The Curriculum of Complaint Management: How Third-Party Title IX Training Socializes Higher Education Staff

• In Event: Sociology of Law Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Sociology of Law Section Roundtables: Table 3 — Gender, Sexuality, and Legal Categories

Abstract

Higher education staff responsible for resolving sexual harassment complaints are required to take training on their responsibilities under Title IX, yet little is known about the content of this training nor how it shapes the enactment of the law on campus. This study draws on observation of professional training sessions from three, third-party Title IX companies to analyze how training shapes staff members’ professional orientations and practices. I find that training companies promote two models of what I term “complaint management,” or ways of understanding and acting upon student’s sexual violence complaints under Title IX. These models arise from companies’ depictions of the risks born from the Title IX legal landscape and from student behavior. This study demonstrates that, contrary to previous findings in the sociological literature on law and organizations, compliance professionals inconsistently adopt risk frames, but that—when present—risk characterizes law itself as well as the people involved in the daily work of implementing law. By expanding the work of compliance professionals to include the socialization of complaint handlers, and by highlighting the variability of professionals’ suggestions about how to enact law, this article illuminates how complaint managers’ approaches to front-line work are dynamically taught in training.

Author

• Isabel Patten, University of California-Irvine