Editor’s Note: On March 4, 2018, Organizing for Survivors (O4S), a group of over 65 survivors and allies, gathered to draft a list of demands for Title IX policy change at Swarthmore College. On March 19, 2018, at 12:15pm in Parrish Hall, O4S read these demands aloud and then delivered them by hand to President Valerie Smith. Among other demands, O4S called for the resignations of Dean Liz Braun, Dean Nathan Miller, and Director of Investigations Beth Pitts from their positions at the College. Furthermore, they called for the removal of Michelle Ray, Interim Title IX Coordinator, from her position. On the morning of March 23rd, 2018, O4S hand-delivered these letters to each respective administrator with extensive details regarding these demands. These letters are reproduced exactly as presented below.
Dear Dean Braun,
As you know, on Monday, March 19th, the group Organizing for Survivors delivered a list of demands, relating to how the college addresses sexual violence, to President Smith. Included on this list was the demand that you resign from your position at the college and sign a letter of apology to all the survivors whom you have harmed, whose rights you have violated, and who you have retraumatized. We believe that you have failed to do your job to protect, care for, and aid students through these difficult processes. We believe that students have the right to expect their administrators to protect and advocate for their safety and wellbeing. Below we would like to inform (or rather, to remind) you of the specific reasons for this demand:
In the past, when you actively participated in the adjudication process for Title IX cases, you asked inappropriate, invasive, and unnecessary questions to complainants. You transitioned out of this role without any acknowledgment of or accountability for the harm that you caused. In your current role overseeing appeals, you have upheld inadequate sanctions despite the requests from complainants to make those sanctions reflect the severity of the complaint. You consistently refuse to right the wrongs of the adjudication process.
You have repeatedly diverted students’ concerns about sexual violence, and specifically the problems of fraternities, and failed to enact the change that students ask for for their own protection and wellbeing. You frequently hear specific concerns and redirect ongoing conversations to more palatable and less controversial issues as a way of diffusing student energy. You employ bureaucratic strategies (i.e. the creation of redundant and ineffective committees) to alleviate pressure while maintaining the foundational problems of sexual violence and inequity on campus.
When students have brought concerns to you about their safety and comfort on campus, you have engaged dishonestly and disingenuously with them. When faced with urgent issues, you have failed to take appropriate initiative, thus forcing students to repeatedly bring the same concerns to you, at the expense of their time, emotional wellbeing, and energy. Even then, you refuse to act in ways that demonstrate you take the concerns of survivors seriously and, instead, your negligence continues to expose them to danger.
You have made numerous comments that demonstrate a lack of understanding for or appreciation of the social realities that shape student experiences, including the ways that racism, sexism, and homophobia manifest on this campus. For example, you once equated the fraternity’s exclusive and exceptional access to college-owned property to the existence of the BCC, revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of how systemic oppression and social privilege operate in the lives of your students.
In your role as the Dean of Students, you oversee many of the staff members and offices that affect the handling of sexual violence on this campus. You are also actively involved in the annual Title IX policy review process. You have had the power to meet many of the demands on our list. You have had the authority to correct the many obvious, glaring impediments to a just and fair outcome for survivors, and you have failed to do so. Instead, you have consistently chosen to support the college’s reputation and communicate to survivors that their wellbeing and safety is not a priority for you.
For these reasons, we believe the only appropriate course of action to communicate respect for survivors is for you to immediately resign from your position as at Swarthmore College. We do not believe meaningful change can occur without accountability for administrators who fail to protect students. We believe the harm you have already caused compromises your ability to effectively serve in this position at Swarthmore College.
Sincerely,
Organizing for Survivors
Dear Dean Miller,
As you know, on Monday, March 19th, the group Organizing for Survivors delivered a list of demands, relating to how the college addresses sexual violence, to President Smith. Included on this list was the demand that you resign from your position at the college and sign a letter of apology to all the survivors you have harmed. We believe that you have failed to do your job to protect, care for, and aid students through these difficult processes. We believe that students have the right to expect their administrators to protect and advocate for their safety and wellbeing. Below we would like to inform (or rather, to remind) you of the specific reasons for this demand:
In your work overseeing student conduct, and as a representative of the college who sits in on the adjudication hearings, you have repeatedly caused harm to survivors.
