Whitman Accused of Withholding Funds for Sexual Violence Prevention
Several sources who have worked closely with the Dean of Students’ office regarding Sexual Violence Prevention have alleged a pattern of abusive behavior from Dean of Students Kazi Joshua.
Sources allege that Joshua neglected to provide a working budget to the Counseling Center for Sexual Violence Prevention. They allege that Joshua lied about the state of SVP’s budget once student and staff requests escalated to the President’s Office.
Nearly a dozen students and former staff members familiar with the Office of the Washington Attorney General (AGO)’s investigation into Whitman College allege that Whitman has consistently denied funding to student-led sexual violence prevention efforts on campus while publicly taking credit for their work. Sources say this is part of a pattern of misleading students about the state of campus safety.
Part of Joshua’s responsibilities include fielding expenditure requests from multiple groups on campus. Sources say that requests made to Joshua for SVP expenditures were routinely denied. Multiple sources allege that Joshua raised his voice and banged on tables in meetings about SVP’s funding. They say that Joshua opposed funding to such an extent that staff felt forced to directly request funding from the President’s Budget Advisory Committee.
Naomi*, who spoke with the AGO numerous times and was involved in student-led Sexual Violence Prevention (SVP) efforts on campus, alleges that Whitman publicly supported SVP while privately cutting their funding, taking advantage of student leaders in the process.
“Administrators are supposed to be there for the students, being Dean of Students it’s quite literally in the job title – you are neglecting the student body by not doing this and it’s a big fucking problem,” Naomi said.
Tay*, who is familiar with the administration and their budgeting process for SVP, claims that in meetings with other administrators, Joshua expressed support, but privately refused to take any actions to substantiate that support. As a result, according to Tay, survivors had little resources to turn to.
“[Joshua] may have vocalized this support, but when it came down to it, when I asked for things that were needed for that office to be successful, I was met overwhelmingly with a no,” said Tay.
Gwen*, who worked closely with student survivors to connect them to community resources says there is a lack of institutional support for survivors on campus.
“Show me on the map where that resource exists because I don’t see that support existing currently. I would like to see the budget line item that goes towards that support … I would like to see what that budget was spent on, I would like to see if it takes several sentences to contextualize where the resource exists and under what conditions it can be accessed, that’s not accessible … that’s not real,” Gwen said.
Penelope*, who is familiar with the budgeting processes for SVP, says that they initially received assurances from Joshua to freely request funds whenever needed in lieu of an official budget.
“I was told by Kazi to just ask for anything. Anytime you need money, just ask the Dean of Students. And I said, okay. . .when we asked for money, we were told we can’t keep funding you, there isn’t a huge pot of money, or that there’s no money left,” Penelope said.
In a December 2023 meeting with the President’s Budget Advisory Committee, the Counseling Center requested $21,000 to fund the Sexual Violence Prevention Program. The proposal, which was number 28 in a list of 74 other proposals the board considered, was named “The Community Health/Wellness and Sexual Violence Prevention Program needs a budget.”
In public meeting notes available on Whitman’s official website, the cabinet tentatively decided to refer the request to Joshua for “one-time funding.”
The Wire independently confirmed that in the Spring of 2024, Board of Trustees member Sarah Wang donated $2,500 for Sexual Violence Prevention at Whitman. Sources say Wang made the donation because of staff and students’ need for funding, which appeared to have not been met by the administration.
At the end of the Spring 2024 semester, sources familiar with the budgeting process say that requests for funding were escalated to the President’s office. Sources allege that once Joshua was made aware of this escalation, Joshua provided a budget number which he claimed had always been available to SVP.
“He’s saying there’s a budget and there always has been a budget and you mismanaged the money,” said Penelope, “and I was just shocked.”
Email communications obtained by The Wire between Joshua, Assistant Vice President of Student Life Juli Dunn, President Bolton, and former Health and Wellness staff show Joshua’s charged response to budget requests.
In the email chain, Joshua claimed that the Health and Wellness staff had always known about the budget and simply chose not to use it.
“I have nothing further to say on this topic,” wrote Joshua at the end of the email chain.
Penelope describes their negative interactions with Joshua.
“There’s a pattern of lies. There’s a pattern of bullying. I’m sure you’ve heard that he’s yelled at every sexual violence prevention educator, faculty, staff … he actually yells at people,” said Penelope.
Penelope says they were so concerned with Joshua’s behavior that they filed a report with HR. That report, they say, never went anywhere.
“Everybody knows what he does, and it’s deplorable,” said Penelope.
Gwen recounted similar experiences with Joshua.
“There was a pattern of behavior, [there were] multiple occasions when Kazi didn’t feel like he had control of the conversation or the meeting, he would stand up, look down at those present, and pound his fist on the table,” Gwen said.
Gwen says that the nature of these interactions with Joshua were entirely unprofessional.
