Something Was Wrong - S25 Ep21: Answering Community Questions with Dr. Nicole Bedera, Dr. Kathryn Holland & Dr. Jacqueline Cruz

Starting point is 00:00:00 Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses topics that may be upsetting. This season discusses sexual, physical, and psychological violence. Please consume the following episodes with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each individual episode, please visit the episode notes. Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. The podcast in any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Thank you so much for listening. You think you know me, you don't know me well at all.

Starting point is 00:00:45 You don't know anybody till you talk to someone. I'm honored today to be joined by Dr. Nicole Baderer, Dr. Catherine Holland, and Dr. Jacqueline Cruz. We are here to discuss Title IX and dig in deeper to this season and the themes that we've heard from survivors and answer some listener submitted questions. You'll recognize the doctor's voices from the expert episodes this season and we're so thankful to have them back for this special episode. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for having us. Happy to be back. for having us. As a reminder, Dr. Nicole Bedera is a sociologist and leading expert on sexual

Starting point is 00:01:41 violence and institutional betrayal. She's the author of On the Wrong Side, how universities protect perpetrators and betray survivors of sexual violence. Her work examines how universities respond to reports of sexual harm and how those responses often create additional layers for trauma survivors. Through years of research and survivor interviews, Dr. Baderer has identified patterns that show these outcomes are not isolated failures, but part of a broader structural problem. Dr. Catherine Holland is a social psychologist who studies how campus environments shape survivors' experiences. Her research looks at why many survivors choose not to report, what factors influence that decision, and how universities can create climates that either support

Starting point is 00:02:28 or silence students. Her work explains the patterns we see when survivors say they don't feel safe coming forward. And Dr. Jacqueline Cruz is a Title IX expert, researcher and adjunct faculty member at NYU, where she focuses on social science. Her work examines how Title IX systems function in practice, including the pressures administrators face, and how institutional priorities can shape outcomes. Her research highlights how expectations of neutrality and fairness can sometimes limit meaningful accountability. What legends? The overwhelming response that we've heard from listeners is, wow, I just learned so, so much. I just cannot thank you enough for bringing that data and information to the listeners. And I'm excited to dig into some of their questions.

Starting point is 00:03:18 One of the first questions that I received from a listener was actually before we announced that we were taking questions. And I could tell that this listener, it was something that has been sitting on her heart for a while. She shared with me that she has a friend who was sexually abused by a professor at their former university. The survivor didn't wish to engage with Title IX or report, but they worried for the current students who are potentially at risk. What would you recommend? This is Nicole, and I want to answer this question a few different ways. The first thing that I want to say is that if a survivor says they don't want to report, that's the end of the process. Sexual violence is traumatic because it violates the survivor's autonomy, so we have to respect their wishes in all

Starting point is 00:04:00 scenarios. But the other thing that I see underlying this question is a fundamental misunderstanding about what actually happens when a survivor reports. Now we're at the end of the season. I hope we've educated enough that people understand that when you go to Title IX, that very rarely means that a professor will be removed from campus. And that even reporting to Title IX, very rarely will that report turn into an investigation. And this is information that I think we just need to share more broadly because survivors do sometimes make different decisions when they know what the stakes are, and that can go in both directions. So one decision might be, well, I don't want to report because I'm afraid of an investigation. And if they know that an investigation is very unlikely, if they know

Starting point is 00:04:45 that they can't be compelled to participate, especially if they already have that diploma in hand, then maybe they would want to leave a record if all it's going to be is a record. On the other hand, That's a lot of time, stress, a lot of dredging up that trauma and going back to the site of violence for just nothing to happen. But I do think that's an important thing to recognize. The reporting process does look different than people expect that it will. In terms of how to support other students, there are ways to do that that are more effective than Title IX. Technically, a report could be there if somebody else comes forward. But we know from the research that schools really hesitate to use that information.

Starting point is 00:05:23 information and other investigations. Sometimes it can be helpful for things like discovery and lawsuits around mishandling sexual misconduct, but that's a rare outcome at most schools. So when I think about how to support students who are potentially at risk, part of what I think is about continuing to stay involved. I think about some of the other risk factors for why perpetrators, specifically professor perpetrators, can abuse their power. And they are things like feeling like they really need the support of that professor for

Starting point is 00:05:51 a letter of recommendation. for mentoring in their discipline of interest. If you are someone who would be able to do things like help with mentoring, would be able to get more involved in your alumni network in a way that specifically supports students in that program to be someone who's available to them, things like that can actually chip away at the power of a perpetrator in really significant ways. And I know it's not the answer that the listener is probably expecting.

