One in Four Women
Story by Elliot Watkins | Design by Makayla Zayic | Photos by Ayla Woods
How an anonymous student group inspired an overhaul of CWU policies regarding sexual misconduct
Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t put down your drink at the bar. Don’t wear that outfit. Don’t get in your car without checking the back seat first. Don’t be too friendly to that guy in your class. Don’t be too upfront when you’re not interested. Don’t forget to lock the door.
Don’t assume you’re safe.
If it seems women are on edge, there are statistics to explain that behavior. One out of every four women in the United States will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Fast Facts on Preventing Sexual Violence.
This number does not account for sexual harassment or fondling. Women in the United States have over a 50% chance of being sexually assaulted within their lifetime, while men have under one in three chances, according to the CDC.
Of the 1.2 million Americans who identify as trans/non-binary people, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA, statistics from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) show that almost half – or just over 47% – have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
College students are no exception. One in every four women between the ages of 18 and 24 on college campuses were victims of sexual assault, according to the Association of American Universities.
At CWU, students have been calling for improvements to administrative policies concerning sexual assault on campus. Their efforts stemmed from what they say were “retraumatizing” practices by the administration.
In response, the administration has formed a work group to address and make policy recommendations concerning gender-based violence prevention, changed procedures for reporting and response, and opened a new position for a Deputy Title IX Coordinator.
Who are these students? Why now?
“CATS AGAINST ASSAULT”
Last October, a post calling out the university’s Title IX practices was plastered across Instagram. Users liked, reposted and followed the page, which seemed to spread like wildfire across campus overnight.
Everyone was talking about Cats Against Assault.
A member of the group explains: “Cats Against Assault is a social media platform to inform students as well as promote changes within the Title IX and reporting department at Central Washington University. Every aspect of reporting at Central historically has retraumatized students. Our team came together when we all realized that this was a huge problem.”
The Cats Against Assault Instagram page now has over 2,160 followers.
The content which has received the most likes on their page contains accounts of predatory behavior by employees of the university. There are claims of having to work alongside predators and allegations that a person was hired as an instructor at CWU even after they were formally reported and accused of sexual misconduct by a student, though the case was later dropped for fear of retaliation, according to the Cats Instagram page.
In interviews with PULSE, Cats members claim that students who have reported cases of sexual misconduct at CWU have faced serious invalidation and unprofessional hurdles while embarking on their journey toward justice. “There’s just so many people along the way in this process who really ruin it for students,” a Cats member claims.
A Cats member recalls explaining to a faculty member on her case that she wanted to keep a designated department as an outlet, a place she could have separate from her case. According to this Cat, the faculty member did not commit to the agreement of confidentiality with that department.
“She didn’t write down the fact that I didn’t want it reported back to that department, because that was before she started taking her notes,” says the Cats member. “Fast forward six months, I get an email from the head of the department that I explicitly asked them not to go to, asking me about the case. I wasn’t notified that they ever told that department, I just heard directly from the head of the department that she was aware of the case and that she had sent the information that they had needed over. They explicitly went behind what I told them.”
Two members of Cats Against Assault say the department had represented that student’s community, yet she wasn’t given the opportunity to keep it separate from her trauma.
Another Cats member claims the university failed to protect her from retaliation, even though she says the faculty on her case assured her numerous times that the university has no tolerance for retaliation of any kind. This person says they dropped the case for fear of retaliation.
“I asked in so many meetings, ‘Am I going to be legally retaliated against for coming forward? Can the predator hurt me for coming forward?’ and they all said, ‘We prohibit retaliation,'” this Cats member recalls. “They always said, ‘Threatening to sue you, any of that would be retaliation and we prohibit that,’ and then when I called them and said, ‘He’s threatening to sue me, what do I do?’, they said, ‘I can’t help you.’”
Before the Instagram page was launched, members say they met with administrators in spring 2022 but didn’t get the results they were looking for.
“When we had first contacted administration we were not taken seriously, because we had kind of given them the option to have this not be public and to solve these issues in the [Title IX] department with Central as a whole and the way they handle sexual assault cases,” one Cats member says. “We had kind of offered for this all to be handled quietly, but when we weren’t taken seriously that’s when this all started.”
By “all,” they mean the Instagram page and public protests as well as the administration’s more active response.
The Cats Against Assaults’ Instagram page lays out six demands for CWU to “create a safe, effective, and timely option for reporting sexual misconduct.”
The demands include:
- Greater access to representation by counsel, meaning victims would not be as financially burdened trying to find quality attorneys in their Title IX cases.
- Information allowing students to have complete understanding of all the possible outcomes they could be faced with in a Title IX case.
- Timeliness of cases, according to federal and university standards.
- Title IX receiving more extensive training.
