Chants including “No justice, no peace. No complicit employees,” could be heard Wednesday afternoon in front of Tower Hall. Inside, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been holding listening sessions for the community regarding their experiences with San Jose State’s Title IX Office.
“The Department of Justice is holding office hours here in Room 110 to hear from the campus community about concerns regarding sexual discrimination and the university's efforts to respond to sexual assault in its Title IX Office,” said Alexandra Ferry, social work sophomore and Students Against Sexual Assault co-founder. “We want to encourage students and faculty to attend these office hours because it's an opportunity for your voice to be heard.”
Students Against Sexual Assault, which put on the news conference, is a student organization that advocates for the university to become a safe and supportive space by ensuring Title IX protection, according to its Instagram page.
Vanessa Becerra, sociology junior and Students Against Sexual Assault member, said the group formed in October 2021 to track SJSU’s progress in fully complying with the DOJ’s demands of rebuilding its Title IX Office.
“[Students Against Sexual Assault had] stepped on this campus [in May] and demanded SJSU act adequately to staff the Title IX Office, remove complicit staff that are still on campus [who] allowed for decades of violence against our students and ignored them in their most vulnerable state,” Becerra said. “Lastly, we demanded SJSU take accountability, provide transparency and ensure student safety.”
She said the group was outside the DOJ’s listening sessions with similar demands from its May 11 news conference.
The DOJ had “office hours” for several hours on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively and is expected to hold two others in Tower Hall today from 5-7 p.m. and Friday from 3-5 p.m.
Its campus visit is compliance monitoring that is congruent with the Sept. 21, 2021 DOJ-SJSU resolution agreement, in which the DOJ found that the university failed to adequately answer to sexual misconduct reports for more than a decade, according to the resolution.
Concerns about the SJSU Title IX Office were raised after Scott Shaw, former SJSU athletic trainer and director of sports medicine, had been charged with violating civil rights of at least four female student-athletes from 2017-20 for engaging in sexual misconduct, according to a March 10 U.S. Attorney’s Office news release.
Shaw was initially investigated in 2009-10 about his pressure-point therapy on the genital and breast regions of female student-athletes, but he was cleared of wrongdoing by the university, which enabled him to treat more than 1,000 female student-athletes before he retired in August 2020, according to the DOJ investigation report.
The DOJ also reported that the university took active measures to cover up the misconduct, which included retaliating against whistleblowers.
The DOJ said in its Sept. 21 findings that the 2020-21 reinvestigation was “only” initiated after Sage Hopkins, swimming and diving head coach, circulated a 300-page dossier through the FBI and the National Collegiate Athletic Association in December 2019.
Hopkins sent out the dossier, which detailed more than 17 swim and dive student-athletes’ sexual misconduct accounts against Shaw, after it “disappeared” from the university’s Title IX Office in 2019, according to a Sept. 25 Mercury News article.
Hopkins, a main whistleblower throughout the 10-year-long athletics sexual misconduct scandal, said he attended the news conference in support of Students Agianst Sexual Assault.
He also said he spoke to the DOJ during its listening session Tuesday and thinks it’s an opportunity for the administration to keep focus on what’s important: protecting students.
“I feel like there's been a lot of very good changes that have been made,” Hopkins said after the news conference. “I'm very happy with our new administration, both in athletics and interim president Perez. I feel that they have the [students’] safety as their number one priority.”
He added that the DOJ being at SJSU is a chance for the university to really see how it is doing in regards to the changes it is federally required to make.
The resolution agreement between the DOJ and SJSU states that the university must reform its Title IX Office and increase the number of Title IX staff workers, which should be made up of at least five members.
Mykel Vallar, freshman transfer student and Students Against Sexual Assault member, said since the student group’s first news conference in May, its members have met with Interim President Steve Perez and Peter Lim, interim Title IX and gender equity officer, multiple times.
Vallar said Students Against Sexual Assault provided feedback to Perez and Lim on how to improve the Title IX Office, which included hiring staff members and removing staff members who were complicit in the sexual misconduct mishandling.
