I was walking back from class about a month ago when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I got a news alert from CNN on my phone that I casually glanced over.
Except the phrase Title IX in the headline caught my eye.
It is no surprise that President Trump is not the foremost speaker on women’s rights after some of the things he’s said, but nevertheless as I started to read what Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that day — you probably know her as the woman who said guns should be allowed in schools to protect from grizzly bears during her confirmation hearing — my stomach began to turn.
DeVos announced that the Department of Education was going to rescind the preponderance of evidence standard that was more forcefully imposed on public universities for Title IX cases during the Obama administration, and replace it with the clear and convincing standard of evidence instead.
But what does that mean?
Director Clifford Scott of the Office of Equal Opportunity, who works with Title IX here at USC, explained it like this: the preponderance of evidence standard is finding someone in violation of Title IX by asking if it is more likely the action has taken place than not. The clear and convincing standard of evidence is asking is there a high probability that what is alleged is true.
The retraction of the original standard set by the Obama administration was done to give those accused of sexual assault on campus more judicial rights in student conduct and Title IX investigations. To make it harder to prove that a crime was committed on the accuser’s part.
Scott said with preponderance of evidence you only need to tip the scales a little, but with clear and convincing evidence more is needed.
As I kept reading I started to become more worried about my friends, myself, survivors of sexual assault, and whether USC was going to employ these changes since this was a change on the federal level. Surely, the ruling would trickle down to the states, to their public universities, and eventually to here.
But it hasn’t.
USC, like a lot of other universities dealing with this, haven’t changed the standard of evidence needed in a Title IX case. It’s still preponderance of evidence, and even if it did change, many of the services offered by USC to help survivors of sexual assault would stay the same.
“If changes occur then our explanation behind that and how the process works, that would change, but in terms of how we offer services and what we do, that won’t change,” said Associate Director of SAVIP Shannon Nix. “No matter what, whether there’s federal legislation or not, we’re still gonna do what we do.”
And the Office of Equal Opportunity, or EOP, agrees.
Scott said that if a change does take place that EOP will still be doing Title IX investigations if a survivor of sexual assault comes to them and wants them to get involved.
Scott also said that while these measures are being instituted on the federal level, they are interim measures and therefore are not permanent and may not truly take hold.
So for now, we here in Columbia can rest easy knowing that nothing has changed, and if it does, there will still be people here to help and protect those in need.