Starting point is 00:06:16 And it's certainly more involved than just filing a report and feeling like you've done your part and letting it go. but I do think that's the more accurate answer for how to support students is to support students yourself. Thank you so much. I'm curious, Dr. Holland, what your thoughts are since you have so much research in this area. Yeah, definitely. And I will say that I would echo all of Nicole's comments. My sort of initial thought is that I completely understand where this listener, where their worries coming from, being worried about the possibility of this professor, continuing to engage in this. behavior because especially as Nicole mentioned, if there are systems in place that give him position of power to be able to do that. But what I would also say is that there should also be worry for the friend because there's sort of a perception that harm has been done. But what we know

Starting point is 00:07:09 is that actually being involved in title line processes, especially if that's something that explicitly goes against other survivors' wishes, is that that can cause additional harm. Survivor will often say that interacting with the Title IX office was more traumatic than the harassment or assault that they had experienced. And so while, yes, it's sort of the concern for the potential future victims, but also concern for the health and well-being of the friend. One other thing that I would say is that if the friend does give consent to having a report be made, as Nicole had mentioned, there is the possibility of having a report be on file. Often that is something that survivors who don't want to engage in a sort of formal investigation process do feel okay with.

Starting point is 00:07:58 It's very true what Nicole said is that it is entirely possible that that would not be used again in other cases and wouldn't potentially be used to support future allegations. But the fact that it's not likely doesn't mean that it's impossible. It's also possible that if they don't want to be the one to be able to do it, you also have the ability to submit a report as well. You shouldn't submit that report unless they explicitly give you consent to do so. But if they don't want to have to be the one to describe what it is that happened to them, that's something that you could also do is a bystander. Thank you so much. Dr. Cruz, anything that you want to add from your perspective? From my perspective, I'm thinking about how Title IX is often now given as the only choice

Starting point is 00:08:43 of being able to confront campus sexual violence. And I think as we all three can speak to, it's not a system that often works. One thing I think about, too, is informal ways we could support students who are potentially at risk. This is maybe like a controversial thing, but whisper networks in the sense of not sharing or divulging your friends information or name, but being able to say like, that professor,

Starting point is 00:09:09 I know things about him. I'm not gonna go into detail, but I would just avoid. Being able to act in those small ways can sometimes steer people away from risky and dangerous situations Because we know professors like this go on to abuse multiple. There's usually not one victim. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Could you tell me a little more about what you mean by whisper networks? A whisper network is just networks of women who, when there are serial perpetrators on a campus, speak to that through informal channels so that people know. Nicole, I'm blanking on this, but I'm sure you remember there was one industry in which women, they had a list of people to stay away from. The shitty men and media list. Thank you. You do put yourself at risk, I think, when you start naming names and publishing things,

Starting point is 00:09:55 but I think there are ways to have informal networks of women supporting other women to warn them about risky situations, including professors who are known to have abused students or who act in creepy and inappropriate ways. As women, we've probably all been in a situation where somebody has given us a heads up, like, hey, that guy, be careful, don't trust him. I've heard things about this professor that he's not super respectful to women. Speaking to what was said here, like, you do not want to give away the autonomy of the survivor. You don't want to be sharing private details without consent from the survivor. But if you know that a professor is acting in ways that are unprofessional and risky, I think it is okay to say, I've heard things about this professor. I would be

Starting point is 00:10:43 cautious, because then at least it's on somebody's radar. This is Nicole again. First of all, I fully endorse a Whisper Network. The idea. that Whisper Networks have become controversial, I think Jackie's right. But the reason for that is because there's a desire to suppress women's freedom of speech, to be able to speak to each other about what we have experienced with perpetrators, what people we know have experienced. And one of the things that they want us to do is to stop warning each other. We're talking about these really famous examples, like the shitty men and media lists that were pretty formalized, still informal, but it was a spreadsheet, right? And that's one level of it. But the other level is just,

Starting point is 00:11:20 just like Jackie was talking about from the beginning, saying, if you want to work with that person, you're thinking about taking them on as an advisor, I've just heard some stuff, I wouldn't. And you don't really have to go much deeper than that. And you don't have to share any personal details about you or what you heard. I think it's tougher for it to come back negatively on you. I really do. I think there's a reason that Whisper Networks operate in the kind of ambiguity that they do

Starting point is 00:11:40 to make it all very hard to pin down and to respect the privacy of survivors. And the other thing that I want to say, we've been talking about this way of trying to rein in a specific perpetrator, focused on trying to get people away from that perpetrator. The other way to do this is by expanding the power of safe people on campus. If you're an alum, a lot of what that can look like is supporting specific other faculty. Right now is a really tough time for faculty on campus for a whole host of reasons. Some having to do with the political climate, some having to do with the financial climate,

Starting point is 00:12:14 of higher education, these things are so connected. And a lot of schools are making decisions about things like who to hire and fire. especially smaller schools are terminating faculty rates that we haven't really seen from before the past five or ten years. And so letting the school know that there is a professor who you do value and that if they're making tough decisions that these are the people who you want to be on campus, if there's room for a promotion when they're thinking about who will be chair of a department, who might be moved into a dean or a provost position,

Starting point is 00:12:43 who's going to be given more power on campus, to be very clear about where your values are, have other students come and share that information too. Students can also protect the people who did provide a safe haven while they were in school, and that can be just as powerful, in some ways even more powerful. Honestly, for the longest time, our outdoors space just was not it. It didn't feel intentional, it didn't feel relaxing, and we barely used it. Then we finally decided to actually make it a space we wanted to be in.

