Something Was Wrong - S25 Ep7: Rethinking Mandatory Reporting and Internal Processes in Higher Education with Dr. Katherine Holland

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

*Content Warning: institutional betrayal, sexual violence, stalking, on-campus violence, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence, stalking, rape, and sexual assault.Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources   Follow Dr. Kathryn Holland: Website: https://psychology.unl.edu/person/kathryn-holland/ Dr. Kathryn Holland on Google Scholars: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OgJhWwoAAAAJ&hl=en SWW Sticker Shop!: https://brokencyclemedia.com/sticker-shop SWW S25 Theme Song & Artwork: The S25 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart instagram.com/okaynotgreat/ The S25 theme song is a cover of Glad Rag’s U Think U from their album Wonder Under, performed by the incredible Abayomi instagram.com/Abayomithesinger. The S25 theme song cover was produced by Janice “JP” Pacheco instagram.com/jtooswavy/ at The Grill Studios in Emeryville, CA instagram.com/thegrillstudios/ Follow Something Was Wrong: Website: somethingwaswrong.com  IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast  Follow Tiffany Reese: Website: tiffanyreese.me  IG: instagram.com/lookieboo Resources: End Rape on Campus: https://endrapeoncampus.org/ It’s On Us: https://itsonus.org/ Know Your IX: https://www.advocatesforyouth.org/campaigns/know-your-ix/ Sources: Dear Colleague Letter, May 26, 2011 (PDF), www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201105-ese.pdf “Welcome.” Sexual Assault and Sexual Health Lab | Nebraska, sashlab.unl.edu/ Holland, K. J., & Cortina, L. M. (2017). The evolving landscape of sexual harassment: Research, policy, and practice. American Psychologist, 72(7), 612–625. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000103 Holland, K. J., & Cortina, L. M. (2013). When sex-based harassment becomes sexual harassment: College students’ experiences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 313–328. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032040 Holland, K. J., & Cortina, L. M. (2016). Sexual harassment: Undermining the well-being of working women. Journal of Social Issues, 72(4), 825–842. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12190 Holland, K. J., Rabelo, V. C., & Cortina, L. M. (2014). Sex-based harassment and discrimination: Evidence of psychological harm. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(3), 368–382. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684314521575 Holland, K. J. (2019). Culture, power, and gender-based violence in institutions. In C. B. Travis & J. W. White (Eds.), APA Handbook of the Psychology of Women (Vol. 2, pp. 253–271). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000059-014

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.

You don't know anybody till you talk to someone. I am honored to be speaking today with Dr. Catherine Holland. Dr. Holland's research investigates how people's health and well-being are influenced by their social environments, with a focus on formal support systems, social norms, and interpersonal processes. She is primarily interested in well-being around issues of sexual violence and sexual health. For example, she studies the implementation, use, and effectiveness of formal support systems for sexual assault in higher education and the military. She researches the causes and consequences of both negative and positive interpersonal processes,

such as gendered sexual aggression and bystander intervention. Dr. Holland also examines how social norms around gender and sexuality affect women's sexual health. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work is guided by the fields of psychology, social law, community, and women's and gender studies. She's interested in utilizing multiple research methods and using research to promote social justice and change. Dr. Holland, thank you so much for being willing to come on the show and share your expertise with us today. Of course, I'm really excited to talk with you. In 2019, you were awarded the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.

Congratulations. Incredible. Thank you. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and what made you interested in entering into this field? My background is psychology and women's and gender studies. I completed my bachelor's degree in applied psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. And it was there that I really pursued my passion in working with survivors of trauma, sexual violence and sexual health. I worked as an advocate for survivors of sexual violence.

in the ER, so helping them navigate medical and legal advocacy. And I also fell in love with research. I worked in a community psychology lab. It was the first time that I really saw what research could do. It was through those experiences that was giving me a look at the way how institutions function can really have a huge impact on survivors' experiences and their healing process. Also, how we can potentially leverage research to better understand. how institutions work, how social systems work, how communities can respond to violence, oppression,

etc. With that, I decided to pursue a PhD. I went to the University of Michigan in their dual program in psychology and women's studies. It was there that I actually first started studying institutions of higher education and Title IX specifically as it relates to sexual violence and harassment on college campuses. I was always interested in how institutions, Institutions respond to survivors of sexual trauma and the way that we can better understand how those systems function and how they can better support survivors in the aftermath of trauma. What introduced me to that at the time, I started my PhD program in 2010. This was right at the very beginning of the sort of larger social and political attention being

