This story contains frank discussions of rape, self-harm, and physical assault. If you don’t feel like reading a story involving those subjects, go ahead and skip this one.

Sexual assault is a uniquely violent crime. It destroys a victim’s sense of autonomy in a way that a simple battery or theft does not. Sexual assault perverts intimacy in a way that shatters an implicit trust most people have with their partners.

Illinois Tech’s Code of Conduct explicitly forbids sexual harassment, which includes sexual assault, unwanted advances, and patterns of behavior that create an unsafe environment. It also outlines a reporting and investigation process overseen by the Title IX Coordinator, Virginia Foster, and the Dean of Students, Katherine Stetz. These policies are all based on industry best practice and the requirements of federal and state law.

Even with strong legal backing, the processes that support sexual assault survivors at Illinois Tech are inadequate. By reviewing documents surrounding sexual assault investigations and conducting interviews with current and former Illinois Tech students, sexual assault survivors, and staff of Illinois Tech, the reality of sexual assault reporting became clear. Students have been forced to take classes with their abusers, have felt disrespected and discredited, and have been told not to report assaults. There are patterns that are disrespectful towards victims and inconsistent enforcement of policy. All of it taken together make the processes of investigations and sanctions surrounding sexual misconduct unnecessarily painful.

“That school put me through hell”

In the spring of 2018, Ananya Bhattacharya decided that her relationship had become abusive and broke up with her then-boyfriend. She decided to file a Title IX complaint about him. She told a professor what was going on. “Within minutes, I was in Title IX, talking to Virginia Foster,” Bhattacharya said.

The next day, she was called into a Residence Life staff member's office. That staff member told Bhattacharya “whatever happens at the end of this, you know what happened.” Bhattacharya then told me, “I should have realized then, this was gonna be a lot harder than it seems.”

As the investigation into her case went on, Bhattacharya found a key piece of evidence: surveillance video footage of her ex-boyfriend groping her in a public common space. When the Public Safety department viewed the footage, according to a document produced by the Title IX investigation team, they identified several specific instances of times Bhattacharya looked visibly uncomfortable.

After asking the investigators for a month to review the footage, they brought Bhattacharya in to watch it with them. According to Bhattacharya, her ability to process evidence of her trauma at the time may not have been reliable. “The problem with this was that I wasn’t able to say what happened. I was overwhelmed. I was a wreck,” Bhattacharya said.

The campus judicial board, the investigative organ headed by Dean Stetz and the Assistant Director for Community Standards found that “the evidence discovered during the investigation did not support a finding under Illinois Tech’s policy on sexual harassment/misconduct,” according to a letter produced by the investigations team.

According to Adhora Madhuri, who was present when Bhattacharya received the email containing the investigation’s finding: “She just broke down and started crying.” Madhuri served as a witness during the investigation, as well. Bhattacharya said in an interview: “It was haunting to me that so many people who watched me being groped said it was fine.”

Bhattacharya says that the reasoning she was given by Foster for this finding was a “prior history” of behavior between the two of them. It is unclear how this fits within Illinois Tech’s policies regarding consent, specifically the Code of Conduct which reads: “Consent to previous sexual or intimate activity does not imply consent to later sexual or intimate acts.”

Reflecting on her experiences, Bhattacharya acknowledged that she had been struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for which she was participating in therapy. According to her, “what gave me PTSD wasn’t [the assault], it was IIT. It was how I was treated.”

Bhattacharya is not the only student who had an experience of feeling disrespected by the Illinois Tech employees involved in sexual assault reporting.

During the fall of 2017, Reanna Dyke, who was an Illinois Tech student at the time, filed a Title IX complaint alleging that a friend of hers had sexually assaulted her. “He didn’t want to take no for an answer,” she said in an interview.

Her experience with Illinois Tech staff investigating her claim began with an interview with Virginia Foster. It started by Foster asking Dyke what she was wearing when the assault took place. “They asked who took off what, when – every single detail of that encounter” Dyke said.

Like Dean Stetz being bound by confidentiality, Foster also could not comment on specific cases. When asked to describe her office’s investigative methods in general, she said: “we’re trying to ascertain from their perspective what happened.” Foster added that she uses a snowball technique for interviewing – i.e. asking interview subjects to suggest other interview subjects that could corroborate their claims.

“Working with Virginia was pretty positive,” Dyke said, describing the beginning of her investigation process. After the first meeting, she no longer felt that way. According to Dyke: “I was so uncomfortable after that. It didn’t seem like they understood how difficult the process was after the initial meeting.”

