Dear Campus Community:
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
-- Legal Citation: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and its implementing regulation at 34 C.F.R. Part 106 (Title IX)
Last summer I informed you that I was ordering an external review of our campus’s Title IX policies. I initiated this action after a U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) investigation into a complaint concerning CU-Boulder’s handling of a sexual assault involving a student. While we have not yet received OCR’s investigative report, today I can announce that the external review of our policies and procedures regarding sexual harassment, sexual assault and compliance with Title IX is complete.
The report, compiled by nationally recognized Title IX experts, found that the university’s “policies and practices satisfy current legal requirements.” Furthermore, the report states, the university “has dedicated significant resources and personnel to preventing and responding to discrimination and harassment.”
While I am pleased we are in full compliance with the law, you know that CU-Boulder is not an institution that simply wants to meet expectations. We want to exceed them.
Therefore, today, I have directed members of my cabinet to begin implementing three key recommendations from the report:
- Create a new Title IX coordinator position with ultimate campuswide oversight for all complaints (rather than the current practice of separate coordinators for student and employee cases). The coordinator will report to a senior administrator in my cabinet.
- Enhance coordination and communication among the university’s Title IX response team.
- Increase existing training, education and prevention programming for students, faculty and staff required by Title IX and the Violence Against Women Act.
We will work with our student leaders, the chancellor’s advisory committees on diversity and consider implementation of all recommendations in the report this semester.
I want to thank our internal Title IX Working Group as well as other campus representatives who provided transparent and comprehensive responses during the review process. The reviewers acknowledged in particular “the strong level of commitment and dedication represented by the individual (Title IX) implementers” on our campus.
While we can be proud of our work to date, we can work harder. I am asking all of you to make a personal and professional commitment to understanding and upholding our Title IX policies and procedures. You can start that process by reading this report, hosted on the Colorado.edu website. We must ensure that our campus environment is one of equality and fairness for all, and that we continue to improve our policies and procedures for dealing with sexual assault and sexual harassment. I assure you that my administration is fully committed to these ends.