brought back to campus sexual violence. We had the Dear Colleague letter from the Department of Education in 2011, which often gets the credit for being the first time. The federal government has cared about campus sexual violence or sexual violence in schools. That is not correct. But essentially, I was watching my campus responding to renewed attention to this and revamping their sexual misconduct policies and procedures. And it was actually through that process that I was watching in real time, the dynamic interoperative. play between what was happening at a federal level in terms of what are institutions supposed to be doing and then how that's actually translated into practice on my campus. And then what does that

actually mean for the people within that university? So it was really the first time that I'd been in the thick of it while that dynamic action and response was happening. And that was also what got me started an interested in mandatory reporting policies specifically because I worked as a graduate teaching instructor when I was there and we had our little yearly training at the very beginning of the semester before we would start teaching. And as they were updating their policy, someone came and did a presentation to the graduate students in the psych department and told us, oh, and by the way, you're all mandatory reporters now. So if anyone brings up sexual violence, you're going to have to report it. The advocate in me went, I'm sorry, what? I will if that's what they want. And if they

don't, then that's not the action I'm going to take. It's really about finding what it is that survivors want and need and then helping leverage the resources to help get them, that outcome. And this was especially salient for me because I teach psychology of gender. I also taught women's health. Very frequently we would teach about sexual violence and sexual harassment and would commonly have students give disclosures in the classroom, for example, or talk to me about it. And so I went to go take a look at the policy and I found out we were not actually required to report sexual harassment or assault. I forget the exact wording, but it was something like we were strongly encouraged to do so. And then that sent me down the whole road of understanding mandatory reporting

policies. It was the first time that I'd ever really been exposed to a mandatory reporting policy in that way where we're talking about legal adults, whether we're talking about students, whether we're talking about employees. That was the thing that triggered me to start focusing on Title IX and mandatory reporting policies as a specialty within that. It's interesting to me that both you and Dr. Bedera, who actually recommended that I speak with you, thank you, Dr. Bedera, that you both started out as victim advocates. How do you feel that the experience as an advocate influences your work today? That was really at its core, what brought me to this work in the first place. It drives everything that I do from the kinds of questions that I'm interested in

in studying from the kinds of actions, whether that would be empirically informed, you know, data-driven policy practices, prevention programming, basically anything that I would hope to see come out of my research. I also see that as being really strongly aligned, at least. That's what my goal is. I always want to bring it back to the foundation of my advocacy training, which is really thinking about what does a trauma-informed response to violence look like and what are some of the essential pillars of that. It comes back to the importance of autonomy and control and being able to make well-informed decisions. That was one of the primary things that I was really passionate about in my advocacy work is helping survivors understand what are the options available to them. What are the

things that they want to be able to pursue? So it's really about providing as much information as you can to help empower survivors to be able to navigate the next steps in their recovery and response process. I see that as really serving as a foundation of the direction that my research goes. I also see that playing a big role in the way that I actually design and collect my data. So, for example, I do quantitative work, but a lot of my work is also qualitative in nature, putting participants at the forefront and their experiences and knowledge as not something that I'm trying to just get from them, but really seeing them as the sort of core central component of generating the kind of knowledge that we need to be able to craft better policies and better reporting

and response systems, better resources. Your recent publication in 2018 was titled Advocating Alternatives to Mandatory Reporting for college sexual assault. So I'm curious what the data reflected in terms of mandatory reporting and what some might find surprising. That's a great question because I see myself as a feminist psychologist. I'm deeply rooted in victim advocacy. And often when I talk to people who are not really in the field, some folks will get surprised when they find out that I am anti-mandatory reporting. They're like, I thought you cared about victims. It doesn't take much time for me to explain what reporting actually means and what it looks like for them to quickly realize, oh, so this isn't

often the best way that we respond. Specifically within this context of higher education, following federal Title IX guidance, and this has been for many decades, universities have designated some of their employees as mandatory reporters for sexual harassment and sexual violence. And it has fluctuated over the years who is or is not designated within that role. Universities for a very long time have had a lot more discretion as to who they were going to put within that role, although my research has found that most schools and especially the more sort of traditional four-year public and private not-for-profit institutions are especially likely to make just all of their employees mandatory reporters. The problem is, is that on its surface,

This sounds like a good thing to a lot of people. Well, don't we want the university to be taking action to be responsive to sexual violence when it happens? But the issue is, I always like to say that a mandatory reporting policy is only as effective as the system that you were reporting into. When the system itself, and in this case, the Title IX response process, generically I usually call it the Title IX office, though it comes under many different names at different universities. but essentially the system that is tasked with responding. So that can include anything from conducting investigations or formal grievance procedures, conducting or facilitating any kind of informal resolution processes, coordinating supportive measures.