Starting point is 00:13:16 And that's when I started shopping on Wayfair. We ended up getting these really beautiful egg chairs that instant make the space feel more inviting, plus an outdoor rug and some trendy side tables that really tied everything together. It completely changed the vibe, and now it feels calm, a little zen, and somewhere we actually want to hang out. I've been a Wayfair customer for years, and what I've always come back to is how easy it is to find the pieces that feel current and well-made, but still practical, especially with kids and pets and within budget. They really do have everything in one place, and I love being able to filter through their options, read reviews,

Starting point is 00:13:51 and feel confident in what I'm ordering. And with over 20 million verified five-star reviews, it makes decision-making so much easier because you're seeing real feedback from real homes. Get prepped for patio season for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R-com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

Starting point is 00:14:16 I'm curious if any of you have heard of higher education institutions using anonymous surveys as a way to collect information, specifically regarding professors as a way where they might be able to use that as an outlet? Dr. Holland? Yeah, so a lot of schools do what are called campus climate surveys, and those are intended to be anonymous to collect a variety of kinds of data to gather information related to the prevalence of sexual harassment, sexual assault and other forms of gender-based violence on campus. They will also often include questions related to barriers to reporting or students' knowledge of different kinds of resources and things like that.

Starting point is 00:15:01 So I would say that institutions might point to that as a possible outlet for identifying potential problem areas on campus. Unfortunately, I think in practice, very few universities actually leverage that data in the ways that they could to improve training, education, and campus climate. It's sort of that thing of like, oh, stay away from Professor X. Everybody knows that he is a problem. And that is a very common thing that already happens. I do worry about as someone who does research the power of evidence-based policy and practice. And I think that institutions don't always leverage the resources that are available on their campus, the many researchers who are there to be able to actually make that data

Starting point is 00:15:46 useful. Another piece would be the potential for anonymous reporting forms where you can submit anonymous reports. Some schools have them. Some schools don't. I would say that the example that we were talking about before, I would discourage even reporting through an anonymous form attaching a particular survivor's name to it. There is a way in which you could just report the perpetrator's name without actually naming anybody else if you were really concerned or wanted to protect that person. So those would be two ways that I would say institutions would have mechanisms through which we can get insight into sexual craftsments that's happening on campus that hasn't been reported through any sort of formal mechanism. Another question that was submitted by a listener, and thank you again

Starting point is 00:16:26 to everybody who submitted questions, was stories shared in this season were from a few schools. Is there research pertaining to other schools that reflect a different reality for students? I think the interesting thing about how Nicole and I became friends is that we were both doing our research in different areas of the country. I was looking at multiple schools up and down the East Coast. I was only interviewing administrators. Nicole was working at one school on the West Coast doing a full ethnography of everyone. But what was so interesting to us is that we were finding really the same types of things. I mean, even down to language in the sense of that something I would hear over and over that Title IX administrators would say was no one is ever going to be happy.

Starting point is 00:17:13 I point to this because for me it was this moment of this is happening all over the country. The things that I'm finding, I'm not only finding, but other researchers I respect are also finding them. I cannot think of an outlier or a school that is doing this great that does reflect a different reality for students. I think that schools, unfortunately, by different types and throughout the country, continue to fail their students when it comes to Title IX. And I think that there's a real lack of accountability. Through the work that Nicole and I now do with our consultancy beyond compliance, we still get many universities coming to us in different departments from across the country and in a variety of fields. It still remains a huge problem. So from my perspective,

Starting point is 00:18:02 the research is really showing us that this is the reality of Title IX on the ground. Dr. Holland, did you want to chime in there? Yeah, definitely. I was finding the same things within my research and I have now done my own work at schools all across the U.S. And I've also done comprehensive reviewing of other researchers work at schools all across the US. And it's the same thing. There is no standout individual university or group of universities where we're seeing consistently better survivor experiences, consistently better outcomes. What I think we do see is potentially individual cases or one-off experience. is we have some Title IX practitioners who really deeply care and really try. But by and large,

Starting point is 00:18:50 it's just not enough to really make a big difference in terms of how this system functions for survivors. Thank you so much. Dr. Bedera, anything you want to add? The only thing that I would add, because I just echo what everyone else has already said, that one of the things that's shocking about all of my work as a researcher and reading everybody else's work as researchers is how consistent these problems are across universities. But I would say there is a little bit of variation in the type of bad response from a university, still less than we would hope. But there are still some universities that never set up a Title IX office at all.

