Weary of the Title IX process, student leaders look to self-adjudicate accusations of sexual misconduct
By Duncan Freeman ’22, Long-form Investigative Reporting Editor
When Corey Rundquist ’22 joined Delta Phi in the fall of his sophomore year after a semester of rush, he was confident that his fraternity of choice was different from the other Hamilton frats in that its members were committed to fighting “toxically masculine,” frat culture. Delta Phi was presented to him as a “force of good going against those stereotypes,” typically associated with fraternities, and Rundquist understood that the organization was filled with students like him who desired a fraternity experience that rejected these stereotypes.
Halfway through Rundquist’s pledging process, however, this view was shattered when his pledge master was accused of sexual misconduct. After admitting to the accusations, Rundquist’s pledge master was removed from Delta Phi by a majority vote and then dropped out of Hamilton entirely. This rapid removal exposed both Corey and former Delta Phi president Hudson Smith ’21 to the ways in which members of Delta Phi “had built this myth up that there was a good fraternity or a model fraternity that could transcend the norms.” This accusation also showed Smith that Delta Phi lacked guidance on how to respond to a brother accused of sexual misconduct, needed constitutional processes outlining member removal, and lacked support from the Hamilton administration.
Jack Scacco ’21 faced a situation similar to the one experienced by the Delta Phi brothers as one of two SMART coordinators for Hamilton’s club frisbee team. Scacco filled this position soon after its creation. The purpose of the coordinator was to serve the club as a “multifaceted point person for sexual assault and misconduct allegations internally” so that members could avoid going through the institutional Title IX process. Only weeks into his tenure, Scacco was confronted with an accusation made against one of his close friends on the team by another teammate. At the time, Scacco and the other SMART coordinator were in the midst of creating a team contract specifically detailing how the frisbee team would handle accusations of sexual misconduct, which had not previously existed.
Scacco and the other SMART coordinator quickly came to the decision that the accused member should be removed from the team, which the team captains agreed with and followed through on. Similar to the Delta Phi incident, the accused student did not dispute the events detailed in the accusation and largely realized that what they had done was wrong. This recognition was important for Jack because he admitted that students “can’t really do a full investigation,” since if there were conflicting accounts of the event, it would have had to go through the formal and longer title IX process.
These stories illuminate a trend among leaders of both student organizations and private Greek societies at Hamilton. When alerted of sexual misconduct accusations within their group, these leaders tend to remove or suspend the accused members with extrajudicial, club-specific processes in lieu of going through the Office of Community Standards or Hamilton’s Title IX process. The club-specific process is often instigated by accusers (known officially as complainants), who intentionally avoid the Title IX process due to perceptions that it is long, arduous, and does not guarantee success or closure.
Nikki Eisenberg ’21, an executive board member of Survivor’s Making Activism and Radical Transformation (SMART), explained why many survivors may not want to pursue official complaints with the Title IX office. Eisenberg criticized Hamilton’s Title IX process for “retraumatizing,” survivors and said that the lengthy Title IX process, which she views as “tiresome and difficult”, dissuades survivors from coming forward. Further, she believed that survivors often feel that investigations, whose processes and parameters are outlined by federal law, favor the accused, especially after Title IX regulations were changed under President Trump.
According to Director of Community Standards Catherine Berryman, the Trump administration’s alterations to Title IX policy “required a number of changes,” in Hamilton’s specific Title IX policy. The most notable change was that the formal Title IX process now requires an investigation stage, a practice that Hamilton standardized prior to the requirement, as well as a hearing phase in which both parties on either side of a Title IX complaint are present. During the investigation stage, Hamilton employs both internal investigators, who are members of the Sexual Misconduct Board, (formerly the Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Board) and external investigators. The standard of proof for if someone violated Hamilton’s policy is “preponderance of evidence,” meaning a greater than 50% chance that the claim is true, a far lower bar for conviction than the “beyond a reasonable doubt,” requirement that’s standard for criminal cases in the United States.
Assistant Director of Community Standards Dayna Campbell recognized that from a survivor’s perspective, the prospect of a hearing “can be something that can cause a lot of concern.” Given federal regulations, Campbell saw few means to exclude a hearing from the Title IX process but was adamant that the Title IX office was committed to “figuring out what is the right route for [survivors] to continue their college experience.”