You have routinely allowed for violations of the College’s Sexual Assault and Harassment Policy to occur during the adjudication hearings that you oversee and participate in. You have allowed lines of questioning that directly contradict the policy requirements to occur for lengthy periods of time. You do not intervene when lines of questioning are not pertinent to the policy being adjudicated, including when these lines of questioning are retraumatizing, invasive, and victim-blaming. You have in multiple cases allowed adjudicators to question victims’ sexual history, which is in explicit violation of victims rights under College policy.
You do not respect survivors’ privacy, time, or right to have their lives remain as uninterrupted as possible during the process of adjudication. You have broken promises that you have made to survivors and complainants regarding the timeframe of the process, and routinely fail to answer urgent emails. By failing to communicate clear time tables and stick with them, you demonstrate a lack of understanding of the stress of the adjudication process. By delaying communication with witnesses, making careless errors on important legal documents, and disregarding promises of privacy, you demonstrate a fundamental lack of consideration for the wellbeing of survivors.
You have a pattern of administering sanctions that are inappropriately, even dangerously, lenient given the nature of the conduct violations committed. This practice effectively minimizes the severity of sexual violence and communicates to survivors and perpetrators alike that the college does not believe that such violence warrants meaningful consequences. Additionally, the sanctions you administer are inconsistent across cases of comparable nature or character. Across the board, sanctions do not include mechanisms that prevent further violence or intervene in patterns of perpetration.
You fail to acknowledge patterns in multiple survivors’ testimonies against the same perpetrator, resulting in hearings that do not reflect the level of violence actually occurring. This directly prevents an accurate assessment of “whether the respondent is reasonably likely to engage in the conduct in the future” and results in inadequate formal responses.
You refuse to identify a pattern of misconduct and violence in the fraternities and thus fail to investigate the organization in a way that would accurately address the culture and facilitation of violence it creates. In cases of student misconduct outside of Title IX, you do not meaningfully enforce discipline in the fraternities, leading to their sense of impunity and entitlement.
For these reasons, we believe the only appropriate course of action to communicate respect for survivors is for you to immediately resign from your position at Swarthmore College. We do not believe meaningful change can occur without accountability for administrators who fail to protect students. We believe the harm you have already caused compromises your ability to effectively serve in this position at Swarthmore College.
Sincerely,
Organizing for Survivors
Dear Beth Pitts,
As you know, the group Organizing for Survivors delivered a list of demands, relating to how the college addresses sexual violence, to President Smith on Monday, March 19th. Included on this list was the demand that you resign from your position at the college and sign a letter of apology to all the survivors whom you have harmed, whose rights you have violated, and who you have retraumatized. We believe that you have failed to do your job to protect, care for, and aid students through these difficult processes. We believe that students have the right to expect their administrators to protect and advocate for their safety and wellbeing. Below we would like to inform (or rather, to remind) you of the specific reasons for this demand:
In your role as the Title IX Investigator, your incompetence and insensitivity render the investigation process hostile to survivors. While collecting statements, you have demonstrated a pattern of aggressive and inappropriate questioning rooted in victim-blaming while collecting statements. You have disregarded policy in the course of your investigations, making the process unpredictable and unsafe for complainants. You do not respect or understand students’ gender identities, sexualities, or trauma responses. Your lack of knowledge and fluency about queer and trans identity makes reporting assault especially burdensome for queer and trans students.
Consequently, survivors often do not feel believed by you, and you do not take appropriate steps to ensure that they do.
Your communications through the investigation process are unreasonably slow, and you do not respect agreed upon timelines, or the need for urgency. Instead, you take long periods of times to send case files, finalize interviews, and contact witnesses. This negligence unnecessarily prolongs survivors’ stress and reduces the probability of achieving a just outcome.
You engage dishonestly and disingenuously with students when they bring safety concerns to you. You use your position of power to undermine students’ concerns by refusing to believe them and challenging their memory of their own experience. In a role where you should be committed to encouraging self-advocacy for survivors, you routinely belittle their experiences, memories, and lived realities. This belittling is especially problematic given that these students are largely women, queer students, and students of color.