Starting point is 00:19:25 There are still some universities where you are more likely to be punished on campus for something like viewing pornography on your personal cell phone or on a school computer, then you are for sexual violence that you're more likely to be punished. for having consensual sex on campus than for perpetrating sexual violence. And this is really a lot more common at small schools, religiously affiliated institutions, and places where the federal government has given these smaller schools a lot of permission to say, we're just too small to implement Title IX. And something that happened under the Biden administration for the first time ever is that the Department of Education gave a religious school an exemption from Title IX entirely. I would agree that

Starting point is 00:20:11 in general, everything is bad, but there are a couple of different flavors of bad. And the one we've been talking about the most is this really institutionalized Title IX response where everything is funneled to Title IX and Title IX is a vehicle of betrayal. But there is also this other less common version, especially in these specific environments, where there's just nowhere to go still. There isn't even a front. The main problem with Title IX law is that universities were given discretion to do whatever they wanted to address sexual violence. And the reason we need, needed Title IX is because these schools were discriminating against women. And so to look at the discriminators and to say, stop it, but up to you, how you want to handle it for decades and decades,

Starting point is 00:20:53 as case law slowly rolled out, it was so easy for them to ignore, especially because there was so little enforcement at the federal level for so long. The Title IX law, I mean, it literally just prohibits sex discrimination. That feels like something that if it hadn't been, been plopping down into a patriarchy could have worked. There's a whole body of sociology about how when a goal or a value system without any explanation of how to get there, it makes the entire project really vulnerable to co-optation, to abuses of power. And that's what we see with the Title IX system that schools created. The Title IX systems they created are working exactly how the universities would want them to function by making it easy to protect men and prioritize them

Starting point is 00:21:40 over people of all other genders on campus. And so what we've seen over the past few years is the federal government really weaponizing Title IX. What we see in our consulting work is that Title IX is essentially telling people on campus, well, if you don't know how to make sure the treatment is equal, make sure you treat men a little better so that then they can't sue the school

Starting point is 00:22:00 and say that you treated them a little worse. So again, if you're going to make a mistake, what side is the error on and saying we want the error to be on the side of treating men better? And when you already have pre-existing gender inequalities, even the smallest amount of preference can create this cascade of problems for survivors, this cascade of discrimination and of increasing privileges for men. The original Civil Rights Amendment in 1972, it wasn't specific enough, but it was intended to fix all of this, but there wasn't a big enough shift in the power of who

Starting point is 00:22:34 would get to make those decisions. And the people who made those decisions, this is the system they wanted. As Nicole said, you have to put that idea into practice. You have to create substructors and some guidance to be able to do. And even just naming a couple of things right off the top that would go a long way towards addressing some of these issues is one, completely explicitly calling out the fact that to be compliant with Title IX does not mean that you need to be neutral and equal. And that is something that has majorly contributed to the issues that we see is that they're like, well, we have to treat perpetrators and survivors the exact same. And as Nicole said, a lot of times that turns into, well, we're actually going to treat them

Starting point is 00:23:12 better because that's going to be a safer option for us. It's prompt and equitable. And we know that equitable is not the same as equal. Getting rid of policies that compel survivors to disclose to the Title IX office when they don't want to through mandated reporting. This idea has been put into a specific decision that then manifests in ways that's designed to fail survivors from the start. Thank you for sharing that because the reason why I started my research was I was looking at Title IX policy. I was saying I wouldn't necessarily rewrite these policies in any huge way, right? There were small things, but I thought this should be working, so why isn't it? And then when I started interviewing administrators, what I was finding was this focus on neutrality. Administrators were using rape myths and thinking about sexual violence

Starting point is 00:24:00 through those lenses. And so they weren't being able to implement the policies in ways that were actually ending gender discrimination or even addressing sexual violence. Jackie, I think that's right. And this is something that people are always surprised by with on the wrong side is that most of what schools have developed, they just chose. It's not in the regulation at all. There is no law that requires them to act this way. The biggest problem with all of the regulations in Title IX law is that they're not prescriptive enough. And they give schools a huge amount of discretion to do better. And I say this because, you know, when people are thinking, how can I change my campus? The first thing you'll hear back is, oh, it's so complicated. The regulations are really restrictive. We would do better if we could.

Starting point is 00:24:43 And anybody who's telling you all of that on campus is frankly lying to you because most of the things that we're talking about. When we talk about things like the problems with informal resolution, the problem is that it isn't specific what school should be doing. So they're choosing to do one of the things that would be the most hurtful to survivors. But if we put all of these same policies, and procedures into hands like the people who are on this conversation today, we would build something that would still be completely legal, would actually advance gender equity, would support survivors, and look hugely different from anything that universities are doing right now, despite being governed by the exact same policies.