When Dean Stetz was asked to respond to some of the accusations that she was not adequately empathetic, she said, “I try to be nice. I try to be kind. Sometimes there’s only one way to say something.” Dean Stetz views her role as strictly relating to ensuring a fair process. She described this view by saying, “I can’t have tunnel vision. I have to think of everyone.”

While it is important to be fair in an investigation into sexual assault, it is also important for everyone involved to feel respected – like what they have to say is important. From the experiences of those who have gone through this process, there is a lack of that vitally necessary empathy from those involved.

“I can’t keep anybody safe”

In addition to an impersonal and seemingly uncaring process, the infrastructure of a small school like Illinois Tech makes it difficult to separate people involved in assault investigations.

In March 2017, first-year student Anna Lawrence filed a Title IX complaint against her then-boyfriend. This experience is common among survivors of sexual assault and abuse. 76.3 percent of sexual assaults in victims age 18 to 24 are committed by someone the victim knows personally, according to a 2000 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Her once happy relationship had turned physically and emotionally abusive. Lawrence’s Title IX investigation included screenshots of her boyfriend admitting to “tackling me, ripping my shirt in half. He would send me pictures of him crying and cutting himself.”

After an investigation by the Title IX office and campus judicial board, Lawrence’s boyfriend was suspended for a year with a permanent ban on public housing. Additionally, a Mutual No Contact Order was placed. This means the university would have taken disciplinary action if either Lawrence or her boyfriend contacted each other in any way.

The school, however, was unable to prevent them from taking classes together. When Lawrence arrived for classes for her second-year, she found her ex-boyfriend and abuser sitting in her class. When Lawrence and her friend Arthi Upendram went to Dean Stetz for help, they were offered none. Upendram, who was involved in a separate Title IX investigation into Lawrence’s ex-boyfriend, said that Dean Stetz “directly said to Anna and me that the reality of it is that I can’t keep anybody safe.”

This mirrors other statements that Dean Stetz has made, most recently while speaking about assault and theft at the October 14 Student Affairs Town Hall hosted by the Student Government Association.

In an interview, Dean Stetz said that while she cannot comment on specific investigations, there have been some where a reporting student and responding student are forced to be in the same class. “These are always very difficult,” she said before adding “we’re getting better at it.”

Generally, perpetrators of assault and dating violence should not be in class with those that perpetrated the crime. The Department of Education publishes a document for university administrators offering guidance for how to deal with cases of sexual assault and misconduct called the “The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting.” One of the recurring examples of a protective measure that schools can do to protect victims of sexual assault is “modifications to academic requirements or class schedules.”

At a small school where so many classes are made up of a single section and aren’t offered every semester, altering someone’s schedule to avoid contact is often not possible, according to Dean Stetz.

Illinois Tech's lack of a process for adequately dealing with situations like Lawrence’s is not unique to Illinois Tech. Every small school will have issues like this. That said, it shows a lack of understanding for survivors’ lived experiences. Illinois Tech cannot claim to ensure a safe environment for its students if it requires some of those students to attend classes with someone it knows to be dangerous to them.

Unclear enforcement standards.

Problems with the investigation process at Illinois Tech can start very early. In the summer of 2017, Gabby Collins was staying in Gunsaulus Hall. While there, she was sexually assaulted by someone she considered a friend after having a few drinks. After he left, she went to Public Safety. Collins declined to identify her assailant.

When she arrived and told them what happened, they immediately started asking questions: “Were you drinking?” “Did you let them in?” and more. When she asked to file a report, a Public Safety officer pressured her not to, according to Collins. She said: “They said that if they looked into it and don’t find anything, it would come back hard on me.”

So, she didn’t file a report. In the morning, she called Heather Pecho, a friend who was staying with her parents in the suburbs. Pecho invited Collins to stay with her.

According to Pecho, “she had pretty big hickeys. I don’t know if you would even call them hickeys at this point. They were bad and purple and brown.” Pecho described the bruises as not something that a Public Safety officer would miss.

Andy Yocum, the Director of Public Safety, confirmed that his office has no record of a sexual assault being reported to them during this time period. Yocum, who was hired after this incident happened, acknowledged, “I’m not saying it didn’t happen, because of course I can’t,” adding that he was concerned by the possibility.

When asked about this situation, Dean Stetz said, “if that’s true, I would be concerned” but confirmed that she had no way of verifying the element of the story involving Public Safety officers.

