By: JR

JR
Sat, 31 Jan 2015 17:28:29 +0000

To the people who are interpreting this as a personal attack against either themselves or the band; please don’t. Regardless if there was inappropriate conduct on the part of the police, the director, or other administrators – once the president or board of trustees is informed, they have a legal obligation to act. This situation was clearly a violation of Title IX responsibilities. The Department of Education has said as much.

Title IX is far reaching. In fact, if OSU hadn’t acted, which in this case took the form of firing Waters, initiating a larger cultural review and other assessments of policy and procedure, the University could lose access to federal funds. While that is unlikely in any event, there is an enormous amount of attention on Title IX issues. In a certain sense the university was backed into a corner. A very serious Title IX violation occurred the moment that event one student reported a sexual assault and it was not properly reported or handled. Not only is it personally harmful to that student, it also means that the larger university would be held responsible for those actions.

Even if there weren’t the allegations of mis-handled sexual assaults, if a culture and environment exists where a reasonable person would be made to feel harassed, uncomfortable or coerced to participate, then Title IX has also been violated. I see many people claiming that the culture was changing – great – but was it enough? Was it perhaps possible that among the many traditions within the band, some, if not many student were made to feel uncomfortable by the actions of others at the moment when this report was issued? I would venture a yes. The response since that point has reemphasized that to me; the band shouldn’t be issuing general statements on behalf of all students who have or are participating. This is a very tricky legal situation for the university. There’s no clear cut answer and I’m sure that Drake didn’t walk in and say something like “Let’s fire Jon Waters! He deserves it! I want to get rid of him!”. Realistically the university was taking a practical step to protect itself in any future legal proceedings.

I get that this is personal for many people. How can it not be? But there’s a give-and-take here. The university isn’t acting with malice, and by submitting this evidence is making a case for its defense.