I first met Olivia Ortiz in the spring of 2015, which was three years after she’d accused her then-boyfriend of sexually assaulting her when she was a second-year student at the University of Chicago, and two years after she’d filed a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights about the way the university had handed the accusation. The linchpin of Ortiz’s complaint had been that Dean Susan Art, the administrator who had handled her initial accusation, had offered to resolve the issue through an informal mediation session between Ortiz and her ex-boyfriend, after which she told Ortiz that the university didn’t consider her complaint sexual assault. Only afterward did Ortiz learn that informal mediation wasn’t an appropriate disciplinary measure for an accusation of sexual assault, both according to the university’s own policy and two “Dear Colleague” letters issued by the Department of Education, one in 2001 and one in 2011.
That was three-and-a-half years ago. Periodically, Ortiz would hear that OCR would get her complaint resolved soon. In May 2016, she heard that they were getting ready to finish up. The election happened. The Trump administration had very different ideas from the Obama administration about the nature of sexual assault complaints. Last July, more than five years after she filed her original complaint and six years after the initial assault, she finally got an answer.
On November 16, the day I spoke with Ortiz, the Department of Education released a press release from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announcing its proposed Title IX policies. Taken at face value, they seem to be supportive of students, but Ortiz finds them disturbing, particularly the part about “the opportunity to test the credibility of parties and witnesses through cross-examination.” Ortiz sees the new rules as the administration’s way of protecting perpetrators and schools, not victims. Evans agrees.
