As I travel and speak with my colleagues in
fraternity/sorority advising, I am frequently asked questions about the
intersection of Title IX and fraternities and sororities. In the last year,
I’ve noted an alarming trend – more and more campuses are naming non-employee
student organization advisors as Campus Security Authorities (i.e. mandated
reporters of sexual violence). The rationale for this movement is to increase
reporting of sexual violence, and by making alumnus advisors mandated
reporters, so the thinking goes, institutions may learn about incidents of
sexual violence about which they may not otherwise learn.
Generally speaking, most fraternities and sororities, in addition
to an on-campus or faculty advisor, will have a host of alumni members who
serve in a variety of advisory roles. Some chapters may have a singular alumnus
advisor, some may have an advisory board containing multiple advisors providing
general oversight to the chapter, and some may have advisors assigned to
particular chapter officers (i.e. new member education advisor, recruitment
advisor, etc). These advisors may or may not be alumni of the institution, but
very few are actually employed by the institutions themselves.
Requiring alumni, non-employee advisors to serve as CSA’s is
not a good idea for three reasons:
1. Lack of accountability – The premise behind a
“Responsible Employee” or a “Campus Security Authority” is based on
accountability. If an employee fails to meet their responsibility as a mandated
reporter, the institution has some recourse to address that behavior. For a
non-employee, this is not possible. The institution has no recourse if it finds
that a non-employee has not fulfilled their mandatory reporting requirements.
This unenforceable policy exposes the institution to increased liability. In
addition, because of the variety of advisory structures and roles, it may be
difficult to clearly delineate which advisors are CSA’s and which are not (i.e.
an alumna/mother of an active member who serves as an assistant recruitment
advisor and is only around the house during formal recruitment – CSA, or not a
CSA?).
2. Conflict of interest – in many cases, an
organizational advisor may be a trusted, confidential source of support for a
member of the organization. This is especially true for sorority members. If a
sorority member is assaulted, a mandated reporter policy would place the
advisor in a conflicted position – unable to serve her role as confidential
advisor to the student because of her reporting requirements.
3. Burden on chapter to recruit advisors – Chapters
have a hard enough time recruiting and retaining good chapter advisors, and we
know that a strong advisory team is a strong predictor of a chapter’s success
and positive organizational culture. Adding mandated reporting requirements to
advisors (which also places increased liability on them) makes it that much
harder for chapters to recruit and retain alumni members to be involved with
their chapters.
So how should we handle the issue of student organization
advisors and mandated reporting? Many campuses are already requiring all
registered student organizations to have an on-campus faculty or staff advisor.
By definition, these individuals (as college/university employees) are CSA’s as
defined by Clery, and should also be considered Responsible University
Employees under Title IX. If you require organizations to have these on-campus
faculty/staff advisors, they should be the mandated reporters. As institutional
employees, they can be held accountable for these responsibilities, and their
roles are often clearly distinguished form those of the alumni advisors.
These faculty advisors are actually valuable assets for a
variety of reasons. In addition to being mandated reporters, they are also
excellent channels for sharing information that may be FERPA protected and that
could not be shared with non-employee advisors. Imagine, for example, that a
member of a fraternity was accused of sexual assault and was placed on interim
restriction from the campus. Imagine that the fraternity member lived in an
off-campus fraternity house that was not covered in the interim restriction.
How would we get this information to the organization without violating FERPA?
Through the organization’s faculty advisor, who clearly has an educational need
to know in this hypothetical situation, and could then pass along relevant
information to others as necessary.
We have even heard of some campuses attempting to make
student leaders (i.e. fraternity/sorority presidents) mandated reporters.
Again, for all of the reasons outlined above, this is not a good idea. There
are many ways we can increase reporting and make our campuses safer without
extending our mandated reporting requirements beyond what is reasonable for us
to enforce and in ways that create undue and often conflicting burdens on our
student leaders and volunteers.
