American University Doesn’t Care About Sexual Assault Victims

This article was written by a Rival staffer who has chosen to remain anonymous

TW: sexual assault, victim blaming, mention of underage drinking

I wasn’t going to write this. I’m not the first person to start a story on this topic with that sentence, but it’s true. That’s all I can give at this point: the truth. Even if American University’s Office of Equity & Title IX didn’t believe me, this is the truth.

I am one of many survivors of sexual assault on campus. After what happened on Halloween this year, and AU admin’s response, I feel the need to share my own story. It’s not a particularly uplifting experience, but hopefully it will show readers what it’s truly like to report sexual violence on campus. All of the slogans, emails, and lip service that AU gives its community about helping survivors of sexual assault– it’s all bullshit. At least, it was all bullshit when I went through the process.

Last year was my first year at AU. Excited to start my college experience, I couldn’t wait to move on campus. Finally, on August 26, 2021, I moved into my dorm in Centennial Hall. The very next day, I was sexually assaulted right outside my door. Yep. Approximately thirty-six hours after moving seven hours away from the only home I had ever known. 

I had been in my dorm with my roommate, suitemate, and a friend I had met the day before at around 10pm when we heard a knock at the door. Not unusual, it was Welcome Week in the freshmen dorms, so everybody was just trying to socialize. We opened the door to find four freshman guys, who introduced themselves and said that they were going around the dorms trying to meet new people. The eight of us struck up basic conversation. What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your major?. 

All of the sudden, one of the guys, who was standing on the other side of the hallway about six feet away from me, comes over to me, leans down, and grabs my breast. He proceeded to apologize seemingly to thin air, not making eye contact with me once. One of his friends says “We’re really drunk.” They hadn’t been acting intoxicated at all before that, but hey, what do I know of their tolerances? The conversation continued on until The Man (my name for my assaulter since I can’t name drop him in this article) asked us where the bathroom was. Since it was Centennial, we explained that there were no communal bathrooms, these were suite-style dorms, and that he’d have to walk to Anderson for a bathroom. He didn’t understand that. He kept asking us where he could find a bathroom. After a few minutes of back and forth, since we were not going to let a stranger who just assaulted me use our bathroom, he and his friends sauntered off to Anderson to presumably find the bathroom. We went back inside. 

It took me two days to decide to knock on my RA’s door and report it. I could’ve just left it be and forcibly tried to repress any memory of it, like I had done so many times before. Looking back, there are some times where I wish I would’ve done just that. But eventually, I decided to report it to my RA so I could find out what the resources for sexual assault survivors were on campus, as well as to hopefully show The Man that it’s not okay to do that. 

Four days after move in, my RA was already helping one of his residents report a sexual assault. Classes hadn’t even started yet. 

Soon after my report to the Office of Title IX, I was assigned a Title IX coordinator to take on my complaint. She had me tell the whole story, and then ask if I wanted to just leave it as an internal complaint (where nothing would be done about it, there would just be a record that I had said something) or proceed with an investigation. I chose to proceed with an investigation. I didn’t want yet another sexual assaulter to walk away with impunity. I was told that the investigation and hearing would most likely go on until the end of the semester since the Office of Title IX was already backed up (yes, I was told that during the first week of classes). 

My coordinator told me that since I will be constantly recounting a traumatic event in investigatory interviews for the near future, the Office of Title IX could provide me with any academic accommodations that I needed for the duration of the investigation. I asked for leniency on the due dates of assignments. My professors were emailed a notice of my accommodations, saying that I would be granted an extension on any assignment any time I asked for one. Despite being told that my investigation would be happening for around three months, the notice of accommodations said that they expired after three weeks. Every three weeks, I would have to email my Title IX coordinator asking for an extension on the accommodations, since I was still constantly recounting the traumatic moment in interviews with her. To this day, I still don’t understand why my accommodations kept expiring, since I had asked my coordinator after the first renewal if she could just make them for the rest of the semester. It definitely added a lot more stress onto an already difficult situation for me, since I had to keep up with when my accommodations would expire and beg for a renewal so my professors would keep accommodating me. 

Now, did all of my professors actually accommodate me? Most did. One didn’t. Since I already hashed that whole situation out with that professor’s department and the Office of Title IX, and the issue was resolved (as far as I know), I won’t dwell on that issue too much. There’s still much more to this story. Just know that this was yet another problem I had to fight back against amongst the rest of the whole situation. 

As November started to fly by, I started to be skeptical of the “end of the semester” deadline that I had been given for the investigation and hearing. Some of the witnesses I had named had only just recently been interviewed for the first time ever. Mind you, the investigation formally started on September 15th. How were any of my witnesses supposed to remember every minute detail that the Office of Title IX wanted to know? I just had to hope that their memories of what happened months ago were damn near perfect. As it got closer to December, I was told that the investigation would be bleeding into the second semester. Great. My entire freshman year clouded by a sexual assault investigation that seemed to move at a snail’s pace, with updates barely given as I waited. Just what everyone wants from their college experience!