They're often at least now seen as a sort of one-stop shop for response. But the problem is they are not a victim advocacy office. And so you're putting survivors into a system that does not have their best interests at heart by design. They are there to ensure that the institution is compliant with federal policies and practices that have been increasingly overtly hostile to victim survivors. Putting someone in contact with that system when they don't want it, when they're not ready for it, can be extraordinarily harmful, can result in secondary additional trauma. In a lot of the studies that I've done with survivors, they'll frequently describe it as more traumatic than the assault that they

experienced, that actually navigating that system was worse. Even if they responded wonderfully, even if there weren't problems with it, I would still say that it needs to be survivor's decision if that is the choice that they want to make. Because again, if we're going back to the advocacy, it's really that survivors being able to make well-informed decisions for what's going to be best for them in their life. So the other little piece of this is that often I'll hear the response from Title IX practitioners or just other folks. They don't have to participate in those processes. And while that might be true in my work, I find that institutions of higher education will often do anything and everything they can to not initiate formal grievance processes and try to resolve

issues in a way that doesn't put them at increased risk for some kind of liability or initiating a response procedure that would actually require some kind of action or sanction against someone who's been engaging in that behavior. The problem is, though, is that even if that is true, at the end of the day, the university still gets to decide they have ultimate control over the decision of whether or not they bring a formal complaint or not. It's called a university-driven complaint where even if the survivor does not want to participate, they can still choose to move forward with that. And while they can't force the person to participate in a hearing or interviews or things like that, they are still essentially taking a wrecking ball to that person's life, where they are talking to the witnesses,

the perpetrator, then knows these sort of campus climate means that is someone, where someone often lives. This is also where they work. It's also where they go to school. It's where the vast majority of their friends and their support system is. And then you start completely running through every single person in their life. Pretty soon they turn around and it feels like there's no safe place for them to be. That's why I have such an issue with mandatory reporting. Well, it's just one of the reasons. I have many reasons, but that's a really big one. A lot of times I hear this sort of idea of we're the ones who can provide things like supportive measures and referrals to resources. But even then, those are not frequently actually that useful for survivors healing.

Oftentimes when you're talking about referral to resources, they're handing them a list of the same campus resources that they can easily find outline. There's no sort of rhyme or reason it seems behind the scenes of when they do and they don't help facilitate things like academic accommodations, where for some folks, they will help navigate with their teachers with that. And other folks, they're like, well, sorry, that's out of our hands. Go talk to your instructor. That's one of the primary reasons why mandatory reporting seems like we have a zero talents policy,

but then if you actually take a look at what it is that you were reporting into, there's much more effective ways to be responding to sexual violence and trauma. That's one of the entire reasons why victim advocates exist and are trained because they don't just let anyone be a victim advocate for someone you have to undergo extensive training to be able to understand that at its core is about centering that person who's experienced the violence, and that's just not what a Title IX office is. They are not putting the survivor at the center of what they do. Several stories this season involve significant power imbalances,

such as sexual harassment and assault by a professor. How does power operate psychologically in these relationships, even when there's no explicit threat? You're right, that is extremely common. The sort of things that institutions, investigators are often looking for what evidence of coercion do we have? And the problem is take as the example of an advisor for graduate students. Even if there are not those explicit coercive threats, bribes, whatever happening, that person holds an immense amount of power over your training, and that's your

entire future career. When you're talking about master's or PhD programs, the faculty members are responsible for helping students navigate that program, helping them gain the kind of of experiences and skills that are needed to then pursue a career in the future. They are often serving as your direct employer. So, for example, if the faculty member has a grant and you're working under them, that is how you're making your living. If a survivor were to actually speak out about it, it's often not very difficult within those communities for all of a sudden they become the problem rather than the perpetrator, who in a lot of cases, has been engaging that behavior for a very long time. A lot of the things that don't come out as an explicit threat,

so even though they might not say, well, I'm going to fire you as my graduate research assistant unless you, X, Y, or Z, that threat doesn't have to be stated for it to still be there. It can make it really challenging for students to be able to navigate what happens next. Another problem too is that because master's and PhD programs, for example, are so highly specialized, that could potentially be the only faculty member in that department who has the area of specialty that they study and that they need training in and that they are then trying to get a job in afterwards. And it just raises so many complicated barriers that can make it very challenging for students to feel capable or comfortable being able to speak out about what's happening or engage in some kind of formal

