And momentarily we'll be talking with
Julie Valentine, who is a member of the
BYU Advisory Council recommending
changes to the title IX and the - and
the honor code, and it was interesting to
look down, the the five recommendations
that we'll talk with Julie Valentine
about, and she is joining us on the line
right now. Ms. Valentine, thank you so
much for joining us here on the Doug
Wright Show. Welcome, thank you.
Let's talk a little bit about the
recommendations. First of all, many people
are aware of some of the reasons that
looking into that has come about. Some of
the concerns we have in society in
general about sexual assault and how we
address that, and BYU, how that melds with
the honor code. What are some of the
recommendations that are being made?
Well, some of the large recommendations
have to do with encouraging reporting. We
have to do that so that we can provide
resources and support to victims as well
as helping to make our campus a safer
place by identifying perpetrators but -
but overall, it - a big part of these
recommendations is that it's not narrow
in scope. There are many aspects to title
IX and related related to sexual
misconduct, and we took a very broad
approach. We looked at investigation,
discipline, we looked at victim
assistance, we looked at organization and
management, we looked at campus culture
and climate and made recommendations in
every single one of those areas.
I thought to the - I'm looking at the
short list of five of the major
recommendations, and number one was to
create a new full-time title IX
coordinator position to replace the
part-time. How important is that now just
to magnify that position? That's really
critical.
There are still many issues involved
with title IX and getting this right
for our campus, that it - it absolutely
needs that time investment, so we need to
have a full-time person.
That is not mandated by the government
but that is a recommendation, that is a
full-time position and that's - that's what
we're leaning towards. So many times when
an individual feels that they have been
victimized, they they don't know what to
do, they don't know where to go, they fear
the repercussions, they wish that they
had an advocate, and that's why I think
number two, and this is in general not
certainly just to BYU but in general, to
create a victim advocate, a confidential
adviser position -
How is that in vision at the university?
So this position will also be a
full-time position and you said the word
confidential. That's critical when
somebody has been victimized. Their power
and control has been taken away from them,
and to be able to help them heal, we need
to help them regain a sense of control,
and so this confidential person will not
report any victim that comes to them but
will guide the them and let them know
what their options are as far as
reporting: what reporting means, where
they want to report, is that title IX, is
that law enforcement, and then also be
able to provide those services to
support them,
so a dedicated victim advocate that's a
confidential communicator we are hoping
will encourage many students to come
forward so that we can help them.
We're talking with a member of the BYU
Advisory Council that has made these
recommendations, Julie Valentine on the
line with us. So that was interesting,
three and four, I think, kind of go hand in
hand.
Number three on this list of five is to
create new physical space to house the
title IX office in a location that is
separate from the honor code office, and
then for ensuring that unless the health
or safety of others is at risk, that the
title IX office does not share
information with the honor code office
about the complaint without the
complainant's consent.
Tell us a little bit about the thinking
behind that and how this is envisioned
to work. Well, we found that there were
many recommendations when we look at
discipline
at the end of an investigation, that we
still utilize whatever university's
disciplinary body is, and that is Honor Code.
So what that means is, only in cases
where the respondent or the suspect is a
student, would their name be given to the
honor code office for them to determine
the disciplinary action. All other cases,
everything will be completely separate:
no names of witnesses or victims will be
given from the title IX office to the
honor code office at any point during an
investigation or after an investigation.
That will be sealed unless for some
reason any victim would want that
information shared, and they would have
to make a written request for that.
Number five is to adopt an amnesty
clause. Could you explain that to me?
So, amnesty clause means that any honor
code violations that occurred around the
time of the assault, would - the victim or
witness would not have their name shared.
It's not even have any discipline
against, but their name would not be
shared with the honor code office. We
looked at amnesty statements from over 80
universities. Our amnesty statement is the
broadest. Not only do we have that it's
at the time, near or at the time of, but if,
in the title IX investigation, honor
code issues were discovered, that they
would be handled in a way to help the
student rather than being disciplinary
in nature.
We're almost out of time here. Before we
need to break for our news, how big a
change, how radical is this within the
BYU structure and within title IX,
honor code?
How big a deal is this - these changes?
This is big. These are sweeping changes. They
are meant to benefit our students and
that -
that's we did all this work for. It's for
our students on our campus community, for
victims to feel supported and for our
campus safer. I certainly appreciate you
joining us today as I just quickly
perused this while we're doing the show.
We got this about an hour ago and I
thought that this this is a big deal, and
I really appreciate you joining us today.
Thank you so much and obviously we'll
keep a close eye on this and perhaps
we'll be chatting again soon, but I
really appreciate you carving out time
for us.
OK, wonderful thank you so much, thank you.
Julie Valentine with us, a member of the
BYU Advisory Council, recommending these
changes, the - the big five that we talked
about, and there are even more. We'll keep
a close eye on this story, obviously,
throughout the day here at KSL Newsradio.