Beyond Title IX: When the System Failed Me

I learned about the Red Zone because it happened to me. What follows is a recount of my experiences grappling with rape in higher education, what I learned, the people who put me in danger, and how I saved myself. 

Assault and Institutional Aftermath

Less than two months into my freshman year of college, I was raped. At the height of Covid, of keeping six feet away from each other, and Zoom classes, I experienced a violence that would change me drastically. In the aftermath, I found myself alone in my dorm, isolating for weeks, reliving my trauma over and over again. A semester later, I was gone. I never returned to that university. 

When a student experiences sexual violence on a college campus, they are quickly made aware of Title IX.* Its history goes back to the seventies, and was first introduced as a law that would protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender and sex. At the time, it mostly functioned as a way to ensure women would be included in sports and extracurriculars. Title IX has morphed and expanded since its inception, but at its core, Title IX is supposed to be about protection. According to the Department of Education, Title IX was enacted to protect people from exclusion from any educational program or activity at institutions that receive federal funding.

Today, Title IX reckons with discrimination at educational institutions, as well as sexual violence. One in five women are sexually assaulted while in college, a number that is significantly aggravated for women of color and sexual/gender minorities. And when this  seemingly inevitable violence does occur, Title IX is there to take in your story. Any report about sexual assault is automatically taken over by Title IX, every college campus has a representative of this law, and many have entire departments. Over time, the Title IX law and its enforcers have become the sole system that higher education maintains to deal with sexual violence on campus; it is meant to be the standard. When I first learned about Title IX I felt reassured — I felt that if there was an existing framework to deal with events like what had happened to me, I would find the help that I needed. 

I’ve described to many of my friends that while the sexual assault I experienced in college has rippled through my life, still, over four years later, it was the institutional neglect that had the deepest impact on my education. 

My First Contact with Title IX

My first contact with Title IX was through a friend. We recognized  each other as  fellow survivors early on, sharing the dead animal look in our eyes, and discovered quickly that our experiences with violence on campus were oddly similar. Wanting to offer support, I found myself accompanying her meeting with our Title IX representative. I sat and listened in disbelief as my friend was held responsible for things that were done to her against her will. 

When it was over we listened closely to the options they offered her. Months later, when I decided to seek my own support, they would offer me the same things. 

1. They could launch an official investigation, which they described as arduous and traumatizing - a process that would include the police and would take many years. If we chose this, there was a slim chance that our case would go to some form of court, and an even slimmer chance that our offenders would receive any form of punishment. 
   
   Or
2. The Title IX office could offer some form of unofficial resources: a no-contact order, an eating schedule, a rearranging of classes so we wouldn’t have to see our rapists on a daily basis.
   
   Or, our final option:
3. We could decide to let it go. 
    

There is an estimate that nine out of ten sexual assaults on college campuses go unreported. It is nearly impossible to get accurate data because so many of us were encouraged not to pursue our cases. My friend and I both decided, after months of processing, that we would seek unofficial resources. She got a no-contact order, and I, a dining hall schedule; both so we could minimize the amount of contact we had with our rapists. 

Neither worked: Having my eating schedule organized around my assaulter’s schedule led to severe anxiety, to the point where I stopped attending meals to avoid finding him waiting outside the building. My friend’s rapist repetitively broke her no-contact order under the unbelievable excuse that he did not recognize her. Ultimately, when we expressed our displeasure and grievances with the inadequacy of the procedures, we were dismissed out of hand and ushered  off to mental health counselors. 

I lost any opportunity for restoration or justice through the institutions’ systems. I believe the opportunity was never there to begin with. 
 

Telling My Story, Finding Healing on My Own

Cut to now, what I did, what helped: Two semesters into my college education, I transferred to a different institution. I transferred because of the assault, but more centrally I left because I could not understand being expected to live with my rapist. I could not reconcile that the place that was meant to ensure my safety worked so hard to protect him. I could not look at the faces of the people in charge - those who knew what had happened to me, and chose to do nothing. 

From the safety of my second institution, a year and a half after my rape, I sent a campus-wide letter to my old college. I detailed what had happened to me and the college’s neglect. I individually emailed every student, faculty, and staff, and the process took me over four hours. Over two thousand emails later, I breathed a sigh of relief. At some point during my Title IX processes, I became fearful of my own story and the repercussions of sharing it. It took me leaving the institution to realize that telling my story would be one of the most important pieces of my own healing. My voice had become quiet and unsure. I had internalized all of the guilt that no one gave my rapist, and I made it my own. In writing my letter, attaching my name, and making it public, I regained a voice and a power no one else could give back to me. 

My college and Title IX did not offer me healing, restoration, or justice. I had to find that on my own. I attended a variety of online and in-person support groups. I connected with my friends who were also going through trauma of their own. I sought therapy and found comfort in EMDR. I watched documentaries and read books about and by fellow survivors. I made art, I painted, and wrote and produced creativity from my pain. I found people, staff and faculty, at my second institution that believed my story and held it in their arms when I couldn’t. I closed down my old email account, the only way my rapist ever contacted me, and I didn’t look for his name ever again on social media. 
 

After rape, living and learning in the place I had experienced such violence became impossible. 

I learned that sexual assault survivors where more likely to drop out of college and for my first two semesters, I considered it every day. Living in the aftershocks of the trauma left me hollow and powerless. But ultimately it did not define me.

I graduated college a few months ago. For years I could not imagine that happening. And something happened when they gave me my diploma. I got some of my power back. I finished an education that I deserved, in spite of life-altering violence. In spite of him and Title IX. That means something. 

At my new school, I was regularly asked why I transferred. I always lied: often I’d say that the academics weren’t challenging enough. But the truth is I was drowning, and no one came to save me. So I saved myself and I left.

I’m done admonishing myself for not having done more; for not having stuck with it and changed the system through a convoluted and useless system that does little more than further traumatize victims. It was never my responsibility to make any university a safe place to study.

I used to believe that what happened was solely my rapist’s fault. But these systems facilitated the violence. 
 

My healing from assault has not included a formal Title IX process.

Ultimately, the most central to healing from assault on a college campus, was to be faithful to myself. For me, it did not include a formal process through Title IX. It did not mean going to the police. It meant putting my education first and leaving a space that was never going to support me. Eventually, being faithful to myself meant telling my story on my own terms and in my own words. 

I recommend learning about the Title IX department and representative at your institution, regardless of whether you choose to proceed with an official or unofficial case. In my experience every institution is different and the support available will vary. Although not part of their department, it was in connection to Title IX that I met a mental health counselor that supported me during my first year of college. 
 

Read my public letter here: Open Letter to the People who Failed Me

MEDIA THAT I RECOMMEND: 

I found Chanel Miller’s book Know My Name grounding and reaffirming. Although she wasn’t a college student herself at the time, it touches on themes surrounding the legal system and college courts.

The documentary The Hunting Ground is a valuable source for those seeking more information about the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses.

By far the most transformative media I’ve consumed is the limited series I May Destroy You, by Michaela Cole. Watch with caution and care, although fictionalized, it is a thorough depiction of the writer's own experience with assault and its aftermath.