At Tufts, contention over handling of Title IX policies

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.

 

Divest NU mounts pipeline protest

Around a dozen Northeastern University students allied with Divest NU are repurposing pipelines in the name of protest, reports The Huntington News.

On Wednesday, Feb. 24, around college students marched down Forsyth Street and spilled into Centennial Common, carrying a “mock pipeline” (in actuality a black inflatable tube) above their heads with the slogans “Divest from climate chaos” and “Aoun – don’t be a fossil fool” scrawled on it in white.

As per the below video, which Divest NU posted to Facebook, the students were led by club members with megaphones, who initiated chants like, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, fossil fuels have got to go.”

The action, in part galvanized by Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs voting unanimously in favor of divestment earlier in the week, is one of several recently undertaken by Divest NU, which has enjoyed swelling membership and public interest with the twin trending topics of the Standing Rock protests and climate change drawing a significant amount of attention to the organization’s anti-fossil-fuel agenda. The organization’s coalition of students, faculty, student organizations, and alumni has now convinced five schools to vote in favor of divesting college and university endowments from fossil fuel companies.

 

Here’s more, as per The Huntington News:

“This march is the beginning of our re-entering into the campus discussion on divestment, and restarting the conversation on our goals,” said Meghan McCallister, DivestNU member and a freshman environmental science and political science double major. “This semester we have a lot of people returning on campus from co-op and N.U.in so we think it’s important to re-engage people who weren’t able to engage with us last semester.”