Because your testimony is integral to the ultimate adjudication hearings, complainants often feel unable to pursue reports about your mishandling for fear this might prevent a favorable outcome in their cases. In these adjudication hearings, you again do not support or respect survivors, their stories, or their needs.
Your lack of attention to detail and lack of commitment to thoroughly documenting relevant testimonies compromises your contribution within adjudication hearings. Many survivors report that your testimony in their case was disorganized and incoherent. This negligence undermines your testimony and, thus, their cases.
In these hearings, small acts of negligence violate students’ right to privacy. For instance, you have seated witnesses from both sides in the same room and mishandled the calling of new witnesses. You have compromised survivors’ safety and increased the chances of retaliation by not protecting their personal information in documentation and correspondences. When you defend wrongdoings in the name of “student privacy,” we ask: whose privacy is being protected?
In your oversight of Public Safety staff as Associate Director, you have failed to adequately investigate or address misconduct by Officers. Specifically, when Officers engage in sexist, racist, ableist, queerphobic, and transphobic behavior, there is no guarantee of any recourse. Additionally, you have a history of not taking proactive steps to ensure staff are aware of policy requirements and procedures, such as the enforcement of contact restrictions. In doing so, you have sent a message to students that Public Safety will not necessarily protect their wellbeing and, in fact, may aggress against their safety with impunity.
You have never taken accountability for, or meaningfully attempted to change, any of these patterns of mishandling. Instead, you evade responsibility for your actions and the actions of Public Safety personnel.
For these reasons, we believe the only appropriate course of action to communicate respect for survivors is for you to immediately resign from your position at Swarthmore College. We do not believe meaningful change can occur without accountability for administrators who fail to protect students. We believe the harm you have already caused compromises your ability to effectively serve in this position at Swarthmore College.
Sincerely,
Organizing for Survivors
May 1st, 2018
The administration is feeling the heat! Public Safety officials just removed our banner, “Accountability Looks Like Beth Pitts Resigning,” from Parrish. Beth Pitts is the Assistant Director of Public Safety.
This morning we called for a #RealResponse, #RealApology, #RealACTION — instead, administrators are silencing students. We look forward to hanging another banner tomorrow. Come by tonight to help paint!
Dear Michelle Ray,
As you know, the group Organizing for Survivors delivered a list of demands, relating to how the college addresses sexual violence, to President Smith on Monday, March 19th. Included on this list was the demand that you remove yourself from any position at the college that falls under the Title IX office, including the Interim Title IX Coordinator position and the Case Manager position. We would like to offer you an explanation of why we feel it is necessary for you to step out of these roles.
In the fall of this year, you moved from being the Case Manager for respondents in the Title IX process to being the Interim Title IX Coordinator. When this change was made, this conflict of interest was not addressed by you, or by Dean Braun who announced your new position to the campus by email. Complainants who underwent Title IX adjudication process in recent years interacted with you as the Case Manager for their respondents. These students were then faced with the reality that if they needed to access the services of the Title IX office again, they were expected to interact with someone who had worked closely with their assailant. This situation similarly affected other students who were familiar with your previous role, even if they had not formally interacted with you in that capacity. This staff change compromised many students’ ability to feel safe and comfortable utilizing Title IX. No one from the college took any proactive steps to ensure that students continued to feel comfortable utilizing Title IX, which could have included notifying the student body of alternate staff members to whom students could report. When confronted about this conflict of interest and the impact it had on students, you have been defensive when you should have been receptive.
Because of the irresponsible choice to allow the Case Manager to become the Title IX Coordinator without any buffer period, and because of the college’s mishandling of the transition, we believe your ability to serve in the Title IX office is compromised. We believe that your continued presence in the office has the possibility of deterring survivors from pursuing their options, which is not an acceptable reality. It is for these reasons we believe the only appropriate course of action is for you to resign as Interim Title IX Coordinator and sever ties with the Title IX Office at Swarthmore College.
Sincerely,
Organizing for Survivors