A group of 31 students and alumni — ranging from the class of 1975 to the class of 2016 —have filed a federal complaint against UC Berkeley, alleging that the school handled their reports of sexual assault and harassment with “deliberate indifference.”
Last week, the coalition of assault survivors announced that they would be filing Title IX and Clery complaints against the university with the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Clery Compliance Division (CCD). According to their petition to the OCR, the sexual assault procedures at UC Berkeley propagate and permit a hostile environment for female students by “discourag[ing] victims from reporting sexual assaults, favor[ing] assailants in the adjudication process and revictimiz[ing] survivors.”
This isn’t the first time that UC Berkeley has been the subject of a federal complaint — last May, nine students filed one with the OCR under the Clery Act. Sofie Karasek, a junior, was one of them. She alleges that she was sexually assaulted during her freshman year by a member of a student organization she’d joined; she later discovered that three other female students — all of them in the same organization — had been assaulted by the same man. According to Karasek, at least three of them filed a formal complaint with the University’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination and the Center for Student Conduct — they originally thought that meeting with OPHD representatives qualified as reporting, and the reps never told them that a written statement was required for a report. Another of the assault survivors also went to Berkeley’s Gender Equity Resource Center (GenEq) and tried to have the assailant removed from the organization; there, she was told the that she should “keep him close in case he does it again” so that he would “have a community of friends to support him in processing it.” According to this logic, it’s the duty of an assault victim to make sure that the perpetrator has someone to talk him through it when he does it again — which he will, because he’s a repeat offender.
The three never received any updates about their case, and their assailant was eventually allowed to graduate early. Karasek later found out that he was only found in violation of the university’s Code of Student Conduct and punished with probation (which is, essentially, a meaningless slap on the wrist) and mandatory counseling. So Sofie filed a Clery Act complaint. Now, eight months later, it has yet to be investigated, and a stream of misguided, nonsensical, and patently contradictory rhetoric continues to emit from the mouths of the UC Berkeley administration, whose indifference and incompetence has put Berkeley students in danger for years. Just how contradictory is it? Let’s have a look at some of the most egregious low points:
“Pressing Charges Can Be a Long, Painful Process”
The university actively insists that it does nothing to discourage survivors, but language in its own sexual assault resources and statements made by its own employees directly contradict that. One claimant, sophomore Meghan Warner, told the Huffington Post that she was “shocked and hurt” to find that most of the university resources online were aimed at the perpetrator, “including an infographic for what to do if you’re accused, not what to do if you are a survivor seeking help.” The link to the school’s Campus Student Policy and Procedures Regarding Sexual Assault and Rape, which is listed on the website for the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD), no longer works. And currently, the GenEq website has this advice for victims of assault:
Consider whether you want to file charges with the police and/or with the campus authorities if your alleged assailant is a student. Pressing charges can be a long, painful process. Each person must decide for themselves, based on their own circumstances, whether it makes sense to go through it. Social Service staff are available to help you consider the pros and cons for filing charges.
Another complainant, Aryle Butler, had a terrible experience attempting to work with GenEq. She didn’t want to report her assailant, but the police somehow found out about her assault and accosted her in her dormitory. “A friend of mine was raped shortly after I was assaulted twice, and the police came to my door at 2am on a Sunday night, yelling my name, and waking up my floor,” she told me in an email. “He then said in the hallway, quite loudly ‘I need to talk to you about [your friend’s] rape’ … He didn’t inform me of my rights, did not identify himself and wouldn’t tell me who told him about my friend’s assault.” She attempted to report the officer to GenEq — being rightfully alarmed and deeply uncomfortable that an armed man was allowed to come onto campus and harass her — but she was told by a staff member that the proceedings “would be too invasive” and was thus “encouraged not to.” Later, she says, she went through “a different even worse process trying to get them to do something about my assault.”
“Berkeley Does Not Use An Early Resolution for Sexual Assault Cases”
Denise Oldham, Berkeley’s Title IX coordinator, insisted to the LA Times that the school does not use an Early Resolution for cases of sexual assault. Early Resolution, as defined on the OPHD website, “may include an inquiry into the facts, but typically does not include a formal investigation” and occurs “when the parties desire to resolve the situation cooperatively and/or when a Formal Investigation is not likely to lead to a satisfactory outcome.”
“I can’t imagine a situation where that would be appropriate,” she told a reporter when asked about whether the process was ever applied to sexual assault cases. However, this directly contradicts language in an email she sent to Sofie Karasek regarding the status of her assault case: “This matter has been explored and resolved using an early resolution process.” It also contradicts what she said to Anais LaVoie, a co-complainant on the suit who claims that Oldman told her Karasek’s case had been resolved without a hearing “through an early resolution process.”
In another email obtained by Jezebel — addressed to Nicoletta Commins, a sexual violence survivor who had reported her assault to the Center for Student Conduct a year and a half prior — Center for Student Conduct employee Erin Nieblyski also refers to an “informal process.” You know, the kind of thing Denise Oldman can’t imagine being appropriate in a case of assault.