From Sexual Harassment to Sexual Misconduct: The Evolution of Title IX’s Response to Sexual Victimization

• In Event: College-based Violence Prevention: Policies and Programs

Abstract

With the advent of the “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in 2010, institutions of higher education began the process of reconceptualizing their Title IX processes to address a diversity of sexual victimizations on college campuses. In this paper I discuss the evolution of Title IX for universities in relation to sexual victimization, highlighting shifts in definitions, victims, offenders, and responsible parties. Using highly publicized cases of university responses to sexual assault after 2010, I analyze competing discourses of blame, responsibility, and response presented by universities and victims as both struggle to invoke a discrimination framework and language to deal with sexual victimization. In particular, using feminist critiques I call into question the development of an umbrella understanding of campus sexual victimization as “sexual misconduct,” a term that both generalizes and negates the violence so prevalent on today’s college campuses.

Author

• Michelle Hughes Miller, University of South Florida