“I don’t know if he was relying on the shock factor or if he legitimately thinks that’s intimidating,” said Gwen, “but it seems fairly unbecoming of someone in his professional capacity.”
In an email to The Wire, President Bolton discussed the state of the budget and monetary support available for SVP. In June 2024, Bolton met with SVP student leaders, where they expressed their concerns about the money available to them. In this meeting, students said that there had been funding upon request for several programs and efforts in sexual violence prevention but there was no set, line-item budget for work in sexual violence prevention.
Bolton reports that all funds were being requested and granted from the Wellness Center. The Dean of Students allocates money as ideas and proposals are made. Bolton says this budgetary approach is not unusual for the first year of a new staff position, stating that the new Native American Outreach program ran like this during its first year.
Regarding Joshua’s interactions with the budget, Bolton talks about her awareness of the funds made available for Sexual Violence Prevention.
“I also checked in with Dean Joshua at this time, and he confirmed that funds were available for the programs in sexual violence prevention, and that the requests for funds for these programs were generally being approved. (He explained that, to his knowledge, there is no program in SVP that was proposed but not implemented due to lack of resources.),” wrote Bolton.
Students involved in SVP have claimed that they organized numerous events which were paid for out of pocket and with GoFundMe campaigns.
Naomi recounted a protest during the Spring 2021 semester led by students frustrated with the administration’s response to sexual violence on campus.
“[Protestors] went and chalked all over the memorial building quotations from the stories that [survivors] had written, like six or seven women came and dropped their panties on memorial steps. The whole thing was covered with flowers,” said Naomi.
One statement from a survivor chalked on the steps of Memorial Hall read “he choked me.”
“That was up for the next day so administrators had to walk through and over and on it in order to get into the building,” said Naomi.
Gwen says the protest in the Spring 2021 semester was indicative of the administrations’ lack of transparency with students concerned about the state of sexual violence on campus.
“I don’t know how, as a decision maker, you step over the undergarments of someone who was assaulted alongside their words expressing the ways that they were harmed by the college after their experience of assault and don’t feel called to address the community, talk with students, make space. My ability cannot take precedence over community,” Gwen said.
Penelope alleges that Joshua purposefully misled them about the funding available for SVP.
“If you’re going to lie, don’t lie about things that can easily be checked up on,” said Penelope.
The budget proposal to the President’s committee asked for a GL number. A GL number is a name given to individual accounts/budgets in order to easily identify them. If sources were aware of the budget for SVP, they say they would have included that GL number for their request.
The Wire obtained the spending history of the GL number which Joshua claimed SVP had access to. The last expenditure on the account was dated May 8, 2021. Penelope was not yet working at Whitman when the last expense was made.
Penelope says when they made a finance inquiry about the budget, they found that they did not have access to the GL number.
“Why would I have applied for a budget of $15,000 if I knew we had a budget?” said Penelope.
Naomi recounted one instance where she was called into a meeting with multiple administrators. In the meeting, Naomi says administrators gave students a choice; they could be paid employees if they agreed to be mandatory reporters, or they could remain unpaid volunteers and still be a confidential resource on campus.
“Kazi and Juli were both there … and what we thought was a nice little meeting turned into … you either get to be mandatory reporters and paid by the school for your work … or you become non-mandatory reporters and we classify you guys as volunteers,” said Naomi.
Naomi says her dedication to sexual violence prevention work on campus was overshadowed by the administration’s consistent lack of support for both survivors and student advocates.
“On some level it was Whitman taking credit for it. I poured my blood sweat and fucking tears into this. I was working 40 hour weeks trying to get this shit together. You don’t get to take credit for this, this is the students begging you for support. The stories I heard at Take Back the Night were saying things about administration that had been harmful.”
Skylar*, a former student who spoke with the AGO and was involved in Sexual Violence Prevention and related efforts on campus, says that Whitman’s support was often superficial at best.
“They want photo-ops and they want that one presentation that makes the school look like it’s quote-unquote safe. But they don’t want to put the money, the time and honestly the risk into creating a consent culture or at least trying to,” Skylar said. “Because I think to them that is too much of a liability, but they would love to pretend like they care about it and like they support it.”
Naomi recounted an instance in 2021 where students were forced to fundraise for Sex Week, a yearly tradition that starts with “Take Back the Night,” a program to support survivors. Naomi says students raised over $3,000 in private donations after administrators refused to fund the event.
“I asked them in every meeting. I asked them for pay and I asked them for funding. I had so many projects I wanted to run, do you really think I would’ve crowdfunded $3,000 from people if I could’ve gotten it from my school?” Naomi said.
Naomi and others organizing for sexual violence education efforts on campus remained unpaid.
“There were ways they could have worked around that – I thought it was really fucked up that we were genuinely the only fucking people doing anything … those people on my team deserved to be paid,” Naomi said.
At the time of publication, Dean of Students and Vice President for Student Affairs, Kazi Joshua, has not responded to The Wire’s requests for comment.
