In November 2020, LSU hired law firm Husch Blackwell to review its Title IX policies and procedures, following a USA Today investigation that uncovered the university’s repeated mishandling of sexual assault cases.
About four months later, the law firm released a 150-page report detailing the school’s failures and 18 recommendations to “fundamentally change the way the university handles these exceptionally complicated cases.”
Nearly one year after the report was released, LSU has completed 17 of the 18 recommendations so far, according to Jane Cassidy, interim vice president of LSU’s Civil Rights and Title IX Office. The recommendations deal with how the Title IX Office operates, reporting processes, investigative protocols and sexual assault training.
Cassidy said the Title IX Office now has four investigators and plans to get another case manager to aid with civil rights claims, since the issues sometimes go hand-in-hand.
The office recently hired a deputy Title IX coordinator for training and prevention, Miranda Brown, and she’s working on training with a push for bystander intervention, Cassidy said.
LSU also hired Baker Tilly, another law firm specialized in Title IX procedures, in October to review the university’s progress in completing Husch Blackwell’s recommendations. Cassidy said the law firm agrees that 16 of 18 recommendations have been completed, as they’re waiting to see the training made for LSU Athletics in practice before they count it as completed.
This semester, LSU coaches and student athletes will undergo new, targeted sexual assault training.
The latest Title IX progress report on Dec. 20 showed 16 of 18 recommendations completed. Cassidy said the recommendation to “thoughtfully consider presumptively appropriate sanctions” was completed shortly after the report and went into action on the first day of the spring 2022 semester.
The policy is meant to better outline how Title IX offenders should be punished.
“This matrix is for every individual behavior that could happen, where we kinda think we start, and then how would we figure out what the exact punishment is. This is provided to the hearing panel, and they’re the ones that decide whether to move that one way or another,” Cassidy said.
The recommendation still in progress is “regularly measure climate and effectiveness.” Cassidy says this will not be checked off until spring 2023 because the Louisiana Board of Regents is requiring all public institutions to give a power-based violence climate survey next year.
The predicted timeline is that the survey will be given to the university in the fall, and the data will be analyzed in the spring, but it’s still in the works, Cassidy said. This semester will consist of groups meeting to discuss how to get maximum engagement with the surveys.
Baker Tilly also recommended five new changes on top of Husch Blackwell’s, three of which have been completed, Cassidy said.
The other two are establishing a committee to help get maximum student engagement in the upcoming survey, implementing mandatory sexual assault training for incoming students, and a plan to continue providing that information every year.
Because the university is nearing completion of the recommendations, Cassidy said the office is pivoting to a focus on prevention.
“We’re really focusing now on how do we prevent this from happening in the first place,” Cassidy said. “We’ve got it set up if it happens, we know how to take care of it. We hope people will trust us.”
Cassidy and Tigers Against Sexual Assault agree progress has and is being made, but they know much remains to be done.
“If it stops now, it’s not enough,” said Emily Hebert, director of public relations for TASA. “But it’s an improvement on where we were before.”
As an example of gaps in improvements, Hebert pointed to the 2021 LSU Title IX biannual report, which gives a report of power-based violence incidents that were reported on campus, as required by state law. It showed that of 63 total incidents reported to the Title IX office between June 29 and Sept. 30 of last year 71% were closed without disciplinary action.
“I would say that the university has made great steps in the fundamentals of having a Title IX process that is effective and better for survivors,” said Angellina Cantelli, co-president of TASA. “However, there is always more to be done, and I am hopeful that they will continue to close some of the gaps we’re currently seeing in education and training about consent and survivors’ rights in the near future.”
Cassidy hopes the progress the university has made so far has helped gain community trust.
“I hope I’m right about this, but I feel like we have made progress in getting people to trust us,” Cassidy said. “We’ve worked with Tigers Against Sexual Assault, we’re working with Student Government, the We’re Committed group, we’re working with the Feminists in Action group, we have a group of faculty members from WGSS who we’ve been taking to.”
