By Barbara Johnson, Title IX Coordinator
As Title IX Coordinator, I work with an awesome group of professionals who are passionate about efforts, to uphold a just Title IX process, that keeps our students safe and supported. The three areas that I want to focus on are: emergency support, “time on task” and training.
At Susquehanna University, we have a 24-hour campus emergency response team that consists of Public Safety, Counseling and Health Services. We also have a partnership with Transitions of PA, a non-profit organization that has a 24-hour free hotline, with sexual assault advocates available to talk with our students at any time. Our Public Safety Director has built a relationship with the Selinsgrove Police Department, so that they are responsive to campus emergencies as needed.
Finally, Evangelical Hospital in Lewisburg has a sexual assault nurse educator available in their emergency room, to provide our students with free sexual assault exams. Completed exams are stored as evidence at the Selinsgrove Police Department, should a student decide to open a criminal investigation.
“Time on task” is the time we spend enriching the work that we do in Title IX. The Title IX Coordinator responds each day to submitted reports, replies to every
responsible employee who submits a report, meets individually with all par- ties involved in a report, sends letters to students wishing to close the report, formally turns a report into a case by submitting it to the Title IX Investigators, to conduct the trauma informed investigation, matches students with a Sexual Misconduct Awareness Resource Team (SMART) member and moves a case forward to the conduct process.
The Title IX team consists of the Coordinator, three deputies, three investigators and the student conduct officer, who meet every other week to review case updates.
The Title IX team reads Title IX manuals, training binders, information guides and media updates to al- ways be on point, about the intricacies of our work. The Coordinator and the Investigators meet weekly to review the progress of pending investigations. SMART team members are as- signed students involved in cases, to provide resources and another layer of support. We often have “talk it outs” for those times when we meet at a moment’s notice to talk through a situation, without names, to be sure we have considered every angle and avoided any bias or assumptions.
We are super excited about the training modules from our new Safe Colleges Learning Platform, focused on Title IX, the Clery Act and Violence Against Women Act. Every employee will have two hours of training by January 2018. That will include about 450 full time employees, 300 part time employees and over 1,020 student workers.
That is 3,540 hours of training! In addition, the Coordinator and Investigators have logged in over 100 hours of specialized training from the Association of Title IX Administrators, D. Stafford Associates and Transitions of PA. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has implemented a new requirement that all athletes are trained in Title IX. Group trainings are scheduled this semester with two completed already. We are learning and growing as we continue to stay on course with our efforts.