reporting and response process, especially if they believe that if they do engage in some sort of formal reporting grievance procedure, that nothing is actually going to happen as a result of it. I once had a survivor describe it along the lines of something like, well, basically, I just blew up my life for nothing. Because when it does not actually result in their favor, then they're basically left in some cases they feel like in a worse situation than they were in which they were experiencing that violence and that trauma. How do you feel institutional betrayal or harm impacts survivors different than other types of trauma? I think the sort of answer to that for me lies in the fact that institutional betrayal as a

theory grew out of the idea of betrayal trauma theory. Jennifer Freid's original work in thinking about how the people that are closest to us, it can be both very difficult to be able to sort of recognize and navigate when you might have love and trust for the person who is doing you deep and terrible harm. Institutional betrayal is not exactly that, but that's where its roots come from. For example, in a lot of cases, the survivor is both going to school. Their job might be part of the university. So their lives are often so deeply enmeshed within that community. They become to trust it. And universities do a lot to build a sort of brand that people can see themselves as deeply connected to. They do a lot to be able to build that sort of emotional connection with

the students. So that's one piece of it, right, is that they often play just a very strong component of their life. But then the other piece of it is the formal response systems and processes are often in theory there to protect the students and employees, the people who work or go to school at their institution. It's there to protect against potential things that they might experience and to be able to offer support so that a student can continue with their education. At its core, Title IX is gender equity law. It's making sure that everybody has equal opportunity to access and pursue an education. The hope then is that, that those reporting processes, these institutional structures, would function to make sure that if

something was complicating someone's ability to fully thrive within their educational environment, that they would then be able to step in and help restore what had been taken away. But unfortunately, that is just often not the case. And that tends to be well known within the college community. whenever I do interviews with survivors or other college students, it's always this sort of like word of mouth, a friend of mine, or my friend's friend went through that and it was absolutely terrible. The word on the street is don't go to Title IX. And I think for me, the harder part is that I often hear institutions frame their Title IX office as this one-stop shop for anything you could possibly need related to sexual harassment and violence. At its core, it's about providing support to people. That is just

not the case of the sexual misconduct training that I have to do at my school. And this isn't created by my school. This is one that is sold to other institutions to do this as well. But the little module is called report equal support exclamation point. This is the message that is often getting pushed is that this is a place where you can go to for support. So then if someone believes that that is the place where you should theoretically go to for support who should have your back, but you know they don't, then it's almost worse. It's this sort of illusion when you're walking in the desert and you see the mirage. It's supposed to be there, but it's not.

And I think that's one of the things that makes that betrayal feel so harmful. It's the very prominent feeling of being let down. You can imagine how things could have gone differently, but yet they didn't. And I think for me, that's why it's so damaging and problematic for policies like mandatory reporting policies or why sort of funneling everyone and everyone through the Title IX office is just not the answer when it comes to providing the best kind of support to survivors because the way that it was created and especially the changes that we've seen in recent years. So, for example, following the 2020 Title IX regulations under the First Trump administration, it's just not a place that is designed to respond well to survivors. And in a lot of ways, it's designed to intentionally make it more difficult for them to try to pursue any kind of formal action. How would you describe the current state of our Title IX system's effectiveness?

In so many ways, it's not being effective. One of the primary findings that we see across the literature, including my research and others' research, is that the responses that are in place are failing survivors at essentially every turn. There might be individual cases where a survivor feels that they had a good interaction with an individual Title IX practitioner or someone that was helping to coordinate their supportive measures like navigating extensions on exams and their classes and things like that. You have well-meaning title line practitioners who are wanting to try to do a good job. So you have individual one-off cases where things might go well, but by and large, those are rare and they are also not evidence that the system is actually working. Because if we take a look at the current state of things, the evidence that we do have is that formal grievance processes are very rarely resulting in any kind of finding of responsibility. That's the term that they use within that is that the person is either responsible or not responsible for violating their schools. Tidalline sexual misconduct policy. It's very rare for someone to be found responsible. And even for those that are, it's actually quite rare to see any kind of sanctions that actually remove the perpetrator from campus, whether that would be termination of employment, if it was an employee or a suspension or expulsion, if it was a student,

