Sacramento State was asked to improve how it handles Title IX, sexual misconduct. Did it?

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In the summer of 2023, Sacramento State was given recommendations to improve its handling of sexual misconduct and Title IX gender-based issues.

Sacramento State was told to improve resourcing strategies campus wide after an uptick in Title IX reports in fall 2022. The university was instructed to increase awareness of its Title IX office, improve coordination with other campus entities and refine documentation and record keeping.

These recommendations were given by Cozen O’Connor, an international law firm based in Pennsylvania who assessed sexual misconduct and the handling of Title IX across the California State University’s 23 campuses. The California State University system’s mishandlings were classified as an “institutional failure,” the audit stated.

The Cozen O’Connor audit was prompted by multiple issues of sexual misconduct and Title IX across the California State University system.

A year later — where is Sacramento State in addressing these issues?

In 2022, multiple sexual assaults caused significant concern across Sacramento State’s student body. Addressing those anxieties was also recommended in the report. When it comes to the combined total of assaults and rapes, nothing has changed, data from Sacramento State Police Department showed. During the 2022-23 academic year, Sacramento State reported 11 assaults and seven rapes. Sacramento State has had 13 assaults and five rapes this year. In total: the university has had 18 crimes that was either assaults or rapes.

This year, Skip Bishop, the executive director of equal opportunity and the university’s Title IX coordinator, said his office has seen an increase in reports. Bishop said this increase shows the Title IX process is working, and that the campus community is becoming more aware of resources.

Bishop could not clarify the exact increase of reports his office has received. He said collecting that data would be “a project that (he) just don’t have time to do.”

Sacramento State was given six specific recommendations from the Cozen O’Connor report intended to improve on.

Awareness and visibility of the Office of Equal Opportunity

Bishop said OEO has included added additional signage on campus to “let people know where (the office is) at.” Bishop said the office has also increased its social media presence.

He added OEO has done more than 50 in-person or virtual events related to Title IX in partnership with other campus partners.

“I got a six person office, and we still pulled that off,” Bishop said. “I would put that up against any of the universities in the country to put that level of programming out in front an entire campus.”

Internal OEO processes and coordination with campus partners

To improve the university’s report intake progress, the report recommended Sacramento State create a formal multidisciplinary team to meet on a regular basis. Within that team, Cozen O’Connor recommended there be discussions of all student, staff and faculty reports related to Title IX and DHR.

But Bishop said that process won’t work for the university.

“We don’t do it like that. We probably won’t do it like that,” Bishop said “Since I’ve been here, we’ve created separate teams because certain information just can’t be shared across the board. It’s more efficient to do it this way.”

OEO meets “regularly” — either biweekly or twice a month — with three separate teams to discuss academic labor relations and academic affairs. Bishop said these teams “do the exact thing (Cozen O’Connor) recommended in the report.”

Bishop said his staff will meet with campus officials like the faculty and university police biweekly to “do exactly what recommend in the report” and discuss cases that come in and where they’re going.

Bishop said there are now two separate teams to discuss Title IX issues with faculty and students.

Prevention and education, improving infrastructure

The report also described OEO as “under resourced to serve the needs of the university.” Due to issues with staffing and resources, approaches to prevention and education were minimal. To solve this, the auditors recommended Sacramento State build a formal prevention and education program, hire a dedicated prevention coordinator and establish a prevention and education oversight committee.

Bishop declined to comment these recommendations because it has a “financial component” and is “connected to the Chancellor’s Office.”

Documentation and record keeping

Sacramento State had inconsistent documentation and record keeping practices, the report stated. Information was not always maintained centrally or was accessible to OEO and other campus departments. Documentation was described as “inconsistent,” and as a result of the system’s inefficiency, the university over relied on “individual and institutional memories,” the report stated.

Sacramento State was instructed to develop specific protocols, consistent collection and retention of data that could be shared and tracked accessibly.

Since 2013, when Bishop arrived, OEO used an Excel spreadsheet. Now the university has a case management system.

“The case management system is just that: it manages the entire case documents,” Bishop said. “If I sent a letter to someone or an email to someone in the case management system, that’s how we keep track of everything.”

Addressing other conduct of concern

In response to concerns over student safety, Sacramento State rolled out an action plan to prevent sexual violence on campus.

In the time Sacramento State has had this plan, the university has hired two confidential advocates contracted out through WEAVE, a Sacramento nonprofit that specializes in supporting sexual assault survivors. These two advocates are located in student housing, said Lara Falkenstein, the university’s associate director of health and wellness.

Falkenstein said Sacramento State has focused on sexual assault prevention awareness. In the month of April, the university has ran sexual assault prevention and awareness events. She said the university supplies students with information on ways to report a sexual assault.

During their audit, Cozen O’Connor found significant confusion among the Sacramento State between OEO and other campus entities. Bishop said to provide clarity, OEO requires mandatory training for faculty, staff and students on the office annually.

The university will send out “campus notices” at the end of each semester, as well as a designated course of OEO for students online.

“We’re doing that, and hopefully that catches on,” Bishop said. “Then our partners, our colleagues have this information and they share it as well.”