Tennessee Hopes to Hire New Title IX Chief

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Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee)

 

There's no firm timeline for when the University of Tennessee will have in place some of the recommendations of a new report critiquing its Title IX policies, President Joe DiPietro said Thursday. But he hopes to hire a systemwide coordinator by the end of the year.


"Some of them are easier and others are more long-term," DiPietro said following a UT board of trustees meeting in Knoxville five days after the report was released. "We've been training, but everybody needs to have training programs that are uniform and effective. That will take some time."

The 28-page report is the result of work done by a Title IX commission DiPietro hired last fall in the aftermath of a federal lawsuit accusing the university of fostering a "hostile environment" in response to complaints of sexual violence. UT settled the lawsuit for $2.48 million last July though the university admitted no fault.

Based on research, interviews and listening sessions with students, the report lists five major recommendations for the university. Among them are the hiring of a systemwide Title IX coordinator, which is something DiPietro said he hopes to have in place by the end of the year.

Disparities between campuses

The total cost of the commission and its report will end up being about $200,000, according to UT officials. That does not include the cost for hiring the systemwide Title IX coordinator or other changes that could come out of the report.

Among other things, the report highlights disparities between the Knoxville campus and other UT campuses when it comes to Title IX policies and says that progress on Title IX initiatives has not been consistent from campus to campus.

In part, that's because the flagship campus in Knoxville has access to more resources and they were very aggressive in responding to the "Dear Colleague letter" that the U.S. Office for Civil Rights issued to more than 7,000 colleges in 2011 urging them to revise their approaches to Title IX, DiPietro said.

The Title IX lawsuit settled last year also resulted in an annual investment of $700,000 and six new positions at the Knoxville campus.

Another Title IX investigator

Title IX is an area that universities need to continuously look at for ways to improve, said UT Knoxville Chancellor Beverly Davenport following Thursday's board of trustees meeting.

She said that following the report she hopes to work on bringing clarity to policies and procedures as well as hire an additional Title IX investigator for the UT Knoxville campus.

There are currently three investigators at that campus, but Davenport said it is a "national norm" to have one investigator per every 8,000 students.

How much will it cost?

In discussion at the board of trustees meeting Thursday, trustee John Tickle said the outcome of the Title IX report was good but he questioned the long-term cost it will create.

"It seems like we always come up with a solution that involves adding people and staff and salaries," Tickle said. "It's interesting that a consultant couldn't come up with something that would reorganize in a different way that you don't have to add people. It's not just this, it's everything we come up with, so we're going to be really challenged to hold costs down because of the bureaucracy of the things we work with."

DiPietro, who has headed up efforts to make the university's funding model sustainable and also talked Thursday about the work of his Budget Advisory Group to reduce a projected $122 million funding shortfall in 2025, said that while cost considerations are always something the university looks at, they do not want to cut corners when it comes to initiatives such as the Title IX work.

"We have to figure out what will serve each campus or institute the best," he said. "We cannot afford to be anything but the best in class or a national model for how to have Title IX programming here."

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June 23, 2017
 
 
 

 

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