Passed in 1972, Title IX formally prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex within institutions that receive federal funding. Title IX has been incredibly successful at increasing women’s access to sports and higher education. However, as we have seen on Whitman’s campus and at schools across the nation, it continues to fall short in matters of sexual violence.

For starters, most survivors never report their assault, often due to fear of reprisal, fear of not being believed or fear that their assault was not “important enough.” 

At Whitman, even survivors who would like to file an official Title IX report are routinely funneled through Code of Conduct, according to sources familiar with the process. This allows the college to avoid publicly reporting the assault and limits the repercussions faced by the perpetrator.

According to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), 26.4 percent of female and 6.8 percent of male undergraduate students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence or incapacitation. Yet, in 2016, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) found that 89 percent of colleges and universities reported zero incidents of rape. These conflicting statistics suggest that many schools, including Whitman, are discouraging students from filing Title IX reports. 

Jackie Maness, a senior at Gonzaga University, said that her friend who was assaulted chose not to file a Title IX report after their experience with the school’s Title IX office. Maness explained that the Title IX office was able to quickly connect her friend with mental health support, but failed to adequately explain their legal options.

“They were like, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ and it made my friend second guess themselves,” Maness said.

Maness felt that the lack of resources devoted to sexual violence at Gonzaga was part of the problem.

“I think these Title IX offices are so overextended and so in over their heads just with the amount of work they have that they’re not able to walk these victims step-by-step through what’s going on,” Maness said. 

This sentiment rings true at Whitman, where requests for survivor support and prevention training are routinely denied.

Miro Stuke, a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington (UW) and facilitator for the UAW 4121 Anti-Discrimination Working Group, expressed similar concerns about the Title IX office at UW.

“[T]he Title IX reporting pathway is not effectively serving or supporting survivors at UW and we have some public reports that demonstrate how there is little confidence in the system,” Stuke said in an email to The Wire.

In the last several months, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at UW has been investigating multiple allegations of gender-based harassment. 

Irene Zhang, a former affiliate faculty member at the Allen School took to Twitter/X to express her dissatisfaction with the university’s response.

“It has been three months since the women of the UW systems lab sent a letter detailing three incidents of sexual harassment and bullying. The university has bounced them from the Title IX office to HR with no resolution,” Zhang said in her post.

The director of the Allen School, Magdalena Balazinska, sent an email responding to Zhang’s allegation.

“Recent social media posts … misrepresent the content of the reports that have been made as well as the actions the school has taken to address them,” Balazinska said in the email.

An article from UW’s student newspaper, The Daily, reported that students began taking matters into their own hands following what they believed to be an inadequate response from the school. Shortly after several women at the Allen School came forward with their allegations, Ph.D. student Matthew Giordano circulated an internal letter in support of the women in the lab. Additionally, Stuke (quoted above) held an EPIC training session for students at the Allen School. EPIC (Empowering Prevention & Inclusive Communities) is a peer-to-peer harassment-prevention program.

This student-led effort to spread awareness regarding sexual violence in the absence of institutional support parallels the experiences of many student advocates at Whitman. A significant portion of prevention training and survivor resources at Whitman are provided by Sexual Violence Prevention (SVP), a coalition made up of unpaid students who have received strong pushback from Whitman administration. 

Though peer support is an important resource for students who have experienced sexual violence, there is a limit to what students can accomplish without institutional backing. Makani Pang, the news editor for Washington State University’s (WSU) student newspaper, The Daily Evergreen, described multiple instances in which the university failed to protect students from known predators.

In an email to The Wire, he explained how former WSU student Thomas Culhane was allowed to transfer from WSU’s Vancouver campus to the Pullman campus while under investigation for two different sexual misconduct allegations. He then assaulted another student at the Pullman campus and was subsequently convicted of rape in 2019. Pang explained that the student Culhane assaulted sued WSU for approving the transfer, arguing they knowingly put the campus in danger. After a federal judge sided with the university, arguing that WSU was not obligated to protect students off-campus, the case was taken to the Washington Supreme Court, where the judge’s ruling was reaffirmed.

“Personally, I disagree with these decisions. Culhane would not have been in Pullman if it wasn’t for WSU approving his transfer, and even though the rape in Pullman occurred off campus, he had demonstrated acts of sexual violence in situations the courts stipulated the university would have an obligation to protect its students in (at least one of those assaults in Vancouver occurred during a university-sanctioned trip),” Pang said.

Pang also brought up an incident in 2023 in which Jayce Carnahan assaulted a student at a fraternity party. A rape kit connected Carnahan to the assault through DNA and he was subsequently arrested and charged. The student who was raped dropped out, while Carnahan was allowed to remain enrolled.

These stories demonstrate the limits of student action. Though students have an important role to play in prevention and support, they have no jurisdiction over how instances of sexual assault are handled at the institutional level. At the end of the day, the college or university has the final authority to decide what measures they are willing to take to protect students.

These instances from WSU bring to mind a story shared by a survivor in a previous Wire article, in which Assistant Vice President for Student Life and former Title IX Officer, Juli Dunn, allegedly refused to acknowledge a student’s restraining order against her perpetrator. Even in the rare case where the legal system protects survivors, colleges and universities often fail to uphold that protection.

In classic liberal arts fashion, Whitman has curated its identity around being a safe haven from many of the ills that are perceived to plague larger state universities. Yet the facade is quickly fading as the Washington Attorney General’s Office investigates Whitman’s mishandling of sexual violence, with the intention of making this a landmark case. It is becoming clear that the kinds of druggings, rapes, stalking, etc. that one might hear about at a larger university like WSU or UW happen at Whitman too. 

Despite the many failures in its implementation, Title IX is one of the only means for colleges and universities to be held accountable to students. Whitman’s failure to adequately investigate and report Title IX violations is not just a fluke; it is an intentional effort to avoid accountability and uphold Whitman’s image as a school where something like that could never happen. By shattering Whitman’s illusion of safety, the stories shared by survivors have the potential to provoke a genuine investment in student safety if the Dean of Students Office chooses to listen.

Correction 12/12: A previous version of this article categorized this in the feature section of the Wire. Per review of its content this article has been re-categorized to the Opinion Section.