President Donald Trump’s Department of Education is being questioned on its lack of transparency because it hasn’t publicized results of a major investigation into sexual harassment and sexual assault cases on University of Alaska campuses.
The university released the results, but BuzzFeed News reports the education department has not. It’s a departure from past practice.
Because the Department of Education hasn’t been answering reporters’ questions, it’s unclear if it’s a temporary side effect of the transition or true policy shift. Victim advocates are worried the Obama-era practice of releasing Title IX investigation results has ended.
I discussed the story with BuzzFeed National Reporter Tyler Kingkade, who reports on sexual violence and domestic abuse. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you sum up what these advocates were concerned with for me?
So, usually when the department would finish a Title IX investigation, it would send out a press release to reporters saying whether or not the school violated Title IX and include the voluntary resolution agreement and the resolution letter.
It’s not crazy to think that the university would have gotten these materials and decided to just push it out on their own, but what was strange was that the education department didn’t have much to say when we asked them, “Hey where’s the materials for this? Why haven’t you guys announced anything? Are you going to announce anything?” And to this week we still don’t have access to these letters on the department’s website.
And to be fair to the department, when I asked about the agreement and the letter of findings, the department promptly shared both of those documents with me, they emailed them to me. But the agency not having them available on their website, what is the underlying problem with that?
Yeah, so I talked with advocates this week, as well, just to follow up. And they’re still concerned because while the department is willing to give away these materials now to reporters who ask for them, they’re worried about what students and parents are going to have access to.
And I know that other universities when they’re under investigation, or even if they’re not and they’re just trying to stay up to date with best practices and what the federal government expects schools to do, they do read these as well. So you can bet that if a school does come under investigation next week for alleged Title IX failures, they’re probably going to look at what happened at the University of Alaska to see what the Office for Civil Rights is looking for schools to do. That’s one issue.
The other is, the advocates just want students to be aware that this is an option. They really want to push hard that students can file Title IX complaints if they think that their rights have been violated. It’s more about the advocates saying that they just don’t want to see any rollback of any transparency.
You mentioned in your report that the department didn’t answer BuzzFeed’s questions about whether the documents would be put on the website eventually. In my own experience, I made a request asking for comment on the investigation, and a spokesperson for the department, I’m quoting him, he told me the department “is not really doing interviews right now while we continue our transition and staffing up process.”
“I’m actually hearing the same thing even from insiders who work on sexual violence issues and Title IX issues, who say in previous administrations under both Democrat and Republican presidents, they’ve had much more access to speak to people in the department early on just to talk to them. And these would be off the record conversations that they’d have. What I’m hearing that they aren’t even getting their phone calls returned.
And one thing to be fair about the lack of the response from the Education Department on the University of Alaska case is that they really are still in transition. They don’t have someone appointed yet to be the … you know, in charge of the communications office. There’s not a lot of players in place yet at the education department. So, there’s a lot still unanswered.
But, I think what a lot of the advocates and activist groups on these issues on sexual assault issues are approaching this as is they’re going to be loud and boisterous early on to show that they’re paying attention. There were a lot of them that were a lot of them that were pretty opposed to Betsy Devos’ nomination because she did not pledge to continue the Obama-era policies on Title IX. And so, I think there’s a bit of them just trying to make a show of force.
All right Tyler, is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you think is important to point out on this issue?
This is definitely an issue where the questions are lying at the Education Department. It’s not necessarily with the university. The advocates, I think, were lucky in this case that the University of Alaska was so forthcoming about their investigation, and a lot of them give them credit because of the University of Alaska Fairbanks interim chancellor a couple of years ago issuing an apology for how cases were handled.
There’s still people who think the university has a ways to go but I think nationally, people are looking at the university as being a bit more transparent and wishing some more schools down in the Lower 48 would follow their lead and post more of these documents and answer more of these questions about Title IX.