Starting point is 00:25:23 Anything you want to add, Dr. Holland? Yeah, that is 100%. It's that those moments of translation between policy and practice where there is so much room to do things right, but more often, people are taking that as an opportunity to do things wrong. Yeah, and I think it really changes the way people think about where do you think about change in the Title IX landscape. A lot of focus is often on the actual policy without really looking at schools are not necessarily implementing this in the ways that they're supposed to be and that there are ideas about sexual violence and perpetration and accountability that are really muddying what otherwise

Starting point is 00:26:05 could be sometimes really clear guidance or guidance that allows creative approaches that could really end gender discrimination or really just address sexual violence in ways where survivors wouldn't feel completely betrayed by their institutions. The president of our country dissed the U.S. Olympic hockey team. And it really struck. me because this is who's at the head of our country? The Trump administration has really claimed to be, quote, unquote, protecting women's sports through the Department of Education and through Title IX, specifically by banning transgender students from participating in athletics. However, it really is in name only, and it's a

Starting point is 00:26:48 weaponization of this concern for girls' sports, as we can tell, kind of like due process, when in reality, he's actually very publicly disparaging women's sports. And so what When we look at the impact of his changes around women and girls athletics in Title IX, we see that a lot of high schools are closing some of their girls' sports teams because the new requirements under the executive order that he passed around how schools should handle vetting girls' gender identities to be in pro sports, they're so arduous that I read a report of one specific high school that on the day of tryouts for girls' athletics teams, there were only a handful of girls that had all of the paperwork, and so they just canceled the team for the year,

Starting point is 00:27:29 or they had to funnel all of the girls into co-ed sports because then they wouldn't require the same kind of documentation requirements. Even things like having parental consent, telling a student that they need to have a signature, that their parent says that they can participate in sports, but a boy or a man wouldn't, that is still an extra burden that is discriminatory and makes it harder to compete. In fact, the result of what the Trump administration has done is make it harder for girls to be in athletics. The other thing that they did is that they said explicitly for the first time in decades, that schools are allowed to spend more money on boys and men's athletics than girls and women's,

Starting point is 00:28:06 that they no longer had to be equitable in their use of resources. This was a huge reversal of precedent, and it is leading to girls sports being less funded than ever. It was already a problem. Things are getting a lot worse around Title IX in general. It's not just on-campus sexual violence, but Title IX as a law in general is being weaponized to restore a certain gendered order and to intensify gender inequality in educational spaces. I agree. And the idea that our country cares about women is just not reflected in the data that I've studied. Dr. Holland, what did you want to add?

Starting point is 00:28:42 Completely echoing everything that Nicole said, but also this isn't necessarily a very clear public statement, but some of the other ways that this current administration has clearly shown where their priorities lie is through the essentially dismantling of the Department of Education and Office for Civil Rights. They have closed a bunch of offices, fired a bunch of investigators in the Office for Civil Rights, the people who actually investigate cases. So when a school is mishandling Title IX cases, you can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights because they are the entity that is, is responsible for ensuring that schools are compliant with Title IX regulations. There was an article in Inside Higher Ed where the Office for Civil Rights, they resolved zero complaints of sexual harassment and violence in 2025, and they have resolved almost no cases as of this year.

Starting point is 00:29:40 So essentially, the Office of Civil Rights has stopped investigating complaints that schools have violated Title IX. That is just another very clear message that's been. being sent that this is not a priority and schools can get away with ignoring or mishandling these cases because the people who are in theory supposed to be responsible for overseeing schools enforcement of this issue are just very blatantly not doing so. Go ahead, Dr. Cruz. Thank you. I would like to add that when I saw what President Trump said and then I saw how the men's

Starting point is 00:30:16 hockey team laughed in response and then afterwards came out. saying, but we love the women's team. We spent this whole Olympics with the women's team. We were cheering them on. They were cheering us on. I thought, I believe that. I bet they were your friends. But it was so symbolic of how just our country treats women, how Title IX works, all of these things. You could like women. You could respect them as individuals. But systemically, when it comes to actually doing what is right and treating women in general as a category as equal human beings. I think when you have a man in a patriarchal setting who is asking other men to participate, so often they do, despite what their intentions are. And I think when I look at

Starting point is 00:31:01 Title IX and I think about all the administrators I interviewed and, you know, many of them had intentions to actually address sexual violence, but they ended up not doing that. They ended up joining the chorus of protecting male perpetrators and protecting men overall. I think people link in their heads that holding perpetrators accountable is somehow dangerous to all men, even though it's not. It's probably dangerous to a brand of toxic masculinity, but it just reminded me of how easy it is to laugh at or disregard women. I guess it shouldn't surprise me when the biggest insult in men's sports is being compared to playing like a woman or being feminine, but it was so greatly disappointing and I appreciate all the points that you made.

Starting point is 00:31:51 starting something on your own, whether it's a podcast, a brand, or a business, comes with a lot of big decisions. And even when you feel confident in your vision, there's still that moment when you're thinking through all the what-ifs. What if this grows faster than I expect? What if I need better systems? What if I want to expand? That's why having the right platform matters, and for so many businesses, that platform is Shopify. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States from major brands to brands just getting started. What I appreciate is how streamlined everything is.

