The Special Status of Students: The unintended consequences of attention to sexual violence on college campuses

BY SAPNA NAIK

The 2015 release of the documentary The Hunting Ground, by filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, was part of a larger discussion about sexual violence on college campuses. While promoting the documentary on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked the filmmakers, “for 18 to 24 year olds, is there a much larger existence of this type of attack [sexual assault] on campus than off campus?” Kirby Dick answered, “There’s some debate on that, but we feel that it’s more dangerous on campus than off campus.”

Research does not necessarily confirm their claim. In a December 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report, Sinozich and Langton found that nonstudents were more likely to experience rape and sexual assault than students of the same age group. The numbers are not clear due to lack of reporting among both students and nonstudents. The point is not that one group experiences sexual violence more than another group but that sexual violence happens, and is unacceptable, everywhere. Much of the attention from the U.S. government (e.g. Dear Colleague Letter, the creation of a White House Task Force, The It’s On Us campaign, and OCR investigations into campuses) and news media (including dedicated sections on The Huffington Post, NPR, and Time), however, has been on U.S. higher education institutions and the sexual assaults that occur on their campuses. Thus, I propose the following contentions: (1) students in higher education institutions hold a special status, and (2) this special status can have unintended consequences.

Some might argue that I am picking examples of how sexual assaults within college campuses have been highlighted in the media to prove that students have a special status. There are indeed examples of attention on sexual violence in professional sports and the military, to name two other complex institutions. I would argue that people within those institutions have a special status as well, but that is a topic for another essay. I admit, I have not done a comparison on the coverage of sexual violence among students versus nonstudents to quantify how much coverage there is on each population. Evidence suggests, however, that among the general population, women who live in poverty, women of color, and LGBTQIA+ people are disproportionately represented among victims of sexual violence and intimate partner violence but these same populations often remain invisible. Media outlets with dedicated coverage to sexual assault on college campuses and an industry that has emerged to fight sexual violence on college campuses indicate that higher education institutions, and as a corollary their students, hold a special status. I grant that the increased attention has started an important national conversation on sexual violence at colleges and universities, and as a result, sexual violence in all sectors of society. A consequence of the special status of students, however, is that already vulnerable populations continue to be ignored.

A caveat: not all students are afforded the same status. Indeed, many groups of students within an institution face inequity: Black students, international students, students with disabilities, low-income students, and the list, unfortunately, goes on. Among victims of sexual violence on college campuses, students with disabilities, LGBTQ students, and students at HBCUs face additional barriers to reporting. Furthermore, students at different institutions are afforded different statuses. Much of the attention that has been placed on college campuses regarding sexual violence, for instance, has been at elite institutions, including Harvard, Columbia, and, yes, Michigan State University.

A second caveat: This is not an essay that adds to the narrative that students are coddled; they aren’t. As Peter Lake states, “students should have a basic right to reasonable safety on campus.” Higher education institutions should keep their students safe and rigorously work to prevent violence, and when institutions fail to do so, students have a right to demand changes. That said, this right granted to students to be able to demand safety from their institutions puts them in a special category.

I argue that the special status of students on college campuses can have unintended consequences on stratification and inequity among all people. My argument builds off of the second component of our course, referenced in Dr. Cantwell’s first post on our blog, to “examine the social, political, and economic processes that interact with higher education organizations in ways that may reproduce and extend social stratification and inequality.” I pay specific attention to sexual violence because sexual violence has and continues to be used as a tool for maintaining inequality, stratification, and subordination. Furthermore, higher education institutions have recognized that sexual violence inhibits equal access to education, and thus are legally required to respond. The attention to the organizational responses to sexual violence on college campuses, however, serves as the mechanism by which special status of students can have unintended consequences. Below, I give two examples.