Despite strict federal regulations, Nikki Eisenberg feels that Hamilton’s administration should be “more proactive while the investigation is happening to protect the survivor and not put the onus on the survivor to protect themselves.” In practice, this means that if both the accused student and the accuser are in the same class or live in the same dorm Eisenberg believes that the accused student should be instructed to drop the class or move out, instead of forcing the accuser to make changes for themselves, as sometimes occurs during ongoing Title IX investigations
Regarding short-term solutions to sexual misconduct accusations, Eisenberg said that “SMART is in favor of removing people from [student] organizations at least temporarily in order to protect the survivor in their space.” This solution is similar to the processes that Hudson Smith and Corey Rundquist carried out with Delta Phi, and Jack Scacco carried out during his term as SMART coordinator. Eisenberg elaborated on SMART’s relationship with other student organizations by saying that “student leaders will often come to us when there’s a problem,” with sexual misconduct before going to the administration “because it is safer for them…. we’re not gonna get anyone in trouble, we’re not gonna do an investigation.” By serving as an advisor to student leaders on sexual misconduct, SMART’s members end up doing a lot of demanding educational work that in Eisenberg’s opinion “the [administration] should be doing.”
Director of Student Activities Noelle Niznik is weary of this extrajudicial system where SMART lends support to club leaders who attempt to remove members accused of misconduct. Niznik feels that this process unfairly “puts the responsibility on students,” to handle accusations of sexual misconduct and should be handled and investigated by the Title IX office instead.
Niznik had other legal issues with clubs removing members without institutionalized due process saying that “our stance is that if the student isn’t found responsible through the college’s process, then the club can’t remove someone on a speculation essentially.” Niznik holds this stance because the official Hamilton policy rules that student organizations “have to be open to all students,’’ regardless of whether a student has been accused of misconduct or there are negative rumors about a certain student. This is different from Greek societies at Hamilton, which are considered private societies overseen separately from student organizations specifically because of their exclusivity and extended entry process
Niznik continued by saying that “if a student was removed from a student organization because of an accusation of sexual misconduct, then argued that they had been discriminated against, I’m not sure that we would really be able to support the organization.” However, Niznik reiterated a common theme expressed by administrators that “most of us want to air on the side of believing the student who is alleging that something happened.” Dayna Campbell, Noelle Niznik and Associate Dean of Students Travis Hill each emphasized Hamilton administrators’ responsibility to believe and support students who come forward with misconduct allegations.
However, anti-discrimination laws, due process requirements, and Title IX regulations can make it difficult for administrators to cater to the wants and needs of survivors, organizations like SMART, and club leaders who want to remove members guilty of sexual misconduct from their organizations. Niznik says that since administrators are “responsible for all of our students,” they have to treat every student fairly by providing equal resources and educational opportunities to each one. Therefore, in practice, students cannot officially be removed from student organizations like the frisbee team unless they have participated in a full Title IX investigation.
It is this stance, necessitated by federal Title IX discrimination regulations, that prevents Student Activities from giving official, uniform guidance to leaders of student organizations on what to do if a member is accused of sexual misconduct. If student leaders are unsure how to respond to allegations of misconduct within their organization, Niznik advises these students to meet with her and Assistant Director of Student Activities Kaity Stewart. Niznik gives this advice in lieu of requiring a constitutional clause that mandates a process for handling sexual misconduct within student organizations because federal Title IX regulations mandate that students cannot be removed without an official Title IX process. Niznik and Stewart are both mandated reporters meaning they have to officially report any complaints or accusations to the Title IX office. Niznik said that Student Activities instituted the policy of giving out situational advice because “we know every case is unique… at the least come talk to us to help sort through the options you have.”
Niznik’s advice on sexual misconduct disputes changes based on the circumstances, but when asked if there was a legal means for student organizations to remove members without an official Title IX investigation, Niznik responded “to my knowledge, no.” Given this policy, it is unclear what advice Student Activities can provide to club leaders besides encouraging students to report to Title IX. Therefore, if a student accuses another student of misconduct but does not want to go through the process of a Title IX investigation, then there are few ways for the administration to adjudicate the misconduct claim or to protect either student involved.