Starting point is 00:32:24 You can build a beautiful online store with ready-to-use templates that can actually reflect your brand and manage everything in one place from inventory to payment to analytics. They also make it easy to get the word out with tools to create email, social media campaigns, so you can connect with your audience wherever they are. And if you need support, Shopify's award-winning 24 customer service, is there when you need it. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today.

Starting point is 00:32:52 Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash S-W-W. Go to Shopify.com slash S-W-W. That's Shopify.com slash S-WW. Transitioning to a lighter note slightly, one listener asked, what can we do as advocates to best support eliciting change in this broken system? This is Nicole. I think a lot about the sociological body of research about how organizations change. And it's a really small body of literature. Because for the most part, people who study social change study things like the way the movements are organized and not what does success look like and how do we get it, which was really shocking to me when I came to grad school. But there are a few studies that looked at successful initiatives and compared it to ones that were unsuccessful. And one of the biggest things that they find is that, You can't do it alone, but you don't need as many people as you think. Forgive me, I'm forgetting the name of the author off the top of my head in the moment, but there was some research about how medical residency programs

Starting point is 00:34:01 that were known for having their students work these absurd, dangerous hours that lead to worst patient outcomes. These are people's lives in their hands, and that everyone was so tired and exhausted and burned out from overwork that they were making preventable mistakes. There was a change to try to put limits on the number of hours. And that was a really big cultural shift. And this researcher studied which residency programs were able to make that shift quickly and which were not.

Starting point is 00:34:27 And what she found was that it took three people who really cared about making that change, working together and using their collective power to get other people on board and to make the shifts that are necessary. So that's something I think about a lot that in my research and in my work as a consultant, We often find people who care about sexual violence on campus who know that the Title IX system is hurting survivors and they want to change it. But they tend to not know who their allies are. They tend to not think that anybody else on campus shares that belief. They have to keep it really private. Part of that is if they try to share it out loud, people who don't share those views will shut them down immediately, punish them.

Starting point is 00:35:08 I heard a lot of stories of that. But then the other issue is that people get burned out and they lose faith and they leave. And to some degree, if you know you can't make change in a place, I don't fall to anyone for leaving. But it turns into the system where there's a revolving door of people who care, stick around until they can't tolerate it anymore. Now nobody knows anybody else who cares. Everybody else who cares feels like they're alone. They feel more isolated. They leave.

Starting point is 00:35:31 And so my most central piece of advice is to find other people who care. Spend time talking to them on a regular basis. And it doesn't always have to be about making change. It can just be being in solidarity with one. another, being there when you have to weather these institutional betrayals as witnesses. And then when there is a moment that there's something specific that you know would help, do that thing, whatever it is, and move in the right direction. And then the other thing I would say is don't reinvent the wheel.

Starting point is 00:36:00 Nobody has to be trying to figure out all the stuff on their own. And one of the things that Jackie and I find a lot in our consulting group is that a lot of the changes people want to make come from ideas from the system itself. So for example, one of the most common requests we get is to conduct some kind of a training that people just don't know better. What if we conduct a training and then that will improve Title IX forever? But the research on things like sexual harassment trainings are not as optimistic as you would think. Sexual harassment trainings can actually increase the risk of sexual violence, especially in institutional settings where, you know, it's that 30-minute click-through online training that everybody knows is not particularly serious.

Starting point is 00:36:39 A lot of people didn't even bother reading it. it sends the message that this is an organization that doesn't care. So we're really reluctant to do those types of trainings, even though it's something that a lot of people think, let's do that first. And so you have to be really critical of if I think there's something that will help, why do I think it will help? Who told me it would help? And is that information I got from this institution? One of the things that's really tricky about campus sexual violence in particular, and we see this come up with survivor advocates a lot, is they learned about the potential solutions of sexual violence from their betraying university. And so when their university says,

Starting point is 00:37:10 says, we just need more consent trainings, they think, okay, let's just try it. When in reality, their universities are encouraging them to do things that really, I would call symbolic compliance, that they're not actually going to make a difference, they're going to look good on paper so that everybody feels like they did something, and then all of those efforts and energies will run out. So instead of looking within your institution for ideas from your institution, look to experts. Everybody who's listening to this podcast is already doing the first step. I would say reading more of our work is a really great place to start, but also at the conclusion of my book, I cite a lot of other research about what makes social change in these

Starting point is 00:37:48 types of systems and the types of conditions that we need to disrupt. Some of that happens on the response side. Some of that happens on the prevention side. And I'll just say one of the main findings that I found really helpful is that we know where violence comes from. The places that are high risk for violence on a college campus are male dominated, which can either mean that there are mostly men in the space or that men are the ones in positions of power in spaces where there are a lot of people of different genders. They're competitive and they're hierarchical where these big power disparities. So a lot of what you can do on campus is try to take power away from those specific places to redistribute it and to give power to places on campus that don't have those

