The University of Texas investigated just 6% of 1,400 sexual misconduct reports last school year
Austin TX October 31 2021 The University of Texas received 1,415 reports from employees of sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence or stalking incidents during the last academic year, but only a few were eligible to be investigated.
Senate Bill 212, passed in 2019, requires public and private universities to publicly share reports of certain incidents during each fall or spring semester. The report must include the number of reports and investigations, the result of the investigations, any disciplinary action taken and the number of reports in which disciplinary action was not taken.
The employee reports can be made about anyone in the university community.
According to UT’s report, which was published Friday, about 6% of the 1,415 reports were eligible to be investigated. The rest of the reports were either submitted confidentially or UT officials determined that they did not need to be investigated for a variety of reasons, such as the alleged perpetrator not being affiliated with UT or having an unknown identity.
To determine whether a violation of its Title IX policy occurred, UT requires a “preponderance of evidence” standard, which means that it is more likely than not that a violation occurred.
As of Sept. 15, 20 investigations, or formal grievances processes, had been completed, with eight that met the evidence standard, and 12 that did not. According to the report, 38% of the 86 complaints had been dismissed, and the others were still going through the investigative or adjudication process.
Adriana Alicea-Rodriguez, UT’s Title IX coordinator and associate vice president, said the eight complaints that met the evidence standard involved six students. Two students — each with two complaints for sexual assault — were expelled from UT, one student was barred from enrollment at UT for two years, one student faced probation, and two students faced suspension.
More than two-thirds of the reports were submitted to confidential employees on campus and not investigated due to a limited amount of information being disclosed. According to the report, it is “highly likely” that many of the reports submitted by confidential employees could be duplicates of the reports that were formally investigated.
UT also chose not to conduct a formal investigation for an additional 25% of the reports, including when complainants decided not to file a formal complaint or share additional information. Formal investigations also were not done by UT for duplicate reports or when both parties decided to resolve the process informally.
Alicea-Rodriguez said the reports don’t necessarily represent all of the instances of sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence or stalking at the university during the last academic year, including students who choose not to report. However, she said reporting is increasing due to SB 212, which allows UT to provide support.
“There’s always going to be incidents that happen that the complainant doesn’t share that information with anybody,” Alicea-Rodriguez said. “I think there’s always going to be individuals that have experienced a Title IX matter, and they may not feel comfortable talking about that with anybody, whether that’s a friend, family member or an employee of the university.”
This is the second time UT has published the report, known as the chief executive officer report, under SB 212. Last year, UT published a similar report with data from January to August 2020 as required for the first time.
UT received 1,052 reports from Jan. 1 to Aug. 13, 2020, compared with 626 reports received from approximately the same time period in 2021. The majority of the reports last year occurred during the first three months — largely before the pandemic moved classes and most campus operations online — and as UT increased training about reporting requirements for employees.
“Last year, SB 212 was a new thing. It was a new law, and people were still learning about what were their reporting requirements under the statute, so there was a lot of things that were coming to us that may have been duplicate reports,” Alicea-Rodriguez said.
The other seven academic institutions in the UT System received a combined total of 777 reports during the 2020-21 academic year. UT-Austin had 1,260 more reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence or stalking compared with UT-Arlington, the second-largest school in the UT System.
“I can’t speak to other UT System schools,” Alicea-Rodriguez said. “However, I would say we have spent this 2021 academic year (putting) a lot of effort in doing training and education to employees and to the campus community in general in regards to the Title IX program, the changes that we had implemented, the changes that happen at the same time as it pertained to the Title IX federal regulations and what that meant for the process.”
Statesman