Assistant Director of Community Standards Dayna Campbell echoed Niznik’s sentiments concerning issues with removing members from student organizations without due process. “The hard thing to realize is that people don’t know the details about every situation and don’t always have the answers,” said Campbell, urging students to file their claims through Title IX rather than handling it on their own. Campbell advocated for approaching misconduct claims “from a restorative lens,” similar to how Nikki Eisenberg described SMART’s goals. Campbell continued, saying that when handling cases of misconduct “it’s not about vengeance, it’s about repairing the harm that was done,” and finding a solution that is fair to all regardless of their relationship to the accusation. Campbell was critical of extrajudicial processes, especially ones that remove students from parties or student organization events that are meant to be open to all because it was “denying folks the rights to due process.”
Legal and financial pressure on Hamilton students and administrators to adhere to Title IX investigation and due process guidelines has only increased in the last half-decade. Part of this pressure stems from two cases in which students who were found to have committed sexual misconduct by the Hamilton College Sexual Misconduct Board after lengthy Title IX investigations took legal action against Hamilton College.
The first of two legal actions was a suit filed by a former student in Fall 2017 after he was accused by four women of sexual misconduct in his final semester at Hamilton in Spring 2017. The student, known only as John Doe, was found to have committed misconduct in one of the four cases, and as The Spectator previously reported, was “banned from campus, banned from Senior Week activities, denied his status as a graduating senior and prohibited from walking with his class at the upcoming commencement.” The suit resulted in a large, undisclosed settlement that was reached in Oct. 2018 after Doe argued that he had been discriminated against because of his gender and had experienced “significant emotional damage,” as a result of the investigation. The exact dollar amount awarded to Doe remains confidential. At the time of the settlement, Dean of Students Terry Martinez refused to comment on the specifics of the case.
The second court action, previously unreported by The Spectator, was decided in June 2019 by a New York appellate court that overturned the decision of a lower court in May 2018 that had sided against the petitioner (a student listed only as A.E) and on the side of the respondent (Hamilton’s Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Board). The June 2019 ruling reversed the decision of the lower court, siding with A.E over Hamilton’s Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Board. The summary provided by the New York State Supreme Court explains that two months before A.E was set to graduate from Hamilton, he was accused of sexual misconduct and the Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Board initiated a Title IX investigation. The HSMB sustained the charges against A.E, whose punishment included a full expulsion, which A.E quickly appealed. The basis for this appeal was that Hamilton had violated state law, the school’s own misconduct policies, and A.E.’s due process rights by not allowing A.E “a hearing or an opportunity to submit questions to his accusers in writing.” The first court that heard the appeal sided with the College, and the second, decided in June 2019, agreed with A. E’s argument, reversing the judgment of the first court. As part of this decision, the court demanded that Hamilton “annul the determinations that petitioner (A.E) violated the College’s Policy.” Further, the court urged Hamilton to “adhere to the college’s published rules and guidelines in any future proceeding.”
Catherine Berryman, Hamilton’s Director of Community Standards, declined to comment on the specifics of this case. However, she disagreed with the court’s decision and believes “that the college (and the Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Board) DID follow our policy and procedures.”
These cases show that even when Hamilton carries out a full Title IX investigation and finds the accusations to have been true, the College can still face legal and financial consequences from the student who committed misconduct. The Spectator was unable to find examples of students that had been removed from organizations or events without an investigation who then took legal action against students or the school. Both Niznik and Dean Hill worry that legal issues will only increase for the school and could possibly extend to individual students if extrajudicial removals continue to occur.
Despite these possible discriminatory legal issues, Jack Scacco, Corey Rundquist, Hudson Smith and Nikki Eisenberg all believe that the benefits of removing students outweigh the risks. Hudson Smith felt that “being a member of an organization is a privilege,” and that “even if it infringes on the rights of students… the positive outweighs the negative,’’ Nikki Eisenberg expanded on this by saying that removing members from student organizations and associated events helps to create a “community of protection,” ensuring the safety and comfort of Hamilton students. Eisenberg reiterated that “people aren’t really making things up,” when it comes to misconduct claims. She continued by saying that extrajudicial removals “evolve out of an administration’s lack of effectiveness in their strategy to combat sexual misconduct on campus.” Eisenberg feels that club leaders wouldn’t have to remove students from organizations or their associated events “if survivors felt more safe on campus and issues were dealt with in a better manner.”