- One-way no-contact orders on respondents instead of complainants.
- Work suspension for the duration of a Title IX case for respondents.
Last June 14, CWU President Jim Wohlpart notified Cats Against Assault in email about the changes the administration would be making on behalf of the requests Cats had made. Cats published the email on their Instagram page.
The changes to procedure stated in the email included a 24-hour response time to students with inquiries, a hard copy explaining options for victims in their first meeting and hiring a new employee for face-to-face intake on campus.
According to Cats, the improvements stated in the email were still not being implemented when the new school year started in fall 2022. “I told them straight up, do this, you know, do your fucking job or there will be protests in the fall,” one Cats member recalls.
On Nov. 3, just two weeks after their first appearance on Instagram, Cats Against Assault assembled their first protest. It made the news on and off campus.
According to reporting by Jessica Perez in NBC Right Now, more and more students joined throughout the duration of the protest. CWU sophomore and protester Faith Kruse told Perez: “I didn't report my harassment, I've heard of many other girls being harassed on campus and a lot of times they don't report it [sexual assault] because they know it's not going to be taken seriously.”
ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE
The Nov. 3 protest marked the first real shift in conversation around sexual assault on the CWU campus because exactly a week later, on Nov. 10, President Wohlpart released a statement to the campus community regarding changes to be made to improve the experience of reporting sexual assault.
“As our nation grapples with enduring issues related to gender-based violence, several members of the Wildcat community have recently raised concerns about institutional policies and practices that require our careful attention and leadership,” Wohlpart’s statement reads.
The statement acknowledged CWU community members’ requests and demands for better gender-based violence policies and room for administrative improvement.
The statement also officially announced the creation of the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Workgroup: CWU SAFE as one of the improvements the university would be making.
In an email statement in response to questions for this story, President Wohlpart tells PULSE: “Cats Against Assault has provided me with an understanding of the need to elevate this work now and given me a lens into a student's experience with this process. The conversations I have had with students have truly impacted the way in which I have led gender-based violence prevention work.”
According to the CWU Safe website, there have been numerous changes to the CWU approach to sexual assault in recent months. These changes have been recommended by CWU students, including Cats Against Assault.
Of the demands that Cats presented to the university, described above, they say that four of six have been met, or are in the process of being met. These include:
1. Victim’s rights, options, and risks in writing at their initial meeting with the Title IX coordinator.
Prior to Cats Against Assault coming forward on social media, they claim the Title IX office did not provide survivors with the information they needed to make informed decisions about their cases.
“When you asked them [the Title IX office] a question that they did not like, or did not want to answer, they would just go silent on the other end of the phone, or not answer it over email,” says a Cats Against Assault member.
In contrast, the campus police department has been providing survivors with a hard copy of needed information for years, according to Campus Police Chief Jason Berthon-Koch. Title IX will now be providing information in this format to victims.
“One of the concrete changes we have made is I think we provide a lot more up-front information to complainants but also respondents,” Thomas Pedersen, CWU’s Title IX Coordinator, tells PULSE.
2. For CWU to follow federal and university-stated timelines for solving cases.
According to Cats Against Assault, prior to the recent updates, administration would start the process of reporting, promising to be timely with cases, and then the case would drag on. One Cats member claims that her case went on for five months, and she says she knows another CWU student whose case lasted for seven months.
According to the Cats Against Assault Instagram, with the recent updates, the university is under more pressure to move things along faster.
In his email response, Wohlpart tells PULSE: “I am now also requiring the Director of Title IX/Compliance to meet with vice presidents when they have a case that arises in their area, and I have made it clear that they must monitor these cases, make sure that they move through the process smoothly, and are resolved in a timely manner.”
3. Amplified training for Title IX employees.
According to Cats Against Assault, the Title IX employees consistently went against policy and contradicted themselves and the information they’d give students throughout the process.
“There would be times when a certain person on the team would be on the phone with Title IX representatives, like Thomas [Pedersen] or Laura [Brant, Assistant Director, Student Rights & Responsibilities], and she would be reciting the laws on their website that they had to them, and they wouldn’t know what she was talking about,” a Cats member recalls.
According to both Wohlpart and Pedersen, the Title IX Coordinator position was new as of Fall 2020. Pedersen claims that the Title IX department is very thorough and informative during the process of sexual assault cases.
“We are committed to doing a full and thorough investigation and providing as much information as we can to the decision makers, whether they are a hearing committee, an appointing authority, etc.” Pedersen says. “And we do that in a manner that is focused on the investigation being fair and thorough, and that is the commitment that hasn’t changed for as long as I have been here and even before that.”
Wohlpart has also ordered a new position to be created in the Title IX office. This position is dedicated to supporting the TItle IX office, as well as being responsible for preventative education across campus, according to an email sent to the CWU community by Wohlpart on Nov. 10.
