Week two: laying the foundation.
After meeting last week for introductions, members of the Sexual Assault and Misconduct Task Force convened Tuesday to examine UT’s current sexual assault and misconduct policies and begin crafting a new, more comprehensive policy.
Made up of more than 20 UT students, faculty, staff and UTPD officials, the task force will meet a total of seven times this semester. The meetings are open to the public and feedback from the university community is welcome as the task force reviews the interim policy currently in place.
Nickie Hackenbrack, a senior in biological sciences and co-chair of Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee, is one of the four undergraduate students on the task force. Hackenbrack stressed the importance of students contributing to the conversation.
“This is directly involved in students’ college experience,” Hackenbrack said. “Any student can be a victim of sexual assault and any student may have to be an active bystander … So, this is important for everyone to understand what we expect of our students.”
During its second meeting, the task force discussed the policies and provisions that are required by law to be included in the final product. Matthew Scoggins, an attorney and general counsel for UT, outlined the basic sexual assault regulations set by Title IX, Title VII, the Clery Act, FERPA, the Tennessee Public Records Act and regulations from the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.
Scoggins has been working to implement policy changes since 2011 in response to increased national emphasis on campus sexual assault, and said the university is changing its policies proactively, not in reaction to a lawsuit or investigation.
“It’s important for people to understand that we’re not acting so that we don’t get audited but that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed,” Scoggins said. “The federal government certainly has put it in the spotlight and so we’ve been using their guidance as well as we go through this process.”
After an hour of establishing the basic rights associated with sexual assault, the task force got its first taste of policy development. Defining the terms “sexual assault” and “sexual contact,” each only one to two sentences long, turned into a 45 minute debate over the impact of each individual word.
Delving into the specific language of each definition is crucial, especially when dealing with the often ambiguous situation of sexual assault, said Jenny Richter, UT’s Title IX Coordinator.
“I wish it could be easy,” Richter said. “I wish that students could understand what was acceptable behavior and what wasn’t. It’s not easy. Because you’ve got two people coming into a situation with two perspectives, two beliefs about what’s going on.”
Despite the difficulty of synthesizing the perspectives of more than 20 individuals from different backgrounds, Richter emphasized the value of evaluating each term fully.
“I was very pleased that people were so willing to point stuff out today,” Richter said. “I sat there and within just a few minutes of the discussion I heard things I had never considered.”
The task force will meet next on Sept. 29 at 3:30 p.m. in Thompson-Boling Arena Dining Rooms C and D and will focus on the definition of consent. Read next week’s Daily Beacon for coverage and updates on the meeting.