The spring semester started in the second week of January. At this point, I had given up. I tried to forget what was happening while I waited anxiously for any sign that this may be over soon. The first time that I was contacted that semester was when I was sent the preliminary investigative report on January 31st. The final investigative report was exactly the same, but was sent over a month after the preliminary report on March 8th. 

When I read the report, I somehow became even more frustrated than I already was, which I thought was impossible. The Man’s witnesses obviously denied he did anything to me (one even going as far to say that he had never stepped foot in Centennial Hall in his life). My witnesses, who were actually trying to recall the true memories of that night, had all said that because they were only interviewed at least 2, sometimes 3 months after it happened, they couldn’t recall every detail the Office of Title IX wanted to know. I knew how that looked. I knew that this case may not go my way now since the investigation took so long that witnesses' memories were clouded. Not to mention that I had to ask for another extension on my accommodations since I still had to do the hearing. 

If you’ve never been to or heard of a Title IX sexual assault hearing, let me set the scene. There’s a panel of three AU staff and faculty members that act as the jury. Each side, the complainant (me) and the respondent (The Man) gets appointed an advisor, who is basically representing your side similar to how a lawyer would in a real trial. Except the advisors are also members of AU staff and faculty, so they don’t actually have to know anything about this process. My advisor, who was a very nice person, was a professor who told me that he had never been an advisor for a Title IX hearing before, and that he wasn’t too sure about what he was doing. I don’t know if The Man’s advisor had any experience either, but it was troubling that the Office of Title IX had appointed somebody who didn’t know anything about these hearings to represent me in mine. Witnesses get invited to the Zoom, and they RSVP if they can come so they can be let into the Zoom for their testimony. I got an email titled “Notification of Witnesses” that said my roommate and one of The Man’s witnesses would be able to testify on the Zoom. The panel also gets a copy of the final investigative report so they can read the other witnesses' testimonies that could not attend the Zoom. My hearing was on March 29, 2022. Reminder, I was sexually assaulted on August 27, 2021. Seven months before that. 

While we were on a break in between testimonies during my hearing, my advisor and I were put into our own breakout rooms to talk. He told me that when the Office of Title IX approached him for this, they said that my hearing was the first sexual assault hearing on a college campus in the whole DC Metro area in the past two years (a timeline that started right before former Secretary of Education Devos gutted Title IX). Yep. Not just AU, but the entire DC Metro area. Yes, COVID caused school to be online for one of the semesters in those two years, but that still means that there had been about three whole semesters in the DC Metro where there were simply no Title IX sexual assault hearings. Considering that 13% of all college students report sexual violence on campus, the numbers did not add up. 

It only took me a few more days to realize exactly why there hadn’t been any hearings in two years. On April 1st, the panel finished making the determination for my hearing. They said he was innocent. 

Seven months, all for nothing.

Seven months of tears and Microsoft Team meetings recounting that night, for nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

They said it was my fault for misinterpreting his actions. It was my fault for not believing him when he said he stumbled. Since when is it normal to stumble and steady yourself on a girl’s tit? They said it wasn’t true.

I can’t even begin to describe what I felt when I read that. I didn’t know it was possible to cry for that long. Did you know you can lose your voice from crying so hard? My chest was merely a vessel for my sobs. 

I hid under a friend’s bed for over an hour. “What do I do now?” was the only thing I could say in between my hacking cries. What could I do now? They didn’t believe me. 

All these months later, I guess I’ve found the answer to my question. Write. Let the AU community know that this is what happens at the Office of Title IX. American University doesn’t give a shit about us, they never have. 

Earlier this semester, I got an email telling me that I had to complete my yearly sexual assault training from the Office of Title IX. Bull fucking shit. If anyone needs to be trained on this, it’s the employees of the Office of Title IX themselves, along with the rest of AU staff, faculty, and administration. Clearly, they don’t know how to give a shit about it. 

Considering how much AU prides itself on being one of the most liberal universities in the country, I expected so much better than this. While the administration likes to portray this school as a community of care, it’s clear that said “care” is not extended to all students. Despite all of their virtue signaling about “trauma informed” investigation and counseling, that’s all it is: virtue signaling. None of it’s real once they get your tuition money. They are not supporters of victims of sexual violence, no matter how many emails they send us claiming to be so. This is not the first time AU has shown they don’t care about us, nor will it be the last. 

I don’t know if there will ever be an end to this pain. I truly don’t. But what I do know is that I want to help make sure that others don’t have to endure what I did. On Thursday, November 10, students are having a walkout against sexual violence at 2pm on the quad. I know I’ll be there. Maybe if enough of us go and make our voices heard, we can make AU give a damn about us.