Starting point is 00:38:28 characteristics. How do we make it so that when there's nobody on campus who's too big to fail or has a whole network who's going to follow around them. A lot of the things that we have done as consultants don't look like they have anything to do with sexual violence at all. There are things like looking for vulnerabilities that would isolate a victim or keep a victim from getting access to other people or resources so that they're really dependent on a perpetrator. We recommend a lot of the time things like changing admission policies or changing academic

Starting point is 00:38:56 probation policies so that survivors aren't getting pushed out. Don't act alone. Do find other people who share your commitments. work on whatever it is that you think will be helpful and let those decisions be guided by other experts who have already had success before. This is Catherine. One additional thing that I would say is connecting with other people is a really great way to feel like you're not alone and lost because when you feel like you're going up against a system that is so widely broken, it can feel like what is it that I can do for students? In the current climate, there are a lot of ways in which

Starting point is 00:39:31 universities of higher education are doing just about everything they can to try to make it harder for faculty and staff to speak up about issues related to equity, inclusion, diversity, et cetera, and that would include sexual misconduct as well. There's a lot of ways in which administration, leaders, they are more responsive to student voices and pressure than they are to faculty and staff because they have a much easier time controlling faculty staff who work at their institution. And so if figuring out the best path forward is that students putting pressure on leadership, I'm not saying that has to be the way forward, but don't feel like your voice doesn't matter because it very much does. On Katie's point, people are really ready for this right now. I think that the

Starting point is 00:40:18 injustices are becoming really visible. We've seen these cycles of activism and of caring about sexual violence where we used to have these pretty long gaps in between there'd be a social movement. It would get squashed by backlash. And then it would take years to rebuild. And it just feels like Me Too wasn't that long ago and we're already reaching a moment that feels like it's all about to break open again. I've been doing a lot of talks about my book on college campuses. And they have never been better attended. I've been hearing things from the hosts who are saying things like, this is the best attended talk we've had in years. And it's turned into, this really delightful problem where after I give a talk, I will be flooded with emails for the next

Starting point is 00:41:01 two weeks of people who attended or who heard about it and want to change things on their campus. And so one of the things I always try to do is say, tell other people how you felt. Tell other people that you care. That room was full of other people who care. And so if you're thinking, how do I find these people? Am I really a low, no? Does anybody else care? Go to events where the topic is campus sexual violence or just gender inequality more broadly. Say hi to somebody. say that you care, and there are a lot of people who are really eager to do this right now. This is Jackie. The point that I want to underline is that we find ourselves talking about Title IX now I really do feel because of student activism. And it was students figuring out that there was this

Starting point is 00:41:42 thing called Title IX that was supposed to address gender discrimination and then rallying around that. And it wasn't the biggest student movement ever, but it started with just a few people noticing the hypocrisies of what their schools were supposed to be doing and what their schools were actually doing. And then it snowballed into Obama passing guidance that said the same thing that the students were saying should be happening. I know when I was a student, it felt sometimes that I was really powerless. But actually, on college campuses, now more than ever, students are really the consumer class. They're the ones that the universities need to be making happy. I think also students' parents. So getting and many people involved in talking about this issue and learning more

Starting point is 00:42:28 about it and connecting in this time of such political instability around the issue of gender inequality, connecting with rape crisis centers and other organizations that have been doing this work for decades and decades and hold so much knowledge about sexual violence, about how sexual violence works, that they have resources. They're really good places to go and meet other people who want to talk about this issue and who are already doing a lot of day-to-day advocacy. Jackie touched on this in passing and I want to make a bigger deal out of it. Parents too. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, I'm not a student anymore. I'm not faculty or staff. Is it too late for me? No. When I started my research at Western

Starting point is 00:43:11 University, when I met the associate dean of students, I was asking him, when do you hear about sexual violence? What kinds of things do parents bring up when they go on a visit day with their prospective students. And he said that the number one questions they asked about were gun violence, something about technology that I can't quite recall. And then sexual violence, I think, was third. He said that he heard an equal amount, if not more, from the parents of sons who wanted to know that their son, if he went there, would be able to graduate, kind of no matter what he did. We hear just as many concerns about due process as we do about the sexual assault itself. And that really reflects the political atmosphere that we've been in. The mothers of rapists who know that

Starting point is 00:43:58 their sons are rapists have done a huge amount of political organizing around making sure that their son will have impunity, that their son and others like him will be able to be as violent as they want and still be able to access elite power and privilege in our society. We have not seen the same movement from the parents of survivors. And one of the big reasons for that is in my research with survivors, I always ask, who did you tell about what happened to you? Is there anyone who you really didn't want to know? And the answer to that second question, it's almost always their parents, because they worry that their parents are going to judge them or punish them or try to take control over their lives. And in some research I did with Katie, actually, we found that in cases where