First, the language that surrounds sexual violence on college campuses has the unintended consequence of devaluing the violence that nonstudents face and as a result, devaluing the lives of nonstudents. In articles on sexual assault student survivors, students’ ability to go to school and complete their education is often cited as a major consequence of not handling sexual violence on campus. The language serves not only victims of campus sexual assault, but also alleged perpetrators. Arguments about protecting the accused are often based on their status as students and rights to an education. For example, in her critique of The Hunting Ground, Emily Yoffe asserts that many accused students filed lawsuits against colleges that expelled them, “saying they were deprived of an education over dubious charges.” An implicit message of the attention to students and their education, particularly at elite institutions, is that we only really care about sexual violence when it prevents privileged individuals from getting a college degree.

Second, students on college campuses have resources available to them that may not be available to nonstudents. According to the BJS report, nonstudents are more likely to report to the police than students. It is not clear as to why this is; however, one possibility is that students have other dedicated resources that they can utilize: counselors, their RAs, faculty, or campus services. At this point, students often have the option not to report to the police, whereas in some cases, nonstudents’ only recourse is the justice system. (Some state legislatures, including Virginia’s, have suggested laws that would require campus staff to report directly to local law enforcement. Virginia changed this stipulation before the law was passed, largely in response to criticism that it would discourage reporting. Instead, reports must be made to the campus’s Title IX coordinator, who then provides the student with resources, an option that nonstudents do not have.) Similarly, students accused of sexual violence do not necessarily have to go through the justice system but may instead go through an internal process. Some argue that internal processes are flawed and “more likely to violate the basic due-process rights of those involved.” One result of this argument has been a push for the SAFE Campus Act, national legislation that would require local law enforcement, not institutions, to handle sexual assault cases. The legislation has been criticized by many victims’ rights advocates, who argue that the legislation is meant to protect perpetrators more than victims, would discourage reporting from victims, and would force students into a flawed justice system. I clearly do not have a solution to this debate; however, it is apparent that the emphasis in both arguments is protecting the rights of students, not necessarily reforming a criminal justice system that has implications on all victims of sexual violence, students and nonstudents alike.

Colleges and universities should do everything they can to address sexual violence, and all types of violence for that matter, on their campuses. Colleges and universities, however, cannot be responsible for fixing violence across all sectors of our society, in addition to the violence that occurs on their campuses. I argue that the attention given to organizational responses to sexual violence on college campuses comes at the expense of nonstudents, thus implicating higher education institutions in social stratification.

This blog post was informed by this piece by Eliza Gray and conversations with Dr. Terrion Williamson and Dr. Brendan Cantwell.

For resources and information on sexual assault and domestic violence, please visit RAINN and NRCDV. 

While we wait …

When will organizations change to become disability inclusive?

BY JESSICA SCHEIN

 

Since World War II, higher education in the United States has evolved from serving the social elite to serving students from all walks of life. One motivation behind massification of access to higher education is the widespread belief in the power of education to serve as a mechanism for economic and social mobility. That historical belief continues today as the Obama administration has recently identified completion of college as a key mechanism for reducing inequality.

Despite public faith in the value of higher education, the process of massification has not been without its critics and progress has been slow and imbalanced. It took the civil rights movement of the 1960s to spur significant admissions of racial and ethnic minorities. Further, despite significant investments, low-income students are still less likely to attend college than middle- and upper-middle class white students. In addition to the ever-present access discrepancies, large gaps in completion rates remain between various groups of students symbolizing an opportunity gap. Currently, there is a large opportunity gap when comparing the general student population to students with disabilities.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that in the 2011-12 academic year, 11% of undergraduate students reported having a disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. This above statistic does not include students with mental health concerns which if included, would make this percentage notably higher. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act of 2008 paved the way for students with disabilities to gain access to higher education. Before these foundational pieces of legislation, higher education was largely inaccessible to Americans with disabilities. Pre-1970, many buildings lacked ramps and elevators, crosswalks were not safe for those with visual impairments, bathrooms were inaccessible to wheelchair users, and many classrooms were not welcoming to students with disabilities. Since then, much has changed.