The protective community that Eisenberg spoke about extends to what students and administrators who spoke with The Spectator label a sexual misconduct “rumor mill.” This system of extrajudicially identifying accused assailants and notifying students about their presence in a class, organization, event, or party is common practice at Hamilton, especially among sororities and sexual misconduct survivor groups. Alpha Theta Chi (ATX) Treasurer Catherine McFarland ’22 and Pi Beta Chi (PBX) member Natalie Halpin ’21 confirmed the existence of unofficial “blacklists’’, which consist of primarily male student-athletes and fraternity members who are not allowed into parties because of rumors that they had previously committed sexual misconduct at Hamilton or were viewed as “creepy,” or “rapey.”
Dayna Campbell and other administrators are especially wary of this system, because it excludes students without a fair process, and creates a culture that, they argue, doesn’t necessarily deter misconduct and assault. Campbell, a former activist and college student herself, said that she “would never tell a group what to do or what not to do to make them feel safe,” but reiterated that the administration couldn’t “act on things if we don’t have the information,” hoping to dissuade students from extrajudicial removals in favor of coming to the Title IX office with the information they have.
Since Greek organizations like ATX, PBX, and Delta Phi are private organizations and differ from the student clubs like the frisbee team, they have a lot more leeway to be exclusive with both who can join their organizations and attend events. Dean Travis Hill who runs the day-to-day oversight of Greek organizations agreed with Campbell that blacklists could be harmful and didn’t see it as effective means of keeping sexual violence from happening. Dean Hill felt that Greek organizations’ focus should be on “how are we proactively keeping violence from happening in the first place,” emphasizing the importance of “developing a culture and an education process that helps members understand ways to create environments that are inherently anti-sexual violence.” Corey Rundquist agreed that preventative education measures were important but held that “a rumor mill about creepy guys does less harm than assaults.” Nikki Eisenberg echoed Rundquist’s point saying “I have trouble feeling bad [for accused assailants] because these actions ruin people’s lives”
Dean Hill continued by advocating for more students to take bystander intervention training, classes that the Inter Society Council, a group of the leaders of all of Hamilton’s Greek organizations, unanimously agreed to make mandatory for all members of Hamilton Greek societies. Dean Hill views these educational seminars, provided by both Catherine Berryman and Dayna Campbell, as a perfect example of preventative education measures that Greek and student organizations should take instead of waiting until after an incident occurs to then remove or sanction members. Student leaders also agreed with the need for preventative measures, but Smith and Rundquist were insistent that there should be a clause in every Greek organization’s constitution and every student organization constitution “that allows us to remove members for sexual assault specifically.”
In the event that removal becomes necessary, Dean Hill recommended that all Greek organizations have, at the least, a formal and fair process for removals that organizations can adhere to each time it becomes necessary. Because Greek organizations are private societies, Dean Hill cannot mandate a constitutional clause or process for removal, but he has recommended different processes in the past. Dean Hill isn’t sure which Greek organizations have enshrined processes as he described but after they had to remove their pledge master, Hudson Smith and Corey Rundquist updated Delta Phi’s constitution with a democratic judicial process to remove members for misconduct. At least one other fraternity, Delta Chi, has a similar process outlined in a contract that each member is required to sign each semester.
Still, Dean Hill, Noelle Niznik, and Dayna Campbell each emphasized that the focus around sexual misconduct should be on preventative measures like required title IX educational seminars, bystander intervention classes, and discussions between administration and student leaders in order to shift towards a culture of nonviolence with removals occurring only as a last resort after-the-fact measure. In the meantime, Noelle Niznik and the student activities office are still unable to provide uniform guidance for student organization leaders who are confronted with an accusation of sexual misconduct within their organization. When asked what student leaders should do if confronted with this situation, Dayna Campbell replied that student leaders should focus on “making sure that person feels heard, then providing an avenue for other resources” while recognizing that there’s no uniform “set course of action,” in these difficult and often personal situations.
