The EOAA Office found that its policies around sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation had been violated in just 3 percent of cases in the 2018-19 academic year. According to the most recent EOAA Annual Report filed for the 2019-20 academic year, of the 23 reports of gender-based misconduct the EOAA reviewed, only four resulted in a finding of policy violation and only one was dismissed due to lack of evidence. The report does not include information on the outcomes of cases concerning other types of discrimination and harassment.
These findings come as the University–and society more broadly–reckons with anti-Blackness and sexual misconduct through the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. During the 2019-20 academic year, the “EOAA received 398 allegations of discrimination and discriminatory harassment, up 28 percent from the 310 allegations reported in 2018–2019.” Of these allegations, 102 involved race or skin color—an 82 percent increase from the year before—and 79 involved sexual harassment.
For years, the Student-Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers has pushed for neutral arbitration for cases of discrimination, harassment, and Title IX, citing what it calls a pattern of institutional failure to protect student survivors over tenured faculty. Now, after voting to ratify a contract with unprecedented arbitration privileges, student-workers are hopeful for increased workplace protections.
But for the non-student-workers who must still go through the EOAA without the promise of neutral arbitration, the question remains: Can a university really investigate itself?
Continue to Part 1, in which a graduate student goes face to face with a dean in an EOAA complaint.
News Editor Irie Sentner can be contacted at irie.sentner@columbiaspectator.com. Follow him on Twitter @iriesentner.
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