San José State and the Title IX Office is conducting an optional campus wide survey for feedback to improve their department.
The survey opened on April 8 and is scheduled to end May 3, according to an email sent out by Peter Lim, the Title IX and Gender Equity officer.
The purpose of the survey is to get campus opinions of safety and inclusivity as well as the effectiveness of the Title IX office, according to a separate email by Lim.
On Aug.15, 2023 former SJSU athletic trainer pled guilty to sexually assaulting female athletes under the guise of treating their injuries, according to an Aug. 15, 2023 article by USA TODAY.
Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education. Title IX states that no one will be denied benefits or face discrimination in any educational program, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s website.
“We did try to time the Title IX survey to come out with sexual assault awareness month,” Title IX investigator Arielle Egan said.
Egan said Title IX’s Intake and outreach support coordinator, Kelsie Cleveland, did the “lion’s share” of the survey with help from the rest of the department.
She said the Title IX office is trying to get both statistics and written feedback from the survey.
“The survey has three main purposes,” Egan said. “The first is to figure out how people are feeling in terms of campus climate, the second is to learn more about the effectiveness of our office and the third purpose is to figure out what kind of barriers are there for students who want to access our services.”
Egan also said there are dialogue boxes where people can put their input.
“We do use our number of reports as a metric to assess trust in our community,” Egan said. “If there are more reports that means more people feel comfortable coming to us.”
Title IX received 529 reports filed from the academic years of 2021 to 2023, according to SJSU’s Title IX annual report.
There were 107 more reports in the 2022-2023 academic year than the year before, according to the same source.
Campus survivor advocate Selena Hernandez announced a list of her services were provided on the Title IX but said she had no input on the questions that were finalized in it.
Hernandez said she is a one-person department and her affiliation is separate from Title IX.
SJSU survivor advocacy services upholds free confidential support for students, staff and faculty survivors for sexual violence, initmate partner abuse and stalking, according to its Instagram.
“Unfortunately a lot of students don’t know a lot about our services,” Hernandez said. “It’s really hard to advertise because we have about 40,000 people here including students, staff and faculty.”
Psychology junior Rochelle Rufo said she heard about Title IX and during her orientation since the staff made the students go through the readings but didn't know about it until recently.
“I’ve heard about the survey and saw the email but have not gotten around to it yet,” Rufo said.
Rufo said it is easy to go through emails without reading them and discard them. She said she would not have heard about Title IX if it weren’t for the orientation.
“If you had the time to sit down and set expectations of doing the survey, that would help a lot,” Rufo said.
Hernandez said the Title IX office received feedback from the survivors she worked with and found ways to improve the department based on that feedback.
“I think, if feasible, the Title IX office will definitely take the feedback from the survey into consideration and apply those changes if possible,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said there are many reasons why students or faculty could be hesitant to talk about their experience aside from SJSU’s history with Title IX.
“There’s general ideas about reporting offices, including UPD or Title IX, and thinking that they’re not going to help me,” Hernandez said. “Some do go in with that conception.”
She said she’s also had students question why the Title IX department would help students now if there’s a history of them not responding to complaints in the past.
“I think the conception is definitely shifting from the survivors I've worked with,” Hernandez said.
Egan said it’s important that students know what resources are on campus because they have access to more resources on campus than in the real world.
“We want to make sure that our resources are serving our community,” Egan said. “We don't know that without the input of our community so when people respond to the survey it gives us an opportunity to make our program better.”