Noelle Niznik reiterated that “at the end of the day we do have a process,” and that Hamilton does provide ample educational resources for students. Yet she recognized that “students are looking for something that’s more expedited and cut and dry, like okay believe me this is what happened this person needs to go and that’s that, they screwed up, they’re out… it’s tricky when we have to support and be resources for all students.”
Jack Scacco, now a captain of the club frisbee team, looked back on his time as SMART coordinator as a difficult period when there were “some days where the stress was physically manifesting, I wasn’t sleeping well… losing focus in class.” He spoke about how “having to consciously change your perspective and opinion on someone that you’ve known for over two years is really hard and sucks.” Since the removal, the Frisbee team institutionalized the misconduct contract that Scacco worked on as a sophomore SMART coordinator and it is tweaked and revisited each semester. Since its institution, they haven’t had to deal with any incidents, though frisbee parties have been few and far between since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
Hudson Smith, who is still involved with Delta Phi, felt that the incident within Delta Phi and the resulting removal of his friend “really changed the underlying opinion that I had about frats and Greek life.” Smith reiterated “that we had built this myth up that there was a good fraternity or a model fraternity that could transcend the norms and that turned out to be false.” The result was that “it has alienated a lot of members and made it really hard to do rush events once we realized we were telling ourselves a lie.” Smith felt that “it was particularly harmful to perpetuate that myth because… it stopped people from questioning the systems in place.” Systems that Rundquist and Smith now believe have racist and sexist origins leading Rundquist, Delta Phi’s current president, to question if “frats ever really can be good?” Arguing that “there’s the potential for [misconduct] to happen any time,” in male exclusive Greek organizations. He elaborated, saying that “the space that you are creating, the power structure that you are assigning to your members, gives your members an opportunity to abuse that power whether its sexual assault or hazing.” Smith urged other Hamilton fraternity leaders to look at the discriminatory power structures that were inherent in their organizations saying that “members of frats are insulated from the reality of sexual assault,” making it often easier to ignore allegations or “push them under the rug.” While Smith and Rundquist knew that kicking their close friend out of the frat “would be harmful to his mental health,” they saw no other option, and in the end, the incident was “dealt with efficiently by just us,” with a majority vote.
Nikki Eisenberg feels that in order to solve these problems, the College must embrace short-term solutions that “hold members of clubs responsible without pushing the boundaries that the admin have,” in order to “foster a safe community.” In the long term, Eisenberg argued that curbing sexual violence “requires a mass cultural shift,” that can only be reached through “better education and more frequent education.” She believed that “the more you educate the better, the faster the culture shift can happen,” a necessity if Hamilton “wants people to see this school as a safe place.”
Long-term education is crucial for Dayna Campbell who, along with Catherine Berryman, creates, curates, and leads many of the educational seminars, discussions, and roundtables that the Title IX office provides. Campbell understands that “education is at the crux,” of curbing sexual misconduct and she is constantly updating her educational programs based on student’s reception. Campbell hopes to “break down the hierarchies,” between students and administrators so more students feel safe to go through the Title IX process with their claims of misconduct and says she “hopes to talk to students about what they’ve experienced and how we can help them.” When it comes to student organization leaders, Campbell understands “the desire to want to punish someone who does something that is bad, harmful to others, morally wrong,” but insisted that there has to be a fair process in which administrators can “gather information and make sure that information is available to the people involved.” Further, Campbell said that she’s “open to figuring out what is an appropriate and feasible process for [student leaders],” when it comes to addressing misconduct, and advocated for a process focused on “repairing the harm that was done,” and “restoring relationships,’’ in the theme of restorative justice.
Campbell is optimistic that as “we continue researching and figuring out what we need to do to make sure our community members get the top level of education, that we can then move towards culture shift,” creating “a community of nonviolence.” Eisenberg hopes that this culture change can occur in the coming years. However, as she reflected on her four years at Hamilton, two of which were spent on the E-Board of SMART, Eisenberg could not help but notice that “serious discussions about sexual misconduct come up every so often,” but in most cases “after a while, people stop talking about sexual misconduct, nothing changes, and the issue stays unresolved.”