Students with disabilities now account for over one tenth of the general undergraduate student population in the US. That figure truly marks progress from the numbers predating the Rehabilitation Act. However, while 58% of students without disabilities graduate with a bachelor’s degree, of college students with disabilities, only 21-34% will do the same (Florida College System, 2009; Newman et al., 2009). This statistic is alarming. A graduation rate of less than 35% is seen in very few groups of students who account for as large of a percentage of the general student population. The bachelor’s degree completion rate for Hispanic students, who account for a similar sized group of students on college campuses, is over 50%.

The above mentioned laws protect the rights of students with disabilities. According to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, “No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States . . . shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…”

What is the practical meaning of Section 504? Colleges and universities receiving Federal financial aid must provide accommodation for students with disabilities. They must give students with disabilities the same opportunities to learn, be tested, and succeed as they provide to students without disabilities. These things are clear. However, because information technology had not yet attained the prevalence that it now has throughout society when these laws were passed, when it comes to dealing with accessibility of the digital content of education, there is no Federal standard for accessibility or accommodation to guide universities.

It is common practice in higher education for faculty members to create their own online educational content. However, very few faculty members take accessibility into consideration when creating such educational tools. In fact, there is no Federal standard for the acceptable level of digital content accessibility which leaves faculty members ever unsure about how to teach accessibly. Creating accessible documents, videos, and media for both online and in-person courses takes technical training for content creators that was non-existent before recent years and that training takes time. Time away from research and time away from teaching is time that is not often voluntarily spent.

On the topic of time, according to instructors, one of the largest barriers to student success is the barrier of time. For a student with a disability to receive their government mandated accommodation, they are expected to have registered their disability with their university’s office for disability services, they then receive a form to verify their accommodation, they present that form to the faculty member, and then they receive accommodation—assuming the accommodation is already prepared. An example of the process from the perspective of a Michigan State University student is illustrated in the video below.

However, most of the time, when the faculty member is presented with the request for accommodation, they then begin the process of making the digital course content accessible. An example of this process from the perspective of a faculty member at MSU is depicted in the video below.

According to communications with students with disabilities on several campuses, the process for receiving accommodation can take anywhere from the timeline presented in the above videos to weeks. That is time that a student with a disability seeking accommodation must wait to then begin their educational experience alongside their peers. Although these students have gained access to accommodation, the accommodation may be contributing to the gap in these students’ success.

Many colleges and universities are creating policies that encourage faculty to proactively create accessible digital content. However, the effectiveness of the implementation of these policies has been low as these policies are fairly general and not enforced. Moreover, implementing policies takes a significant amount of faculty time and the changes are rarely backed by any formal mandate or have negative repercussions.

Internationally, many countries have adopted WCAG 2.0 as the national standard for digital accessibility and enforce such standards. WCAG, or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, was developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet. These guidelines specify how to make content accessible for both users with disability as well as all other users.

The United States has neither adopted nor developed such standard. It was rumored that the United States would have adopted standards for non-government content in 2013. The Department of Justice released an advance notice to proposed rulemaking on this topic in 2010. However, over 25 years after the passing of the ADA, we are still waiting on the Federal government to mandate the accessibility of digital content.

Many disability advocates in higher education believe that a Federal mandate is the only way to effectively catalyze the universal faculty adoption of inherently accessible digital education. Most campus efforts have lacked teeth as well as the financial and political support to facilitate any large scale implementation. As long as the barrier of inaccessible digital content exists for students with disabilities on college campuses, the barrier for economic and social mobility will also exist for this group of Americans. However, in the absence of such a mandate, we can commit to progress towards increasing accessibility and providing opportunity for students with disabilities on our own campuses while we wait.

“When the ADA was enacted in 1990, the Internet as we know it today—the ubiquitous infrastructure for information and commerce—did not exist. Today the Internet, most notably the sites of the Web, plays a critical role in the daily personal, professional, civic, and business life of Americans…Being unable to access Web sites puts individuals at a great disadvantage in today’s society, which is driven by a dynamic electronic marketplace and unprecedented access to information… For individuals with disabilities who experience barriers to their ability to travel or to leave their homes, the Internet may be their only way to access certain goods and services. Beyond goods and services, information available on the Internet has become a gateway to education. Schools at all levels are increasingly offering programs and classroom instruction through Web sites. Many colleges and universities offer degree programs online; some universities exist exclusively on the Internet…The ADA’s promise to provide an equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities to participate in and benefit from all aspects of American civic and economic life will be achieved in today’s technologically advanced society only if it is clear to State and local governments, businesses, educators, and other public accommodations that their Web sites must be accessible.”