TechNews was unable to independently verify that Collins went to Public Safety, though all other elements of her interview were verified.

This is a critical failure in the institutions of power at Illinois Tech. Encouraging a student to not report a crime creates a mistrust of the people who claim to protect student safety. Such behavior discourages everyone from reporting crimes. This can only serve to make the learning and working environment of Illinois Tech feel less safe.

A lack of reporting.

These processes affect a small but significant number of Illinois Tech students every year. While neither would confirm actual reporting statistics for Illinois Tech, Virginia Foster and Abbey Student, who works in the Title IX office, estimated that there are roughly 20 reports per year, adding “the number is relatively low across the university.”

A document produced by Illinois Tech in compliance with a federal law reports that there were at least nine confirmed cases that would constitute sexual misconduct last year. This is an increase from the three previous years. Interestingly, that same report indicates that there were zero reportable sexual assaults among students, faculty, and staff in 2016, highlighting the incredibly low reporting rates of sexual assault.

These numbers are about the same number as other small, urban schools in the region (Columbia College of Chicago, Roosevelt University, University of Chicago) and similar in proportion to larger schools in the region (Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University). Sexual assault and dating violence remain some of the most underreported crimes. According to a 2007 report published by the U. S. Department of Justice, more than 90 percent of campus sexual assaults go unreported.

Other schools’ reportable cases and the underreported nature of sexual assault, taken together, suggests that there is a generalized issue with reporting sexual assaults on campuses rather than a problem inherent to Illinois Tech.

When asked about a perceived uptick in reporting sexual assault on campus, Stetz said “We’ve had more complaints of sexual misconduct. Awareness is more. We’re saying everyone has the right to file a complaint.”

A complex truth.

It would be easy to imagine, based on some of the facts featured here, a picture of a university with heartless administrators who simply seek to protect their job and their institution. It would also be easy to imagine a group of young women who were unhappy about something making exaggerated claims against people in their lives.

The truth is more complex.

Illinois Tech is an interesting case study in a national epidemic. We are a small technology-oriented school with an overrepresentation of men on our campus. A 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics report claims that roughly six out of every thousand college women are newly victimized by rape or sexual assault each year. This suggests that Illinois Tech should expect around 15 women to experience an attempted rape or sexual assault.

How is Illinois Tech treating those 15 women every year? If you ask them, the answer is badly. There’s no way around that. A woman watched herself being groped and was visibly uncomfortable and was told it was consensual by Illinois Tech. Another was forced to learn sitting in the same class as someone who Illinois Tech acknowledged stalked and physically assaulted her. One was told she shouldn’t report her assault at all. All of them said they felt disrespected, frustrated, or lost.

If you ask the people accused of perpetrating that mistreatment, they will say they are trying to remain fair and balanced in the face of a situation that is extremely sensitive and difficult. And they’re not wrong – there aren’t any easy answers.

According to Virginia Foster, “the Department of Education has mandated that we have an environment that is safe and free from sex discrimination.” Words to this effect are present in the student handbook and Code of Conduct’s sections concerning sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. Everyone agrees: sexual assault is tragic, and Illinois Tech must do its best to prevent it and ensure that victims of misconduct feel safe and respected.

When we look at the patterns that emerge from Illinois Tech’s current attempts to prevent and punish misconduct, we find a system fails this mandate. Those who looked to this process when they were hurting found that it causes harm where it should be actively helpful. Whether it’s because Illinois Tech can’t separate a victim and her abuser or because it employs people who would tell a young woman that she shouldn’t report her assault, Illinois Tech has problems with how it handles crimes like this.

How should Illinois Tech address this? Is this an issue of policy or of approach? How can an investigation remain compassionate and fair? There aren’t easy solutions to these problems, but if Illinois Tech doesn’t actively seek to remedy the problems inherent to its system, there won’t be any solutions – easy or not.

Editorial note: TechNews has included student names only when explicitly permitted to do so by the student. In all but one case, the responding party to investigations could not be reached or declined to comment. In the final case, Collins declined to provide any identifying information.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please take advantage of the resources guaranteed to everyone by federal and state law. If the sexual misconduct happened on campus, please report it to the Title IX Office (foster@iit.edu), the Dean of Students (dos@iit.edu), or Public Safety (312.808.6300). If it happened off campus, reach out to the Chicago Police Department.

For immediate crisis-related help, call the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) National Sexual Assault Hotline for free and confidential services (800.656.HOPE (4673)) or reach out to the Chicago Police Department if you are in immediate danger.