Starting point is 00:44:41 parents found out about their daughter's experiences with sexual assault against their will, and it came out because they saw that some of their tuition was refunded on a credit card or something like that. We saw that parents did do things like exert pressure for them to move back home or to transfer schools, all to bring them back and have their parents make their decisions for them again. This is not the kind of autonomous survivor support we've been talking about that parents need to be giving their kids. We're not seeing that pressure from survivors' parents. And so from a parent perspective, one of the things I really recommend is trying to change yourself, trying to make sure that if you have had a habit of telling your kids every time they get hurt and

Starting point is 00:45:19 they make a mistake, well, if you just would have done X, Y, and Z, that wouldn't have happened to you because it is different. Telling somebody just don't touch a stove is really different than telling them sexual violence was your fault. And so to really communicate that when your kids are hurting, that you want to be there to support them, that you're going to show them empathy and care first, and that you're not going to judge them for their choices that they make around things like sex or drinking or anything else that survivors get blamed for, I think that's a crucial part of the puzzle and that there's a lot of pressure that parents can be providing, but you have to make it easy for your children to let you know what happened to them. And then the other

Starting point is 00:45:52 group I want to talk about that's off campus but holds power over campus, because that's really what we're talking about. The other group I'm going to talk about is alumni. They have a huge amount of power to give, they're giving their money to the institution. They're not getting any back from the institution. They have a lot more power to shape institutional objectives because that relationship of dependency goes the other way. And so alumni is another group that we hear from a lot where there's a big concern that if schools start addressing sexual violence in a meaningful way, that it will take the fun out of football and that it will break up fraternities and people's attachment to fraternities in the university. And fraternities are the biggest

Starting point is 00:46:31 fundraising group on college campuses that have them. And they're an incredibly powerful lobby at the congressional level too. A lot of our representatives in Congress and on the Supreme Court come from the same handful of fraternities, many of which have histories of gang rape as a hazing ritual. There is this real sense when we talk about alumni on college campuses, that it's men who make the decisions and that it's men whose money count, even though a lot of the time the people who are making decisions about family donations are women, often who are also alumni of the same school, but the universities doesn't even see it that way. I do think there is some potential for alumni to organize together and to say, we don't like that.

Starting point is 00:47:12 and we don't want to be a part of this broader community. One of the stories that I talk about and on the wrong side is about a case involving two children of really big donor families. Both of them had their name on buildings on campus. And the university really rallied around the male student with this assumption that his family's donor dollars were worth more than hers, than his victims, even though her name was also on buildings. They were both really big donors.

Starting point is 00:47:41 So I do think that that's a part of the problem. I do think we're going to need coalitions of alumni who are saying the reason we're withholding dollars or a requirement. I'm going to make a donation. But a requirement of that is I want a certain amount of it to go to victim advocacy. Things like more directed donations on campus, the school doesn't get to pick what happens with the directed donation just whether or not they accept it. And so if you say, I want to be supporting survivors, that can create a lot of external pressure. External pressure can be really powerful. and it enables people who are applying pressure from the inside to be able to do more.

Starting point is 00:48:14 Excellent points. Thank you so much. Next time on something was wrong. One of the cases I think about a lot from the book was a case involving a victim. People on their dorm room floor had broken into their room, stolen a bunch of their possessions, and written gendered slurs on the whiteboard on the outside of their dorm room. All of the residence assistants, all of the housing staff, those people are technically mandatory reporters. and on paper they should have intervened, but they didn't. If you saw it happen and it violates the community standards,

Starting point is 00:48:48 if it violates the principles of a gender equitable and safe environment, that's something that affects every single person in that community. Thank you so much to each and every survivor and guest for sharing their experiences with us. And thank you for listening. Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production created and executively produced by Tiffany Reese. Thank you endlessly to our team. Associate producer, Amy B. Chesler, social media marketing manager Lauren Barkman,

Starting point is 00:49:21 graphic artist Sarah Stewart, and audio engineers Becca High and Stephen Wack. Marissa and Travis at WME, audio boom, and our legal and security partners. Thank you so much to the incredibly talented Abiyomi Lewis for this season's gorgeous cover of Gladrag's original song you think you from their album Wonder Under.

Starting point is 00:49:46 Thank you to music producer Janice J.P. Pacheco for their work on this cover recorded at the Grill Studios in Emoryville, California. Find all artists' socials linked in the episode notes to support and hear more. If you'd like to share your story with us, please head to Something Was Wrong.com. If you would like to help support the show, you can subscribe and listen ad-free on Apple Podcasts, Purchase a sticker from our sticker shop at brokencyclemedia.com, share the podcast with a loved one, or leave us a review. Want to stay up to date with us? Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Something Was Wrong podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening.

Starting point is 00:50:28 Until next time, stay safe, friends.

Something Was Wrong - S25 Ep21: Answering Community Questions with Dr. Nicole Bedera, Dr. Kathryn Holland & Dr. Jacqueline Cruz

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.