I can't tell you how many different cases I've heard were essentially the case was drawn out over years until the perpetrator just graduated or left on their own because we are now back under the 2020 Title IX regulations from the Department of Education that really broke from prior precedent in how institutions could run investigations and grievance processes. I have a paper that I published with a quater, including Dr. Bader, where we analyzed the preamble in the 2020 regulations to look at the explanation and justification for requiring live adversarial direct cross-examination as part of formal grievance procedures. And that was different than prior guidance, where previously schools didn't have to direct cross-examination,

that it was sufficient to protect due process to have questioning happened through an investigator. Both parties need to be able to present evidence, witnesses, to know what's happening, and then also to be able to ask and answer questions, but it didn't have to be in this sort of like mock courtroom trial type system. The entire rhetoric around the requirement for this live cross-examination was at their core, sexual harassment and assaults complaints are seen as not credible, that this is the best way to test victim credibility and to identify. by ways that you can poke holes because these allegations are seen as not credible. Survivors and victims are seen as not credible. And so this is what we have for the formal grievance processes that are currently available. I have not talked to a single Title IX practitioner who thinks they work well for anyone. And I argue that that is the entire point was to create a system that was overtly, directly hostile and designed to minimize the number of formal grievance processes that

institutions were investigating. Unfortunately, I think that in a lot of cases now, you have sometimes well-meaning Title IX practitioners who then sort of use this as a reason to sway survivors away from formal grievance processes where, oh, it's going to be really traumatic and, oh, it's going to take a really long time and do you really want to do this thing. Then you have the options that are available where we have some sort of informal resolution process that we know very little about. There is very little empirical data on what do those informal resolution processes actually look like? How are they actually working? Are survivors satisfied with those processes? And additionally, what are the outcomes of them? Are those the outcomes that survivors were hoping

for? And I will note that the outcome of informal resolution cannot include requiring termination or punitive measures. If the survivor wants to not share. their campus space with the perpetrator, once the perpetrator does not be there, then automatically informal resolution is not going to offer that. We know very little about what's happening within those or how well they work. So we look at what I consider to be the sort of like three legs of title line office response. What are the things that could happen, whether that's formal grievance, whether that is some kind of informal resolution, whether that's some kind of supportive measures. We basically have failings at every single one of those legs. The evidence that we have the most

common quote unquote supportive measure that's given is referrals to resources. And that typically is often just a list of resources that are available or we could potentially change housing situations. We can facilitate non-contact orders. That's often sort of pitched as something that would help keep them out of each other's fear, preventing contact from happening. But those are also frequently, not consistently applied where I have found at the same institution, we'll have one survivor was like, I wanted to have help navigating accommodations in my class is, but they were like, no, we can't do anything for you. Then you have another survivor. It was like, oh, yeah, it was really helpful. They helped me navigate my class situation. I was able to move dorms. And then finally, the issue of

no contact orders gets extremely tricky within this context because the no contact order isn't just that the perpetrator can't contact them. It's that they can both not have any contact with each other. And so the perpetrator will then often find ways to say that the survivor is the one who violated no contact orders and actually use it as a way to make that person's world even smaller. In my research, violations of no contact orders, very rarely anything happens as a result of them. Survivors often say, I went and I told them they continue to stand outside of my dorm or this person continues to follow me a class or they're still messaging me on social media and they're kind of like, well, what can we do about? it. I think that's another issue that I have with supportive measures and even just this entire process. The 2020 regulations were also the first time that they introduced the idea that supportive measures also need to be provided to the respondents. This is the name that they call for the

person who was accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment. The framing of that is essentially saying that it is because these were things that were offered to people who had experienced sexual harassment or violence, to be able to help remedy what had happened and restore their equal access to education. And by then requiring supportive measures to people accused of sexual assault is then saying that being accused of sexual assault means that you then no longer have equitable access to education. It really does paint very clearly along with the increased concerns around due process protections and the sort of push for Title IX practitioner and institution interpretation of Title IX policy, this idea that we need to be neutral.

It's not that a survivor comes in and we are going to put them at the center of what happens next. It's the survivor comes in and now we need to be equally prioritizing and caring about the person who they've just named as they're harassed. We need to give them protections. And a lot of cases, they have far more due process protections when you actually analyze schools, policies. Those are some of the sort of core problems that I see with the current state of Title IX response in higher education. There were problems far predating the 2020 regulations. They have never worked very well.

And I will say that the current state that the policies are in have moved it from not working very well to continuing to not worked very well and are also more overtly hostile for victim survivors and also now have introduced very clearly this idea that perpetrators are the ones really that need to be protected within these systems. Many of the stories that we are going to hear from survivors this season involve athletic departments, theater departments, Greek life. And some data seems to support that there is higher rates of sexual violence within these systems. Why do you think that is? That's a good question.

