By Sarah Tedesco and Jillian Doherty, Contributors, Emerson College
Earlier this month, the Emerson Community was shocked with news that the administration was mishandling cases of sexual assault. On behalf of many of our peers, we filed two complaints with the Department of Education regarding Emerson’s violations of Title IX and the Clery Act. We filed these complaints because though we love Emerson, the school has failed us and many of our friends in the aftermath of horrible trauma.
Through filing, we have united with students on our own campus, in Boston, and across the country who have experienced all forms of discriminatory crime, including sexual violence. This extraordinary support and feeling of community has come from making our experiences public.
For years, students have been harassed, traumatized stalked and assaulted in our dorm halls, party spaces, and on our campus. We have found that this trauma does not end after the initial incident(s). Through the disciplinary and reporting process, the trauma is elevated and made worse.
As Emerson’s administration stands, it cannot deal with this problem on its own. We are hoping that investigations completed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will provide the school with the external accountability needed to protect our students. We want to be active roles on campus to continue the fight for a revision of policy and make Emerson a safe and welcoming community where survivors of traumatic crime can heal.
Though the initial complaints were announced on October 9, 2013 we want to clarify that students who have experienced any kind of discriminatory crime and mis-response are welcome to join us as we make the changes that our community, and those who will become part of this community, so badly need.
The main goal in filing this complaint is to have an external team investigate Emerson’s administration and target what aspects of our college need to be revised. This targeting cannot be done by the internal team President Pelton suggested in his Town Hall speech.
We are relieved that President Pelton stated in his email to the community that, “We can and will do better.” But in what ways will we do better? If the school doesn’t identify the wrongdoings of the past, how can we fix them for the future?
In the spring of 2013, the two of us founded Emerson Stopping Sexual Assault, and alerted the Emerson administration of the problems we are now announcing to the community.
The response to this campaign, sent out as an email to all students and faculty in March 2013, was that they understood our campus has a problem and they would handle it accordingly. However, we saw no attempt to rectify the college’s broken system of investigations. Over and over we are seeing promises, but those promises have yet to be made into action spearheaded by the college. As student activists, we demanded and created the change we saw we could. We campaigned for internal institutional action, but none was taken.
Across campus, students are working to provide awareness, support, and justice for survivors. They have produced posters, designed trainings, and educational programming. Though the administration has provided some financial support for this work, they have not been the ones creating the change, making the educational materials, and doing their duties to keep the Emerson College community safe.
In filing complaints publicly, we are joining students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Occidental College, Swarthmore College, University of California at Berkeley, University of Southern California, and Dartmouth College in an attempt to address the major shortcomings and injustices committed by the institutions we so love. We believe that Emerson is capable of being the first school to respond to a complaint not only with honesty and integrity, but with excellent practices that support all students.
As members of the Emerson community, one that the two of us have come to learn is closely related to a family, we want to share our stories of both sexual assault and administrative betrayal, in order to inform our fellow Emersonians about the issues in the administration that we fund. We want to prevent the harm we have felt from happening to other students and uphold President Pelton’s pledge during his inauguration to implement an initiative for an “inclusion of excellence.”
When President Pelton and fellow administrators fail to admit the fault they have had in the past, how are we achieving this “excellence”? When Emerson administrators claim an effort to fix our problems, but don’t recognize what problems they are fixing, how are we achieving “excellence”? And, most importantly, when Emerson is violating the rights of survivors of sexual violence, harassment, hate crimes, and other assaults, how are we achieving “excellence”?
We want to see President Pelton create the change he has promised recently when he addressed the community, and back in March when he reacted to a group of students' pleas.
We want to be proud of Emerson, so we are using our unfortunate experiences and becoming the necessary catalysts, so that we see the change that Emerson so desperately needs and so that we in fact can be a community that represents excellence like President Pelton pledged that we could achieve.
We are yearning to be proud of Emerson. We look forward to seeing active change in policy, designed through collaboration, transparency, and honesty.