“By not implementing feedback in the Title IX Office, Lim and Interim President Perez continuously fail the San Jose State community,” Vallar said. “Perez has stated, ‘We must do better’ while still failing to fully staff the Title IX Office with permanent employees.”
Lim said both he and Perez have met with the advocacy group and have offered follow-up sessions with it.
“We are in frequent communication with [Students Against Sexual Assault members] and always welcome the opportunity to receive their input, listen to their concerns and answer their questions,” Lim said in an email.
Robin McElhatton, SJSU assistant director of media relations, said in an email that since the DOJ released its investigation report last year, the university has cooperated with the DOJ in its efforts to monitor SJSU’s compliance with the resolution agreement and federal law.
Lim said the Title IX Office currently has five full-time employees, which is congruent with the terms of the resolution agreement.
Those employees include: Lim; Karina Hernandez, who was hired as the Title IX analyst in February; Wendi Liss, the former Title IX and gender equity officer who had a base salary of $132,000 and was rehired in May as the interim deputy Title IX coordinator; Andrew Nguyen, who was hired in July for the newly-created position of Title IX project manager; and Mary Keating, who was hired in September as a Title IX investigator.
“In the coming months, the university will commence a national search for a permanent Title IX and Gender Equity Officer. The Title IX Office will make an official announcement before launching the search and all will be invited to provide input on the selection process,” Lim stated in a Sept. 22 message posted on the university’s For Your Information Athletics Investigations webpage.
Karlie Eacock, social work graduate student and Students Against Sexual Assault co-founder, said the student group doesn’t approve of the current employee status of SJSU’s Title IX Office.
“We are also asking that the Title IX Office and San Jose State University remove Wendi Liss from the Title IX Office,” Eacock said. “As some of you may or may not be aware, Wendi Liss worked within the Title IX Office prior to the DOJ investigation and prior to the removal of the Title IX staff once that investigation and resolution agreements started.”
McElhatton said Liss worked in the Title IX Office from 2017-18 and 2020-21 as the Title IX and Gender Equity Officer and was rehired for the interim deputy coordinator position this year.
Eacock said the Title IX Office is also “failing” with only one Title IX investigator on staff.
According to the Title IX Staff Directory, there is one vacant Title IX investigator position out of the two.
“We demand that SJSU makes these changes, that we staff the Title IX Office with trustworthy staff,” Eacock said. “Our vision is that our campus be responsive to sex and gender discrimination and rather than being reactive, that they be proactive.”
She said SJSU shouldn’t just be doing the bare legal minimum.
Lim said the Title IX Office is committed to building an effective program.
“This is hard and complicated work and we welcome [the DOJ’s] expertise and input,” Lim said in an email. “We are participating in most of the [DOJ] listening sessions and appreciate the opportunity to listen to members of our community and learn from them.”
SJSU counselor education professor Jason Laker said he attended the news conference to support the process of investigating what has happened, what needs to change and the accountability to execute those changes.
Laker said Students Against Sexual Assault is asking the university for very reasoned, thoughtful and executable actions.
“When your university has to have the federal government come to intervene, that is a deep level of failure,” he said. “What I can say for sure is that with the federal government already swooping in to do this in the state legislature, you know, that's on [SJSU’s] radar – If they screw it up this time, I do have hope that there'll be bigger consequences.”
Laker declined to comment on whether he has or intends to sit down with the DOJ during its listening sessions this week.
He said his “strong preference” is that the university tends to what needs changing, but only by investing in Title IX areas surrounding prevention, response, support and education.
Laker said he was also proudly impressed by the “demands” of Students Against Sexual Assault.
“I've worked at different universities with different students and sometimes they make . . . demands that could be described as unrealistic,” he said. “Not these students. I can see that they have things to do with personnel investments, resource investments, accountability, separation of where information goes and who has access to it, which is all to protect people who are vulnerable.”
