Over the weekend, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate near-unanimously shot down a resolution posed by Students Advocating for Students (SAS) that would have altered the university’s handling of Title IX cases, marking the latest salvo in an on-going conflict between campus senate and student group.
The proposal, brought by SAS President Jake Goldberg and Treasurer Edmund Tamas Takata, outlined suggestions for reforming Title IX procedures around the school’s Office of Equal Opportunity’s investigations of sexual misconduct, according to the Tufts Daily.
The resolution, the paper reported, specifically pushes to reduce the amount of influence a principal investigator has over an case’s course and outcome, expedites the timeline for investigations, and – in one point widely criticized by senate members – aims to remove both survivors of sexual assault and perpetrators from investigations and adjudications. Goldberg’s reasoning: that potential bias on the part of those with firsthand exposure to sexual misconduct could taint investigations.
Senators took issue with Goldberg’s vague assertions that his group had fielded complaints from unspecified individuals saying investigations were taking too long, his failure to connect with pertinent student groups before penning the resolution, and his admission that no survivors on campus had consulted on the bill.
One suggestion raised in the bill, opining for the investigators’ authority to be reworked into a hearing process decided on by both parties, was alleged by some senators to “protect perpetrators,” according to the Daily.
Goldberg later communicated to the Daily saying that several campus organizations had declined to work with him on the resolution.
Following a discussion of the resolution and Q&A session, senators voted 25-0 against the resolution, with one abstention.
TCU Senate President Gauri Seth made no secret of his frustrations regarding the resolution, telling the Daily:
“It’s egregious to bring a resolution forward regarding Tufts’ sexual misconduct policy that claims to protect both parties, when the authors of the resolution stated multiple times that they had not spoken to survivors on this campus.”
This is not the first time Goldberg and SAS have clashed with the TCU Senate.
Last November, the Tufts Daily reported that the organization advanced a resolution alleging that the university’s Sexual Misconduct Policy violated students’ freedom of speech through excessive vagueness in defining “sexual discrimination” and “sexual harassment.” Goldberg made the organization’s case on the back of the First Amendment, claiming that the existent policies did not provide enough guidelines for students to avoid such behaviors.
At that time, numerous Tufts community members and senators opposed the resolution, saying it threatened to strip from victims of sexual harsassment and discrimination protections and disciplinary recourse.
The Boston Collegian 