–US Department of Justice, Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 2010

Status Update: Contingent Faculty

BY EMIKO BLALOCK

The Problem at Hand

Recently, the radio program This American Life broadcast a show, coupled with this longer online article from ProPublica, about the loan default rate of a community near St. Louis, Missouri. The program described the “problem at hand” for the community in St. Louis: a large and disproportionate number of African American households are defaulting on loan payments and experiencing wage garnishing. The larger issue that has led to this and will continue is what the writers of the show describe as “generations of discrimination leaving Black families with grossly fewer resources to draw on when they come under financial pressure.” What led to this situation was not what I at first initially suspected, discrimination by loan companies. It goes much deeper.

This American Life’s program form provides a storytelling device to better understand how a seemingly endemic situation (high loan default rates in a particular community) is connected to a longer narrative about social status, education, and access to resources. The device the producers used was “a status update,” a map to portray “remarkably hidden [circumstances] to people in the communities most burdened by them.” Generations of discrimination have left Black families in the St. Louis community at a disadvantage when it comes to producing resources when they fall on hard times. If the primary breadwinner of a family loses a job there are very few that person can call on for help, making it hard to avoid default status. Systematic exclusion from opportunity and outright discrimination over many generations has resulted a much smaller intergenerational resource base for the community to draw upon. Even when an individual from the community attains higher education and secures a good job, this person’s status is more precarious than many in the Anglo community with similar levels of education and income level. In this way, a status update is a map, a set of numbers, or a picture that helps tell the story of how structural discrimination perpetuates social status and marginalization.

After listening to the podcast I began to wonder what “a status update” might look like in higher education. What would such an analysis reveal? Following the lead of the radio show, I decided to focus on a population in higher education for my status update often overlooked in the literature: part-time, non-tenure track faculty, referred to here as contingent faculty, whose primary income comes from working in higher education who represent a portion of the academic profession at virtually every college and university in the United States.

Contingent Faculty Status Update

Results of a 2012 study from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce reveal, on average, contingent faculty reported lower compensation per course across all institutional types, little opportunity for career growth or growth in compensation based on experience, and few opportunities available to lead them out of contingent roles. In other words, once an individual is in the contingent workforce, they tend to stay there.

The majority of research on contingent faculty revolves around changing institutional policies or advocating for unionizing contingent faculty labor (See Kezar, 2013). Thus, many are aware of the working conditions that contingent faculty experience. A related line of inquiry is about what Rhoades and Sporn (2002) refer to as the rise in managerial professionals. These are academic middle managers that typically hold terminal degrees and perform supporting and administrative duties on campus. Rhoades and Sporn suggest that the increase in administrative labor in higher education results in more managerial control by non-faculty. Similarly, Kezar and Gehrke (2014) propose that one reason so many contingent faculty are hired is because hiring decisions have moved out of the hands of faculty members and into the hands of administrators who are more focused on the bottom line. My summary is of course, a simplification. Yet my point is there are myriad interconnected factors that contribute to the status and growth of contingent faculty.

Pathways to the Contingent Professoriate and Social Status

Larger social forces are at play when it comes to mapping the pathway to the professoriate for contingent faculty. While I will not attend to these forces explicitly, I do hope the below scenario will illustrate my point about the role higher education plays on social status.

Top Program (US News)	University
Business	University of Pennsylvania Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of California – Berkeley
Engineering	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stanford University University of California – Berkeley

Working on the assumption that colleges and universities base their success on status and legitimacy, I looked to US News and World Report for the two fields considered the “best undergraduate programs” in the U.S.: business and engineering. A cursory glance at the professors who teach in the top three institutions in these two fields paints a clear picture. The majority of faculty who teach at top tiered business and engineering programs in the U.S. come from just a handful of highly selective universities. Table 1 shows where a random selection of tenure-track professors from the top three business schools earned each of their degrees. Table 2 shows the same for the top three engineering schools.

