VAWA/Title IX For Alumni Volunteers

[Kevin]

I'm the chapter adviser for my undergraduate chapter and have had some limited experience in this area. I won't go into specifics, but I was impressed at the way the school handled everything. Looking into Title IX, however, my impression is that from campus to campus, every school is coming to its own conclusions as to how to best comply with Title IX and implementing their own policies.

In originally approaching this, I was grateful the chapter had an adviser (myself) involved in the process who has legal training. I cannot imagine navigating the Title IX minefields without some legal training. I coordinate closely with our HQ in these investigations and am very pleased at how Sigma Nu is very much on-the-ball when it comes to training alumni volunteers regarding Title IX compliance. Again, this is a minefield that every single Greek organization needs to train volunteers with regard to compliance. I imagine the approaches in our various HQs range from full high intensity seminars to prep alumni volunteers to assist actives as well as training for undergraduate members to "We've never heard of Title IX."

If you aren't sure what your national office is doing, I'd encourage you to call. We need to encourage everyone to understand these issues as sexual violence in our organizations, particularly in fraternities is probably the single largest threat to our existence and many of our institutions could care less that ABC has mandatory bystander intervention and sexual assault prevention training for undergrads as well as training for alumni volunteers while fraternity XYZ's volunteers have never heard of VAWA and seek to perpetuate an internal culture which has changed very little in the last 20-30 years.

Finally, organizations really need to implement bystander intervention and sexual assault prevention training for undergrads. I doubt anything at all has changed, except now schools and law enforcement are taking a much more active approach towards preventing sexual assault. Let's do our part to stop this and change the culture which threatens our existence--but not only for that reason.. it's also the right thing to do.

Have any of you (without getting into any specifics, please no specifics!) had experiences with Title IX issues? What are your thoughts and observations?