Feminists in Action at LSU held its second roundtable talk since last year with Title IX officers on April 5, and students were angry at themselves standing in the same place despite the office’s former promises to create systematic change on our campus.
Students came ready to ask the officers for more accountability, transparency, action, and communication from the office. While questions were asked about mandatory reporting, Permanent Memorandum 73 and training on campus to un-learn rape culture, one person loomed large in everyone’s minds: Adelaide Russo.
“We all know that we’re talking about a faculty member in the French department,” Title IX Coordinator Joshua Jones said. “As to that situation, there is a process in play and that process will play out. Anything that we can work on outside of removing that faculty member from campus, we will do.”
Jones said that while the Title IX office does not have the power to fire Russo, since the allegations against her technically do not trigger PM 73, the office is doing all it can to help mitigate students’ feelings of lack of safety. Despite the office’s efforts to mitigate these feelings, students still don’t see enough action being taken.
“I know that you all came into your positions in the Title IX office when everything with Russo and d’Espalungue had already transpired,” one student said. “But we are still seeing the ripple effects of that, and you guys have the opportunity right now to show us that you are here for us. I was here in this room last year, and I was super excited so it’s just disappointing that nothing has come of it.”
Leadership and Human Resource Development freshman Jennifer Cook added to this discussion of inaction by mentioning how many of the cases brought to the Title IX office last year went without closure or consequence.
“As a student, as a young woman, going through domestic violence and sexual violence is incredibly hard and it is even harder to have to admit that it happened,” Eisworth said. “Reporting gives you the chance of closure, but when the chances of closure are so slim, it really discourages students from reporting. Why should students report if the closure rate is so low?”
Deputy Title IX Coordinator for Response and Resolution Asha Murphy noted that when looking at the closure rates for cases, we must differentiate between an incident report that the office receives from mandatory reporters and formal complaints from survivors seeking an investigation.
“There’s a bit of a difference between the number of reports that we receive versus the number of completed cases that go through a formal process,” Murphy said. “I’ll say that for some survivors, it feels right to trust an authority to go through the process. For some survivors, it means never coming in to talk to us at all about it because they’re not interested or they’re not ready. There may be some people who go through the process or care about the process and decide it’s not for them. The point is always to give the choice when we can, and that’s usually every time we talk to somebody.”
Understandably, students are exhausted by the process. French junior Ali Redmann knows this exhaustion and frustration all too well, as she has been highly active in the movement to remove Russo from campus. Redmann is behind the campus-wide viral letter demanding Russo’s firing.
Redmann has sent numerous emails and made many phone calls to President Tate, Dean Blanchard and other administrators, asking to have a meeting to discuss Russo’s presence on campus. She even taped a letter on Dean Blanchard’s office door asking to speak with him on the issue.
“All we’re asking for is an internal probe,” Redmann said. “If you’re telling us that we can’t have that, then we’re at a stalemate; what are we supposed to do in this situation? Who are we supposed to go to, especially if we try to contact them and they don’t care?”
When Redmann asked the Title IX officers if they could help an organization like Feminists in Action get a meeting with Dean Blanchard, Jones agreed to “make an ask.” Redmann specifically asked if the office could potentially set up an open forum type of conversation with President Tate, Dean Blanchard and even Russo herself.
“I will tell you that your question, to directly answer, about facilitating some kind of dialogue, I would love that,” Murphy said. “Can we find common ground and find ways of acknowledging each other and having a restorative conversation? I personally will look into that.”
One of the main takeaways from the roundtable discussion was the office’s lack of communication. Even when the office is actively doing work on campus to create safer spaces for survivors, the student body rarely hears about it. Deputy Title IX Coordinator for Training and Prevention Miranda Brown said she is working on bolstering communication with the student body by creating more of a social media presence.
“We want to be accessible,” Brown said. “We want to have these conversations. They might not feel good, you might not get the responses that you want or hope for, we may not be able to resolve those things, but we want to have these conversations. We want to be open, transparent and we want our office to be readily open for anyone to just come in and talk to us.”
Brown is tasked with educating the entire campus body about sexual assault and creating initiatives for prevention. Due to the newness of her position, she said a lot of her work has been reactive instead of proactive. She hopes that as increased work is done to educate students and faculty, we will see more change on campus.
“It’s going to take a lot of effort from the entire student body and the higher-ups whom we need to be able to put money into programming and money into research,” Brown said. “It’s one little step at a time, it’s very grassroots, very small changes and small steps. I think also we need to help people understand that prior to the establishment of this office, training wasn’t a part of the process. People weren’t getting training; they weren’t having this conversation.”
As far as future steps, the Title IX office is working on not only increasing communication with the student body but also creating easier access to information and documents detailing the work the office is doing. Determining what previous actions were successful and unsuccessful is an integral part of the process.
While the Title IX office may not be able to snap their fingers and change a campus deeply entrenched in rape culture, they want students to know they are committed to creating a safer and more responsive environment for those dealing with sexual assault.
“Where can we make better changes to immediately support students and help students whether it be through creating those communities, Instagram getting an account up or getting information to folks?” Jones asked. “It doesn’t solve everything but at least we’re making progress and showing the campus that we’re making progress.”
