UR students continue to call for change

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On a frigid January afternoon, the winds whip through the crossroads of the University of Rochester’s Wilson Commons. On the steps leading into the campus center, alumna Jenna Register clutches a megaphone.

“We now know their moral compass—do they align with ours?” She said to the modest crowd of 40 bundled up below. “If you get a 40 on your exam and the rest of the class gets a 20, it is no reason for you to celebrate.”

The protest on Jan. 19 occurred in response to the Jan. 11 release of a report by independent investigators who were authorized by the university to study the behavior of UR professor Florian Jaeger and the university’s reactions to the controversy he caused. Jaeger, a member of UR’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, is now on leave.

Other members of the BCS Department, including Celeste Kidd, Richard Aslin and Jessica Cantlon, made a case against Jaeger in a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, describing his behavior as cult-like. They said he used his position of power to sexually manipulate students, retaliated against students who did not heed his advances and regularly objectified or harassed female students.

Following the EEOC complaint came the independent investigation, carried out by Mary Jo White of Debevoise and Plimpton LLC, a New York City law firm. The highly anticipated findings were summarized in a 213-page document. Jaeger acted in a way that White described as morally questionable, including engaging in several sexual relationships with students whom he had academic power over, making sexually explicit comments in front of students, hosting lab retreats in which one student was hospitalized due to drug use and on two occasions sending unwanted pictures of his genitalia. But his actions did not constitute a violation of university policy at the time, the report said.

Following the White report, fallout from the investigation rages on. UR President Joel Seligman announced his resignation hours before the release of the findings and will officially step down at the end of February. Former dean of the college Richard Feldman will serve as interim president. Meanwhile, legal maneuverings continue. Jaeger, mostly vindicated by the White report, still holds his position and on Jan. 24, the UR faculty senate tabled a motion to censure him.

The process has disappointed many students at the university.

“How do you make change when change of this magnitude is really about attitude, behavior and social acceptance?” Register said. Leadership creating “a moral standard and standing for what is right is really important.”

For Register, grad student Marissa Adams and undergrad Lindsay Wrobel, the Jaeger case never existed in a vacuum. They say it’s a case that has brought to light some of the holes in the system. The three student organizers argue it is not necessarily a legal issue—it’s an issue, as White said, of morality. They submit that the university has failed to set a moral standard, and much of their criticism is directed at Title IX coordinator Morgan Levy.

Levy’s role at the university is as a resource for students to turn to when they are victims of sexual misconduct. Her role is to facilitate whatever steps a student wishes to take, and so long as the student is willing, virtually any complaint will instigate an investigation. But Levy herself has little to do with the actual investigations carried out, and refers to her position as more of a “conduit” to the procedural mechanisms that result from student complaints.

The burden of proof to start an investigation is low, relying on the “preponderance of evidence” standard.

“In terms of an investigation beginning, we just need a complaint,” Levy said. “So if somebody comes to us and says ‘something bad happened to me, I want you to look into it,’ we will do that.”

Investigations are broken into two categories: complaints alleged against a student are investigated by the university’s Department of Public Safety. Those alleged against a faculty member are carried out by an attorney and ultimately decided by the dean of the school in which the faculty member resides, according to UR’s Policy 106. This was the case in the investigation of Jaeger in 2016, which was undertaken by university senior counsel Catherine Nearpass. The inquiry, carried out over three months, found no violation of university policy.

Levy had no role in that decision—she was simply the arbitrator of the complaints to the investigator. She is, however, vital to the process of filing complaints, and if students say they don’t want an investigation carried out, her hands are often tied.

“It’s always really challenging, because we want to be supportive of the wishes of our students, but that has to be balanced against a potential danger to our community,” Levy said.

There are situations in which the university is obligated to carry out an investigation, namely when an offender is alleged to have used a weapon, has been the subject of previous complaints or is shown to be a violent threat to the campus.

The White report includes a 2016 email exchange between complainant Keturah Bixby and Levy. In it, Levy states she believes that all complaints and issues, both sexual and nonsexual, were “unequivocally” “heard and addressed appropriately.”