I think within some sub-communities within institutions of higher education, in some cases, this is true for things like Greek life, athletics. There is often this sort of hegemonic masculinity, gendered power dynamics and processes at play within those communities that very much create the kind of environment where sexual harassment and sexual violence can flourish. Additionally, any kind of sub-community or area where there are fairly strict hierarchies, you'll also see this sometime within hospital systems or within the military, when you have a very clear hierarchical power structure that also can lend itself well to creating the kind of environment where sexual harassment and violence can

flourish and it's very difficult for change to occur because of the power and privilege that a lot of perpetrators are holding within those communities. Why do you think there are so few expulsions or sanctions or termination of employment within these systems? One of the reasons at its face level is that reports that are made to the Title IX officer, that's the sort of like first contact that happens, whether that is a mandatory reporter who makes it or whether it's the survivor who makes it themselves. Very few of them actually translate into any kind of formal grievance process, a punitive response being terminated or suspended. A formal grievance process has to occur for that outcome to happen. And so the fact that most of them don't result in that

means that automatically that is off the table as a possibility. The other piece is that very few formal grievance procedures actually result in a finding of responsibility. And so if the person is found not responsible, then they won't be introducing any kind of punitive type measures. There are not a lot of institutions that would come right out and say this. But if they do let the person go, if they expel them, or if they terminate them, they risk opening themselves up to a lawsuit from that person. And if they're trying to avoid litigation, then that's going to be a reason right there. I think that if you sat down with the people who serve on the hearing board, who makes the determination about what distinction is going to be, I don't think they would say, I don't know, is this really a problem? But when you have a system

that is designed at every turn to push on and push up against the credibility of a survivor, And there's a lot of empathy that's given to perpetrators in these processes. A lot of times we hear this idea of like, we don't want to ruin his life or, oh, we have such a promising career ahead of him. They're all so young. It's the first time they've ever had to navigate these things. How could they possibly know? Well, I don't think anyone would want to come right out and say, well, I just don't think

that sexual assault is really that big of a deal. At the end of the day, they think that what happened isn't. really quite bad enough to potentially get someone fired or potentially have them expelled from school. Here's a great example. This is actually one in which they came right out and explicitly said it. So a survivor in one of my studies went through the formal grievance process. The student who had sexually assaulted her was found responsible. And then the hearing board who was determining the sanctions for him sexually assaulting her, they suspended him for just the rest of the semester. They were already halfway through the semester.

And the reason that they gave was that they thought that the assault could have been worse. Essentially, it wasn't severe enough to expel him. And that was something that was so traumatizing for her. She was like, this has completely upended my entire life and you're sitting here telling me that it could have been worse. And so I think the sort of larger cultural minimization of sexual violence and the normalization, frankly, of harassment and violence makes it systems of empathy more likely to empathize with men, really concern about men's ability to continue to thrive and live their lives, and especially when you're talking about younger men worrying about their careers and futures and

stuff. I think that this whole thing comes together to create a situation in which they don't actually believe that sexual violence, even if they 100% believe that it happened, actually think that that justifies. Taking someone out of school, or firing them for their job. And for me, that really comes down to the larger systems of, as I said, the normalization and minimization of sexual violence and patriarchy. Some of the survivors we spoke with this season described retaliation after reporting. What have you learned in your research about how frequently that happens

and how that can impact a victim survivor's finishing school? It's both a really common fear that can prevent someone from actually reporting in the first place or prevent them from pursuing a formal grievance process. But then, as you said, when they actually go through with it, we'll often experience that retaliation that they're concerned about. There's a couple of issues that frequently will come up. One is that it's very difficult for them to often prove the retaliation. the kinds of actions that Title IX practitioners that institutions tend to look for, the things that are happening, it's not the F for the grade or the denying someone of a promotion. There was an example of a faculty member who had gone through with a sexual harassment complaint

and was experiencing retaliation as a result. And when she would bring the examples to the Title IX office, they would say, were you denied a promotion? The person that was retaliating against her, she was a faculty member and this was a colleague. In no way does your colleague, one individual other faculty member, gets to determine whether or not you get promoted.

So like that in and of itself is just not even possible. And so I think that a part of the problem is that the type of forms that retaliation often takes that the institution is often not willing to sort of recognize as being retaliation, even though on paper, it says retaliation is prohibited and you're not allowed to retaliate against someone in practice,

what that actually looks like is often something that they are wary or hesitant to take any kind of action on. As a result, you have survivors then having to try to navigate that themselves. That can result in things like not taking certain classes because the perpetrator is going to be in that, or they switch majors, their friend group gets extraordinarily small. They're not able to talk to anyone anymore because of the kinds of behaviors that they're experiencing. And in some cases, they end up leaving the institution altogether and potentially starting a new university.