Table 1: Where Professors at the Top Three Business Schools Earned Their Degrees

Bachelor	Master	PhD
Harvard	University of Chicago	Stanford
Princeton	Stanford	University of Chicago
Yale	University of Pennsylvania	Harvard
Berkeley	Berkeley	Berkeley

Table 2: Where Professors at the Top Three Engineering Schools Earned Their Degrees

Bachelor	Master	PhD
CalTech	Stanford	Stanford
Cornell	Berkeley	MIT
Harvard	CalTech	Berkeley
Stanford	Brown University	Harvard

Thus, if a student selects, can afford, and is admitted to a business or engineering program from one of the top three universities ranked in US News, she is likely to be educated by a professor who earned his PhD from only a handful of highly ranked national universities. In order to teach at a top ranked business or engineering program, it would appear, one must have the right credentials from the right institution. This, of course, is not news. But it is an important reminder about the stratified system of higher education, and that highly ranked universities also are highly resourced both in financial capital and social networks. Obtaining a degree from a specific type of university with high status means greater likelihood to be employed at a similar university, particularly if the intent of the graduate is to enter the academic profession.

A second status update is a complement and somewhat reverse of the first. Data from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce reported almost 40 percent of contingent faculty taught courses at associates or community college level institutions. The second largest proportion of courses taught was at master level institutions and regional universities, totaling almost 30 percent. Both of these types of institutions (associates and master’s level) tend to have more generous admissions policies, lower tuition prices, and attract more local and regional students. Basically, these are not elite and competitive colleges that carry social clout.

Does this mean students who graduate from lower status or lower ranked institutions have a higher likelihood of being employed as contingent faculty at a similarly ranked institution? While my basic analysis cannot answer this question definitively, it does suggest that where a student goes to college helps to shape their professional opportunists and outcomes. Indeed, not everyone who attends college dreams of becoming a college professor. The caution, however, is that if one does dream about it, where undergraduate degrees come from may matter for where a terminal degree can be obtained, potentially influencing at what type of institution a professorship is found and possibly whether or not that position is tenure-track or contingent.

As mentioned above, providing a status update, whether it is on a largely Black community in Missouri, or on contingent faculty can provide a story to understand the larger issues impeding change. More importantly, however, it is a reminder that what may initially be identified as the source of the problem and how to address it, may in fact be much more dynamic, complicated, and historical. How might a student who aims to enter the academic profession that does not have the means to attend a highly ranked undergraduate program fulfill this goal? I have hypothesized about the academic outcome for the future professoriate. With that, maybe a new goal for those who want to become professors and begin their journey through academia at a lower ranked institution is simply to find a position at an adequate university that offers a semi-decent wage with at least the opportunity for a renewable contract. And the new goal for higher education is to at least attempt to adopt policies that might be more accommodating for the majority workforce of contingent faculty.

Links

…This American Life broadcast a show (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/573/status-update?act=3)

…program is coupled with this (https://www.propublica.org/article/debt-collection-lawsuits-squeeze-black-neighborhoods)

…device the producers used was a status update, a map (https://projects.propublica.org/garnishments/)

…published the most recent results (http://www.academicworkforce.org/CAW_portrait_2012.pdf)

…information is what Rhoades and Sporn http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13583883.2002.9967066

…Similarly, Kezar and Gehrke https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2014/winter/kezar

Case Studies to Share

Case studies from our class

BY BRENDAN CANTWELL

In EAD 991B we are considering how organizational change in higher education relates to social inequality. A central question is: How and to what extent can colleges and universities engage in processes of organizational change that promote more equitable outcomes. Over the past couple of weeks we have read Adriana Kezar’s How Colleges Change as a theory and practice primer on organizational change in higher education. The book makes good use of case studies. In class we also discussed some of our own case studies. Below are a couple of the case studies we found especially engaging.

