On Thursday, Nov. 14, the University of Connecticut shared a special article on UConn Today showcasing the creation of the President’s Council on Combating Sexual Violence and Harassment. It specifically states that this move comes as a result of the former President’s Task Force on Combating Sexual Violence and Supporting Our Students from 2022. While the original task force was intended to be a temporary body created in the aftermath of protests over sexual violence that occurred that year, this new council is intended to be a long-standing body providing ongoing advice on this area of policy. A development like this is purported as a good change by UConn, made to address what is clearly still an ongoing issue at this university. But a look back at recent events gives reason enough to be skeptical about another “council” made to address a problem of consequence to students. Regardless of what kind of publicity the creation of this council gets, the more important question is whether or not it actually does anything. With the general trend of how bureaucracy at UConn has typically been enacted, I’m not holding my breath.
To understand exactly why a new council addressing campus sexual assault doesn’t inspire much hope, it’s important to go back in time and see how this issue first came to prominence in the UConn political sphere. In February of 2022, one student, Alexandra Docken, stood up overlooking the plaza in front of Homer Babbidge Library with a sign that said “I was raped and UConn silenced me,” according to The Daily Campus. This sparked some of the largest protests this school has seen since then on any topic and was able to garner a response from the administration and members of the state legislature. The result was the creation of the aforementioned task force, which was hailed as a genuine solution set to bring change on this issue and finally correct years of wrongs on this campus.
After that, things largely went quiet. The coming fall brought the first initial report from the group, including a few small policies changes such as the creation of the LiveSafe app, some language clarifications on the Title IX website and an improved access to make No Contact Directives. There was never any word from the task force after that. Now, the new article announcing the updated council claimed that the original task force “completed its work.” All this is to say that this working group, despite years of time to find solutions for an incredibly important topic, never became anything meaningful.
Let it be known that this is not the first time or the only subject where this has happened. In 2019, students here at UConn, as part of Greta Thunberg’s international “Fridays for Future” movement, staged a rally of over 1,000 students and held a long term sit-in at Gulley Hall to demand action from UConn against the climate crisis. In response, UConn established the President’s Working Group on Sustainability and the Environment, which released a realistic and extremely detailed 734 page plan by 2021 for UConn to fully decarbonize. This sounds like a really good conclusion, and it would have been too, if UConn didn’t completely scrap the plan a year later after focus on the issue had died down. Although this one was much closer to seeing meaningful change, it ultimately resulted in nothing.
This is a well-understood process about how to chill student voices on a subject. When it comes to making changes, students are at a disadvantage in terms of time; they have to focus on exams at some point, go on vacation and then, eventually, graduate. Universities know that they can play the long game by creating a committee that will convene in several months on a topic, release a report with recommendations several months later and eventually, it’s anyone’s guess whether or not any of the recommendations are put into place. In fact, this is a well discussed strategy among administrators. For example, during the University of Vermont’s 13th Annual Conference on Legal Issues in Higher Education in 2003, they published a paper reviewing four decades of campus protest. and their key recommendation was to “try to convert disagreements over substance into agreements on process… By the time the committee completes its work six months hence, the leaders of the protesting students may have graduated.”
All of this is to say that whenever UConn announces another body created to address something important to students, it’s important to be skeptical above all else. This new council on preventing sexual violence is going to be propped up on a pedestal, but ultimately, it is action and concrete solutions that create change, not simply conversation of such things. If one day this council does create the sweeping change to help eliminate the real problem that is sexual assault on this campus, I’ll make sure to eat my words. But until then, don’t hang your expectations on or extort your praise for this change yet. As far as history goes at this university, students must demand better than this.