So I think that the evidence is pretty clear that there is fairly inadequate response mechanisms for responding to retaliation. For students who are from marginalized communities, what is the, research that you've done show about the nuances that they experience while navigating the Title IX system. The institutional structures are really rooted in the way that they are created by design are at least not helpful and at worst overtly hostile towards victim survivors. That is doubly true for survivors from marginalized communities where the system that is in place, the cases that it tends to work best for is going to be the most privileged of people that are navigating that system. I think some of the unique issues that are faced by survivors from marginalized communities,

one is that there may be prejudice or stigma held within the people who are responding. For example, the Title IX practitioners or coordinators, the Dean of Students or the Hearing Board members, whoever it is that they're interfacing with within this system, may hold hold problematic ideas about members from that group. One example from a survivor from an I study is it was an LGBTQ plus student. And when they were reporting their experience to the Title IX office, the Title IX investigator told them something along the lines of, don't worry, I'm not going to hold your lifestyle preferences against you in this case. And by stating right there, it is already biased.

So it's those moments of microaggressions that happen within those systems. Some of the other things that can be really tricky for folks from marginalized communities. And this is especially true, thinking about students of color at primarily white institutions, for example. It's a smaller community on campus. The perpetrator happens to be someone with a connection to or within that community. Then there can be additional pressure that they experience from others within that. community to not move forward. I'm curious what nuances you've seen for victim survivors when the perpetrator or respondent

is a staff member of the university in terms of how that individually impacts the victim survivor. There are a number of different things that can be difficult, especially when it's someone who is in a position of power, a very highly valued member of that community. We can think about how football or athletics is one great example where if they're a highly beloved coach or athletic director, it's not that they don't want to believe that it's going to happen. It's that if that is true, and then we have to do something against this person, that's also true for faculty members.

If it's a tenured professor, having that job security, there's a lot of very useful, beneficial things that go into that. Unfortunately, it is also something that can make it difficult to remove a faculty member who's a sexual predator. And if they're a highly valued member of the community, so say that faculty member is considered a real sort of star in their field, they bring in a lot of big grants. We're talking about a lot of money that the university is getting because of them. It's one of those cases when they might believe the students,

and a lot of times with those folks, we're talking about many students over many years, that even though they might realize it's true, at the end of the day, the person who is a more valued member of that community is going to get the benefit of the doubt more frequently. Do we really want to lose the faculty member who brings in so much indirect money? Do we really want to like outstart beloved coach who we're really counting on because football culture or basketball culture, whatever it is on your campus that is so prominent in the community,

that it basically becomes the sort of cost-benefit analysis. And when they hold the position of power, it also makes it a lot more difficult for survivors to come forward. We can think about like Larry Nasser as one very prominent example, where it takes over many, many years and many, many, many survivors, is despicable that it takes so many people for it to actually to sort of tip over. Speaking of mandatory reporting, I would have people who would hold up the Nassar case as a pro-mandatory reporting of, you know, if people had come forward, wouldn't that have helped solve the problem?

And in fact, he had been investigated by Title IX. people had already recorded. It did not solve that problem, nor would it. I'm curious if you have come across any research about the media response and how it impacts victims when a civil case is filed or it reaches the media. I will say that I have some evidence from faculty, staff, and students who will mention the media response as something that clued them into problems with their school's Title IX system. Those media cases will often be what clues the community in so that there is something wrong

with the system. There's a research lab at Michigan that was collecting data from media articles related to that and how that related to school's sexual misconduct policies. What actually ends up happening for schools' policies following larger media coverage of specific cases? Because sometimes it'll be like a reactionary thing where a case will come out, it blows up there's negative media attention and then the school's scrambling to try to do something to update their policy or redo their systems. I mean, that was one of the ways that a lot of schools

like universal mandatory reporting policies that makes just everybody a mandatory reporter, all of the employees has sometimes come up as a result of more high profile cases that have happened and then in the scramble afterwards to try to solve the problem. That's often something that sort of slapped on as an idea that that's somehow going to fix the issue when in reality, the issue was the system that you're reporting into. What would you want students to know about their rights and what they should consider when considering reporting? A couple of pieces that I really think it's important for students to know is

who are the people on their campus, who they can speak to in confidence. Schools designates some supports as confidential. Who are the people on campus who they designate as mandatory reporters and who don't they? If they're thinking about potentially interfacing with the Title IX office, I always encourage students to reach out to you and bring an advocate with them, whether that is a victim advocate or whether that is another faculty or staff member who is knowledgeable about the system. There's some evidence to suggest that survivors may have some better experiences when they have other people at the university or in the system on their side to be able to back them up.