Case study 1

Ronda is a newly tenured associate professor of economics at a major research university. Her department is ranked nationally just outside of the top 10 and there is a good deal of pressure by the Department Chair and Dean to advance into the top 10. Like some of her colleagues, Ronda finds the direct pursuit of climbing ranking positions both silly and a distraction from what is really important – educating students and conducting research – but she also enjoys the status and resources that come from being in a well regarded program. Ronda is concerned that few students of color are admitted to the PhD program. Ranking competition is intense when it comes to selecting doctoral students. Top programs are assessed by admitting and enrolling students with the best GRE scores– yield matters – and through reputation. Reputation is shaped, among other factors, by selection students with elite undergraduate pedigrees and by placing graduates on the faculty. All admitted doctoral students in Ronda’s department are guaranteed full funding for 5 years, which is typical among top programs in the field. While the faculty would generally prefer to have a more diverse PhD program, few save Ronda see diversity as a top priority. Since yield matters so much to reputation and rankings, the admissions committee often does not accept the best qualified students of color because faculty believe that these students almost always chose to attend a top 5 program and rarely enroll. Further, many see admitting students of color with GRE scores below the program’s normal range as both counter to rankings competition and a slippery slope towards “lowering standards.” This year Ronda is on the admissions committee and wants to use the new security she has as a tenured faculty member to push for a more inclusive approach to admissions.

Your task is to come up with a plan for change that Ronda may wish to follow. Use the framework for change introduced by Kezar (2014) in How Colleges Change (pg. 44) and employed throughout section 2 of the book. Specific questions you might ask are:

• What order of change is required (first or second)?
• What aspects of the context are most salient?
• What external and internal forces are at play?
• What theories may help Ronda devise a plan?
• What obstacles might Ronda face?
• How can a change in admission practices be sustained?
• What are the broader societal impacts at stake for each of the actors (i.e., Ronda, other departmental faculty, the chair, the dean) at this public university? Are they beholden to more that professional considerations?

Reference

Kezar, A. J. (2014). How colleges change: Understanding, leading, and enacting change. New York, NY: Routledge.

Case study 2

Felix has just been appointed president of a community college in a metropolitan region. As he enters office, Felix is in the process of reviewing the college’s programs and is assessing each one based on sustainability – financial and organizational – as well as the extent to which each program contributes to the college’s mission. An 18-month certification program in advanced manufacturing technology is proving to be a tricky case for him. Enrollment in the program is robust – in fact there is a waiting list – and it enjoys substantial external support. The governor, members of the state legislator, business and civic leaders have all cited the program as a model for what community colleges ought to be doing. The program was established 4-years ago in partnership with a local manufacturing company, which claimed it was unable to find local workers with the necessary skills. The company designed the curriculum, trained the instructors, and paid for 50% of the start-up costs. Additionally, the company pledged to hire graduates of the program and agreed to pay the full cost of the program for every graduate it hires. This means students are given a tuition refund bonus and that the college is reimbursed for its share of the per-student costs. However, the company has only hired 25% of graduates. Most students who complete the program have a difficult time finding work in advanced manufacturing and some have defaulted on their student loans. The program is also expensive for the college to operate. While Felix understands workforce development and job placement as core elements of the college’s mission, he views this program as both financially burdensome and largely failing to meet the mission. Felix hopes to reform the program so that it is more sustainable and mission adherent.

Your task is to come up with a plan for change that Felix may wish to follow. Use the framework for change introduced by Kezar (2014) in How Colleges Change (pg. 44) and employed throughout section 2 of the book. Specific questions you might ask are:

• What order of change is required (first or second)?
• What aspects of the context are most salient?
• What external and internal forces are at play?
• What theories may help Felix devise a plan?
• What obstacles might Felix face?
• What are the most important aspects of the program to change?
• What are the broader societal and community impacts Felix must

Reference

Kezar, A. J. (2014). How colleges change: Understanding, leading, and enacting change. New York, NY: Routledge.