Nathaniel Cary

The Greenville (S.C.) News

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Clemson University has suspended a mandatory questionnaire that was sent to students and asked them detailed questions about their sex lives and drinking habits.

Students had been told that parts of the questionnaire were anonymous, but they had to provide a password and login information to access the survey, which was conducted by a third party on behalf of the university.

Late Wednesday, the university sent an email that said the required Title IX training was "suspended pending elimination of certain questions," according to a copy of the e-mail obtained by GreenvilleOnline.com.

Thursday, the university said it suspended the online Title IX training module to review the content and eliminate some questions.

"This online course, used by other universities across the country, was selected to be given to undergraduate students this summer and fall as part of a comprehensive effort to prevent sexual discrimination, harassment and assault in response to growing concerns about these incidents on campuses across the nation and to meet federal requirements," Shannon Finning, dean of students and associate vice president for Student Affairs, said in a release.

"We learned of concerns about some anonymous questions in the module for undergraduate students," Finning said. "We have suspended the training until the content is further reviewed and revised to ensure that it meets our goal of making Clemson a safer campus for all students, faculty and staff, while also respecting individual privacy."

Clemson used the questionnaire as part of the university's equality compliance under Title IX and the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act.

Clemson used a service called CampusClarity created by a California-based company called LawRoom.

The module has been in use for three years but this is the first time Clemson has used it, said Alex Miller, director of content at CampusClarity. More than 190 colleges and universities are using it this year, he said.

"It's only in the last two weeks that we've heard from some students that they have privacy concerns about these questions," Miller said. "And we take privacy very seriously."

As a result, CampusClarity will review and remove any questions from the course that universities don't wish to use. When it rolls out the next version of the course, it will also make each question optional, he said.

"So you don't have to answer any questions you're not comfortable with," he said.

After any identifying data has been scrubbed, CampusClarity provides aggregated reports of answers to school administrators who can then make decisions to address problems on individual campuses, Miller said.

Questions in the module asked students how many times they'd had sex, how many partners they've had, whether they drank alcohol or used drugs, whether they had unwanted sex or know of someone who has been sexually assaulted, among other questions.

The course was designed with interactive features and videos and took more than an hour to complete, Clemson stated.

David Woodard, a longtime Clemson political science professor, told GreenvilleOnline.com Thursday that students began knocking on his office door to express their dismay over the questions the survey asked and their concern that they would be sending private information to a third party.

Woodard said, "A lot of kids raised that question to me, 'I'm not going to talk about this. ...' They are much more sophisticated about the Internet. They realize that when something goes out there, it's out there and they never know whether or not it's coming back to bite them."

Individual responses to the questions posed during the training are anonymous and cannot be seen by Clemson or the vendor that provided the training module, Clemson stated.

In 30-plus years at Clemson, Woodard said he'd never seen a mandated requirement from the administration like this survey.

In the past, the university has sent out its sexual harassment statutes and asked students and faculty to read it, Woodard said.

"That was a courteous way to do it," he said. "I think a lot of people did read through it. It's not offensive that way. ... It seems like that was enough. I don't know why we should be given graphic descriptions of sexual harassment."

Roger Clinkscales, an accounting major, said he was opposed to the questions in the survey because the survey was advertised as training for Title IX, but "Title IX has nothing to do with one's sexual history and/or past abuse as the questions were so clearly aimed at finding.

"It appeared as though we were meant to turn over some of our most personal health information," to a third party, Clinkscales said.

The SaVE Act requires all universities that participate in Title IX financial aid programs to provide "primary prevention and awareness programs" for new students and employees.

The act requires schools to provide students and employees a statement that the school prohibits acts of sexual violence, definitions of acts of sexual violence, information on the school's reporting and disciplinary proceedings, bystander intervention, sexual violence risk reduction and victim's rights.