Bixby disagreed, according to the White report, arguing that as recently as late 2015, Jaeger had openly mocked the sexual harassment prevention training he had received. Bixby did not file another complaint, due solely to discomfort over the university’s process in handling complaints.

Which leads to somewhat of a catch-22; if you, as a complainant, opt out of the process because of discomfort, the hope of progress comes to a halt.

“There’s never been a time when someone says ‘I want you to investigate this’ and we say no,” Levy said. “The more difficult situations are when someone says ‘I don’t want you to investigate this’ —when someone comes to us and says ‘Joe Smith did something terrible, but I don’t want you to do anything about.’ Obviously, that’s difficult to me as a human being knowing someone did something horrible to someone in our community and I can’t do anything about it.”

But for Wrobel and Register, Levy’s role is seen as critical to the general atmosphere of the student body, and consider Levy’s outreach to students during the outrage as lacking.

“Let’s say that you did none of the things you’re (Jaeger) being accused of, some hypothetical world where none of that is true,” Wrobel said. “But people still feel (the way they do). If this massive miscommunication is going on, clearly you’re (Levy) not suited to do the job you’re doing.”

“If people feel they are unsafe, you’re not doing your job,” Register added.

Wrobel, Adams and Register emphasize that the problem is not that the university is acting illegally or covering up salacious findings. Rather, they say, it’s a cultural problem that demands a different approach than simply trying to find individual wrongdoing. There should be constant scrutiny of university policy to see what can be done to make students feel safer. Register said that if the university determined Jaeger’s questionable behavior did not violate school regulations, that should not vindicate him but rather be a stimulus to rethink campus policy.

Title IX coordination can play a proactive role in establishing positive cultural values on campus, a role that student activists have not seen Levy take up.

“I think a lot of men, as a whole, have a huge problem with seeing themselves in the greater context of society,” Adams said. “When they see things happen like this, they want to say ‘I’m not that.’ ”

But in regard to Levy’s role in the cultural atmosphere at UR, she both agrees and disagrees. Namely, she disagrees that there are no opportunities on campus to engage in sex-positive education throughout the year, such as Sex Week and collaboration with Rochester sexual assault services organization RESTORE. She does agree, however, that the fallout of the Jaeger investigation is time to take a second to re-evaluate the moral and cultural practices at the university.

“If there can be any really good outcomes from this situation, it’s that people are really passionate about this topic again and are really thinking critically on how we make this work for our university,” Levy said. “How do we set standards that work for our population that are not just legal standards.”

The role that the university should play is simple; make Title IX a regular part of students’ day-to-day lives, the three agreed. Provide it not just as a resource for victims, but rather an educational opportunity for all.

It’s a pattern of missing the moral mark the three describe as nothing new, and point to other incidents. For example, in 2015, someone at UR posted on the anonymous site Yik Yak racially charged threats toward the Douglass Leadership House, a black academic housing facility. Included were threats to burn house residents, stab black students and commit sexual violence against one named individual. Although UR subpoenaed Yik Yak, officials ultimately opted not to ban the app from the university wireless network, which was a demand being made by protesters across campus.

If the size of the crowd at the January protest is any indication, attention is waning. The small group of sign holders paled in comparison to the hundreds who flooded the steps of the Rush Rhees Library in September. But just as then the demands remain the same: change university policy to make it not only legally sound but reflective of a moral stance; streamline the complaint process and make the Title IX coordinator more active on campus.

“Just because something isn’t specifically against policy doesn’t mean it can’t violate a broader policy,” Register said. She urged an examination of campus protocol as applied in the Jaeger case.  “What should it have been and was it right?”

That’s been a question in the forefront both locally and nationally, and one that has garnered Levy a good amount of criticism. But as much as the activists and Levy seem to be at odds, Register’s question is one which Levy also asks, and one which she vows to take up by reviving a proposal from her time as a chairperson of the Presidential Diversity Council Implementation Committee.

“One of the things we proposed back in March of last year, I believe, was that the university create a values statement, so that we have another tool to approach these issues with, that even if it fell below the legally prohibited line, we’d still be able to respond in meaningful ways,” Levy said. “We could say ‘this is inconsistent with who we are as an institution, this is not who we are, this is inappropriate.'”

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