Content warning: The following article contains reference to sexual assault and Title IX formal resolutions.
When one member of John and Mary’s club allegedly sexually assaulted another, they were forced to learn the Bates Campus Life and Title IX regulations for removing someone from a campus group. Now, John and Mary (both pseudonyms) say the process for removing a member accused of assault is frustrating and makes students unnecessarily uncomfortable.
“The new member removal policy says something like, if you miss a lot of club meetings and it’s detrimental to the club in that way, come talk to us [Campus Life] and we can ask them to leave,” John said. Meanwhile, when someone is accused of assault, it may take months for a Title IX hearing to occur and bring about action. “And so in that sense, it is about 100 times easier to remove someone from a club for missing meetings than it is if they sexually assault someone, and that just is unbelievable.”
The Student spoke with Mary and John after a reiteration of longstanding Campus Life policy on Sept. 16 at the club presidents summit. This presentation included a reminder of the club member removal policy, which was officially put into officer agreements this year. Contrary to what John said, this policy has been in effect at Bates for quite some time.
In the meeting, Nick Dressler, Assistant Dean of Students for Campus Life & Student Leadership, told leaders “clubs must be in touch with Campus Life if they’d like to remove a member, members may not be removed without due process facilitated by college administrators, [and] students may not remove other students from clubs.”
Dressler emphasized to The Student that “the policy itself is not new, but it was updated this year to include information on member removal and when and how clubs and orgs can be held responsible for the actions of their members.”
Dressler added in his presentation that this reminder of the policy came after clubs in prior years tried to remove members on their own, without going through official channels.
According to Dressler, the goal of adding the policy to officer agreements was to “put our already-established ways of navigating these issues in writing, and making it explicit to student leaders what our and the federal government’s expectations are when it comes to ensuring that we’re in compliance with Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.”
Title IX as a law guarantees that every part of the educational offerings of the college must be available to all students, which includes membership to clubs and organizations.
Mary and John gave The Student their perspective of the removal process they had gone through last year after the assault in their club had occurred. For the purpose of this story, we will refer to the alleged assaulter as Person A and the alleged assaulted person as Person B.
“I felt very strongly that the person should have been removed pretty immediately following what had happened,” Mary said. But that didn’t happen. Club leadership at the time did not take immediate action, and the informal process of asking Person A to leave the group spanned a number of months.
After the removal of Person A, John reports that the tone of the group changed drastically.
“The difference was really seen once the person left,” John said. “A number of group members, really, especially the affected person, just like becoming a whole different person within the group and opening up to a much bigger extent than we saw previously.”
According to John, sometime in the next few months, Person A went to Campus Life and Title IX alleging that “they had been unfairly treated and had no idea why they were kicked out of the group, and kind of leveraged that as a way to claim unequal access.”
The club member removal policy backs up the claim made by Person A and means for that member to be removed Person B would have to go through a formal resolution process through Title IX. This process involves a “fact-gathering investigation into the complaint, a determination phase, and opportunities for appeal,” according to Bates’ Title IX website. The process for a formal resolution of a Title IX complaint is detailed in the Equal Opportunity, Non-Discrimination, and Anti-Harassment Policy starting on page 66. Investigations, the policy states, are completed “expeditiously,” and typically within 60 business days.
Mary was frustrated with the nature of said investigation, seeing as a club member’s safety and comfort was of concern: “Until there is a formal process with formal findings of responsibility on one party or another, Title IX is federally mandated to uphold equal opportunity for everybody involved. Which basically means you could have two people in a space, one of whom has knowingly and very obviously assaulted another member, but until there is a formal process, which takes about a semester, and does not guarantee any outcomes, Title IX is like, ‘get f*cked.’”
Campus Life informed Mary and John – at that point the current leadership of the club – that they must reinstate Person A immediately or go through a formal Title IX hearing before determining if and how club spaces could be limited to members.
Both John and Mary then read up on Campus Life’s policies in regards to removing members of clubs, and were incensed with how much easier it seemed to remove a member over trivial matters like attendance than for assault.
John referenced a part of the Member Removal Policy that permits clubs to include membership expectations in their constitutions such as “regular attendance, fulfillment of assigned tasks, practice, and preparation for organizational activities.” If these expectations are not met, the policy states that club leaders should give written feedback via email, as well as consult Campus Life. If after the feedback is received, the problematic behavior persists, removal may then be considered.
The Student also spoke with Jake, a member of a different club who was removed by the president and took it to Title IX. He recounts the experience of being told he was no longer welcome in the club by the leadership at the time.
“They had invited me to a meeting that they had set up like an interrogation; the leaders of the club were already there,” Jake said. “They didn’t get into specifics but they had said that other members of the group were uncomfortable with my presence in the club.”
Jake added that the club presidents seemed to acknowledge that they couldn’t bar his access from the club: “They said ‘we can’t tell you to leave the club under Title IX, but we discourage you from attending events,’ which for the record, they couldn’t.”
Jake then went to Title IX, and was told if he wanted to pursue it, he could take action against the exclusion he was facing from the club. He told The Student that in his meeting, he was asked if he felt comfortable returning to the club considering all that had happened, to which he said “No.”
Jake was happy to hear that Campus Life was making a committed effort to remind club leaders they have a responsibility in upholding Title IX. “It seems like a lot of officers and leaders don’t know what the process is and what they can and cannot do, so it’s good they are highlighting it,” he said.
The Student spoke with club officer Peter (also referred to with a pseudonym) whose club introduced their own formal investigation and removal policy for club officers last year.
This addition to his club’s constitution was for the removal of officers only, not of members. “Being an officer of a club is a privilege, while access to a club is a right protected under Title IX,” Peter said. “We can and have removed officers for inactivity.”
Peter made it clear that personal conflict bleeding into club spaces had been an issue he and his club had dealt with before and that the additional clause in the clubs constitution was added as a failsafe. Removing an officer for conduct, to Peter, was “only to be used after we had exhausted all official means through the school.”
All three parties interviewed by The Student agreed that these issues are frequently the most difficult parts of being a club leader. Campus Life’s enshrinement of this pre-existing policy demonstrates a clear goal of remaining in line with Title IX legislation, but nonetheless poses a dilemma for students when clubs become the setting for these kinds of conflicts.
Via email to The Student, Dressler said he was empathetic to students who are placed in these situations and encouraged students to “get in touch with us. We can help strategize with club and org leaders about what the appropriate steps are, and how to navigate things with minimal impact on group operations and environment.”
