking whatever steps necessary to make that person feel safe on campus. This will encourage students to share their experiences and remind them the university truly has their interests at heart.
As an institution of higher learning, OCU has an obligation to maintain a sense of safety for its students, even when the government allows them not to.
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