Image: Wikipedia
Earlier this month, the Emerson Community was shocked with news that the administration was mishandling cases of sexual assault. On behalf of many of our peers, we filed two complaints with the Department of Education regarding Emerson’s violations of Title IX and the Clery Act. We filed these complaints because though we love Emerson, the school has failed us and many of our friends in the aftermath of horrible trauma.
Through filing, we have united with students on our own campus, in Boston, and across the country who have experienced all forms of discriminatory crime, including sexual violence. This extraordinary support and feeling of community has come from making our experiences public.
For years, students have been harassed, traumatized stalked and assaulted in our dorm halls, party spaces, and on our campus. We have found that this trauma does not end after the initial incident(s). Through the disciplinary and reporting process, the trauma is elevated and made worse.
As Emerson’s administration stands, it cannot deal with this problem on its own. We are hoping that investigations completed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will provide the school with the external accountability needed to protect our students. We want to be active roles on campus to continue the fight for a revision of policy and make Emerson a safe and welcoming community where survivors of traumatic crime can heal.
Though the initial complaints were announced on October 9, 2013 we want to clarify that students who have experienced any kind of discriminatory crime and mis-response are welcome to join us as we make the changes that our community, and those who will become part of this community, so badly need.
The main goal in filing this complaint is to have an external team investigate Emerson’s administration and target what aspects of our college need to be revised. This targeting cannot be done by the internal team President Pelton suggested in his Town Hall speech.
We are relieved that President Pelton stated in his email to the community that, “We can and will do better.” But in what ways will we do better? If the school doesn’t identify the wrongdoings of the past, how can we fix them for the future?
In the spring of 2013, the two of us founded Emerson Stopping Sexual Assault, and alerted the Emerson administration of the problems we are now announcing to the community.
The response to this campaign, sent out as an email to all students and faculty in March 2013, was that they understood our campus has a problem and they would handle it accordingly. However, we saw no attempt to rectify the college’s broken system of investigations. Over and over we are seeing promises, but those promises have yet to be made into action spearheaded by the college. As student activists, we demanded and created the change we saw we could. We campaigned for internal institutional action, but none was taken.
Across campus, students are working to provide awareness, support, and justice for survivors. They have produced posters, designed trainings, and educational programming. Though the administration has provided some financial support for this work, they have not been the ones creating the change, making the educational materials, and doing their duties to keep the Emerson College community safe.
In filing complaints publicly, we are joining students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Occidental College, Swarthmore College, University of California at Berkeley, University of Southern California, and Dartmouth College in an attempt to address the major shortcomings and injustices committed by the institutions we so love. We believe that Emerson is capable of being the first school to respond to a complaint not only with honesty and integrity, but with excellent practices that support all students.
As members of the Emerson community, one that the two of us have come to learn is closely related to a family, we want to share our stories of both sexual assault and administrative betrayal, in order to inform our fellow Emersonians about the issues in the administration that we fund. We want to prevent the harm we have felt from happening to other students and uphold President Pelton’s pledge during his inauguration to implement an initiative for an “inclusion of excellence.”
When President Pelton and fellow administrators fail to admit the fault they have had in the past, how are we achieving this “excellence”? When Emerson administrators claim an effort to fix our problems, but don’t recognize what problems they are fixing, how are we achieving “excellence”? And, most importantly, when Emerson is violating the rights of survivors of sexual violence, harassment, hate crimes, and other assaults, how are we achieving “excellence”?
We want to see President Pelton create the change he has promised recently when he addressed the community, and back in March when he reacted to a group of students' pleas.
We want to be proud of Emerson, so we are using our unfortunate experiences and becoming the necessary catalysts, so that we see the change that Emerson so desperately needs and so that we in fact can be a community that represents excellence like President Pelton pledged that we could achieve.
We are yearning to be proud of Emerson. We look forward to seeing active change in policy, designed through collaboration, transparency, and honesty.
Image: Wikipedia