4. Temporary work suspension of faculty, staff, and student employees who are perpetrators (respondents) in Title IX cases until their case is solved.
According to Cats Against Assault and reporting last year in The Observer about a specific case involving a Dining Services supervisor, students employed by the university have come forward expressing their discomfort working alongside CWU staff and faculty who have been accused of sexual misconduct.
In response to these voices, President Wohlpart says he has set new standard procedures to reinforce safety and security on campus.
“Policy changes will result from the CWU SAFE committee, but in the meantime, the work I have done includes shifting how we handle these cases and some of the remedies that we have provided along the way,” Wohlpart says.
“For instance, we now will suspend an employee who we have reason to believe is a threat to the community.”
The two remaining demands Cats Against Assault have called for that are not projected to be met are regarding one-way no-contact orders, and accessible legal counsel. According to Cats, the demands are not legal to enforce under Title IX.
A Cats Against Assault member explained, “They [the university] can't really do that unless they can show that a supportive measure is not needed because a no-contact order is a supportive measure for the victim and the respondent through Title IX, and they can’t legally provide that measure to one person and not the other person.”
“CWU SAFE” WORK GROUP
One of the improvements to the reporting policy that is being implemented currently is the Gender-based Violence Prevention Work Group, also known as CWU SAFE. Introduced on Nov. 10, a week after Cats Against Assault held their first protest, the work group is still just getting started.
CWU SAFE Co-Chair and Professor of Philosophy Cynthia Coe explains: “Our charge is to come up with recommendations about how to improve campus climate related to those [gender-based violence] issues. We have representation from faculty, from staff, from students and so we’re really trying to cast a wide net in terms of hearing what people’s experiences are. And then, together, learning about the kind of legal parameters.”
Coe says that she has been in a few work groups that never really resulted in true change despite the amount of work they had put in. She says CWU SAFE is different.
“I’ve been part of task forces before where you know a huge amount of work happens to create recommendations, and then they just sit in a file somewhere, and nothing ever happens,” says Coe. “And my sense is, although we’re kind of at the beginning of our work – we just started, basically in the middle of January, organizing this effort – my sense is that there is a real energy behind this work group.”
According to CWU SAFE Co-Chair and Director of the Wellness Center, Marissa Howat, the recommendations from CWU SAFE are projected to be presented to the CWU President and Board of Trustees in summer 2023.
The work group is a way of changing the culture around sexual assault, Howat says, and the ways to improve are systemic.
“While we can eliminate some, we can expel a student, we can do an investigation, we can have a hearing, we can let people go through an appeals process through Title IX, we can fire faculty, or fire student employees or whatever,” says Howat. “But that doesn’t ultimately, that doesn't change the culture in which that’s happening, which means that something else is going to crop up later.”
A Feb. 22 email from the work group co-chair outlined a general timeline of the group’s meeting agendas, with the last monthly meeting set for May 9. The email also acknowledges the “key points from President Wohlpart” for the projected accomplishments of the work group, and himself, on gender-based violence prevention progress for the university.
As explained in the email, the “key points” include:
Finding ways for CWU to meet more than the bare minimum legal requirements for Title IX, the Violence Against Women Act and the Clery Act (see Definitions), while upholding the “ever-shifting federal laws and regulations.”
Providing safety and security for the CWU community, recognizing there is room for improvement for gender-based violence prevention and handling throughout the university.
Making recommendations and improvements that are both “systemic and sustainable,” which will be done through “shared governance” between the CWU Safe Work Group and the Executive Leadership Team.
According to President Wohlpart’s earlier responses to PULSE’s questions, the work group will be the backbone of longevity among the initiatives combatting sexual assault, as will improvements to administrative standards for reporting on campus.
“Shared governance groups like this are essential to truly shifting the culture of a university community, and making long-term, sustainable changes,” Wohlpart explains.
Howat says that throughout the time she has been at CWU, nobody has been as pressing for positive change as Wohlpart. “I think the thing that excites me most about this work group is it’s the first time that the university president has been so insistent about change and supporting students.”
Cats Against Assault members explain that they worked alongside President Wohlpart to make suggestions and give feedback for the CWU SAFE website, which Wohlpart also said in an email sent to the CWU community on Jan. 5.
Cats claim that the issue with many regulations and policies has been that they were too vague. “Our feedback really was to make it as specific as possible, which universities don’t like doing,” a member of Cats says.
“But because we have the upperhand a bit, like with the [Instagram] account and everything, that [and] everyone's support is the reason we are able to make these kinds of changes.”