And so bringing someone else along who is able to help them navigate that process and help to take in information, I think is really important. I also think that survivors should know that they are allowed to ask for things that are not written down on paper. If, for example, they're wanting some kind of supportive measures that they should feel able of asking for things that are not down on paper. It's not a problem to ask for the things that you need. In other cases, I think institutions do a much better job of being creative and how they're able to support people who are experiencing trauma. There's a really great study that was done just a couple of years ago, and they were comparing the kind of supportive measures that were offered to survivors in schools

Title IX policies compared to the supportive measures that were offered to students who suffer a sports-related concussion. And the most common supportive measures for survivors in Title IX policies were all things that it would essentially reduce their access to education, like making it easier for them to withdraw from their classes. There were things for the students who would experience a sports-related concussion were all kinds of things like facilitating remote work, a slow return process, things that would actually help them stay in school. Are there ways that they can facilitate that for other students and other cases? The main thing that they sort of give you is to ask for what it is that you want and need.

But then also, you shouldn't have to be the one to just on your own come up with that, which is why having an advocate or someone on your side to be able to help you navigate and understand and brainstorm what it is because sometimes it's like, do you even really know what it is that you want? And so that's the place where I think that schools need to do a much better job of offering the sort of their minimum of what's possible. The other thing that I would say is if they are wanting to move forward with a formal grievance process, that if their school doesn't automatically allow for the direct cross-examination to happen remotely or via Zoom so you don't have to be in the

same room that you should definitely ask for that, I think also asking a lot of questions, gaining more information ahead of time. What would the formal grievance process look like? What would the informer resolution process look like? What are the outcomes that could be possible of those things? Because I think that one of the biggest problems, and Dr. Bedera talks about this and her work is that a lot of times students and survivors don't have the information that's available, that puts Title IX practitioners in a really great position to be able to push that person towards whatever it is that they want, ask for an established clear communication from the people in the office. That's one of the other big problems that come up, is that.

there is a great lack of communication and transparency about what is happening at the process. And so having whatever investigator or Title IX coordinator who they're working with to establish upfront what kind of schedule and how you want to be contacted and the frequency at which you want to be contacted with updates, making sure that there are clear expectations for the kind of communication that you want and not feeling bad. Are they busy? Sure, that's their job. I don't care how busy they are. there should be a clear established communication that's consistent across survivors. Those kinds of things, I think, are really essential.

And that's also where I think that having an advocate to help navigate policy language, those policy expectations. And I think the last thing I would say is also don't feel bad if going the formal grievance process is not right for you. I think that a lot of times survivors feel a lot of pressure. It can be a really admirable thing and something that, can be very meaningful for survivors. It's such a selfless thing that happens a lot where they're like,

I'm going to put myself through this because I don't want someone else to have to experience this. I want to try to protect other people from what I experienced. And I think that that is fantastic. What worries me is when that attitude starts to get adopted by other people who like, well, wouldn't you want to make sure that this wouldn't happen again? Wouldn't you want the mandatory reporter to report it? Look at what's happening here. At the end of the day, for me, this individual person's wants and needs and timeline needs to be

at the heart and the center of every single decision that happens afterwards, which is why black and white kinds of policies and responses are just not going to work because at their core, they are not survivor-centered. There is not a one-size-fits-all for survivors. The last thing I'll say is if they're concerned about the kind of support that they might get on their campus. If they're concerned about the campus-based victim advocates, for example, finding community supports outside of that. Organizations like End Rape on campus or No Year 9 can often be helpful for navigating information. There's often student groups. It's on us is another example of one that often has campus-based chapters. And so finding the organizations outside

that can help identify information and think about your options and processes. Victim advocacy organizations in the community can really be helpful as well. Some of them might not be as familiar with the intricacies of the Title IX process, but there might also be people in those organizations who that is sort of their specialty. Thank you so, so much, not only for that information, but for being willing to speak with me and educate all of us. Where can we follow and support the work that you do? My lab website, I have information there about what I do with my contact information.

I will often encourage students and faculty and staff and other advocacy groups. I'm always open to answering questions or, speaking with folks. I've also served as an expert witness before for Title IX litigation. I'm always willing to help lend some expertise. And so my contact information is available there. For my research, I always make sure that my Google Scholar profile is up to date that has all of my current publications, which has this work. And if you're at an institution or if you're not able to actually access those, send me an email and I will send you a PDF of anything that you need if you're looking for something that is behind a paywall. Thank you so, so much. You are incredible

Thank you for the important work that you're doing, the important research you're doing. 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. Chessler, social media marketing manager Lauren Barkman, 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. 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 artist's 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. Until next time, stay safe, friends.