SEXUAL ASSAULT AT CWU
Between 2019 and 2021, there were 27 reported sexual offenses on the CWU campus, according to the CWU Annual Security and Fire Safety Report. Of the sexual offense/assault reports, 14 were cases of rape and 13 were cases of fondling.
These numbers vary each year. “Obviously, 2020 was down because we didn’t have anybody on campus,” Campus Police Chief Berthon-Koch says.
The CWU Annual Security and Fire Safety Report is only covering crimes that happen on campus grounds, so the 27 reports of sexual assaults are specifically on campus.
According to The Seattle Times, CWU investigated 186 cases of sexual misconduct between 2016 and 2021, more than any of the other five Washington public universities included in their investigation, with EWU having the second most at 99.
“The number of reports does not indicate the prevalence of sexual misconduct at the colleges, and is influenced by factors such as population size and students’ trust in their schools to respond,” The Seattle Times article explains.
CWU is tied with Evergreen for the least amount of expulsions: CWU had no expulsions and the lowest amount of perpetrator repercussions, 11, out of 55 reports with findings. All other public universities in Washington have more counts of perpetrator consequences.
The Ellensburg office of Aspen, an organization that provides services and assistance to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes, saw 61 sexual assault survivors in 2018 and 46 in 2019, according to Victims Services Advocate Kelly Boozer. Anyone that reports their sexual assault in Ellensburg is referred to Aspen.
UNDERREPORTING
According to Title IX Coordinator Pedersen, “Sexual assault is an issue on a college campus, it is also the most underreported things across the nation, and I would assume it is the same at Central. It is a problem in a community, it is a problem on a campus, it is something that we unfortunately deal with all over.”
According to Berthon-Koch, both men and women survivors underreport their sexual assaults. Berthon-Koch says he hopes with changes in society’s outlook on mental health and having these hard conversations, that more people will become more comfortable reporting.
“I’m hoping that as we evolve and we become more comfortable with talking about mental health issues with people, with our society, of recognizing and talking about it and seeking assistance for help,” says Berthon-Koch. “I’m hoping that also comes over to the area of sexual assault and reporting.”
Reporting sexual assault “is holding the person accountable, yes,” Berthon-Koch says, “But it’s also making sure that that person [the survivor] has the resources that they need to have in, like I said, the worst event of their life.”
Women who are college-age students don’t report their sexual assault, or abuse, 80% of the time, according to RAINN.
Why aren’t survivors reporting? There are many reasons.
First, sexual assault can often be the most traumatizing experience someone can endure, Aspen’s Boozer, Cats Against Assault members and Berthon-Koch all agree. To report sexual assault, as the victim, is to agree to retell your trauma countless times with no promise of justice.
“Let's look at the big picture,” Boozer says. “They contact law enforcement, maybe. Or, maybe they went to the hospital. They tell their story then, so we’ve got one. And then they have to tell their story to, maybe if it’s going through the legal system, just including service members, a low number would probably be like 10 times.”
Two Cats members tell PULSE that reporting, to them, can be “more dangerous” than not reporting because it can be very traumatic. “It’s the most dangerous thing you can do because it’s like, for victim safety, it is extremely retraumatizing to go through the process.”
As a Victim Services Advocate, Boozer adds that she has only ever seen a sexual assault case go to trial once throughout her seven years of being at Aspen. According to RAINN, for every 1,000 sexual assaults in the United States, only 25 violators of consent will be held accountable, according to RAINN.
REPORTING AT CWU
Pedersen says: “We take every complaint or disclosure serious, and I would encourage anyone who has experienced interpersonal violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment, or anything else on campus to report and to contact our office, even if they just want more information about the process.”
The reporting process at CWU can be done in numerous ways. A student can report their sexual assault to the Wellness Center, Campus Police, Title IX, the Ellensburg Police Department, the hospital, Aspen and/or any staff member of CWU. Ultimately, all reports on campus will go through the Title IX office.
There is always the option of reporting anonymously, and coming forward later. The police also provide an array of options in print for all survivors.
Campus Police Chief Berthon-Koch says: “We take these situations very serious, and we want to do what we possibly can to support the survivor of a sexual assault, and/or sexual abuse, and/or domestic violence, and/or domestic abuse, and/or anything. Victims of crime, we want to support them the best we can.”
If a survivor chooses to report their sexual assault and file a formal complaint, there will be an investigation. The investigative processes are different depending on where the assault took place and the resources a survivor has, needs and/or chooses.
The investigative process starts with either civil rights investigators from the Title IX office on campus, or investigators from the police department (both on and off campus). Once the investigators compile all of the evidence, and draft their report, the draft is shared with the complainant and the respondent for potential feedback on the report.
Once the report is finalized, it is handed off to the prosecutor on the case, who determines whether the case has enough probable cause to go to trial.
