During the 2016-2017 school-year, Macalester received 79 reports of sexual violence incidents, a significant increase from the 49 incidents reported in the previous year. In response, community members have made efforts to combat sexual violence on campus. The Sexual Violence Prevention Program Coordinator (SVPPC) role, built into the Office of Title IX & Equity, is…
The failure of multiple departments on campus to screen students for Title IX complaints prior to hiring them into leadership positions has left the college scrambling to draft a new comprehensive policy for vetting student employees and leaders. Currently, there exists no college-wide policy requiring student employees to be screened through the Title IX office,…
A Macalester alumna representing former English professor Kristin Naca in her lawsuit against the college will be deposed. In an Oct. 25 decision, the United States District Court of Minnesota granted Macalester’s motion to compel the deposition of Hlee Vang ’02 – whose 2002 harassment claim against professor Terry Boychuk is central to the case….
Kristin Naca, a former professor in the English department, has sued Macalester College for “discriminatory and retaliatory termination.” According to her lawsuit filed on October 9, the College revoked her employment due to “her systemic Valley Fever, her sincere practice of the religion of Santería, sex, sexual orientation, and her Filipina and Puerto Rican ancestry…
Karla Benson Rutten, Title IX Coordinator and Director of Equity, and Laura Linder-Scholer, Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator, both exhibit pride for their new positions. These positions were created to, “respond to increasing awareness and concern about the prevention and response to sexual violence and other civil rights on campuses.” Benson Rutten has the job of…
This year, I am not signing the “Consent is Mac” pledge. I don’t think consent is the most effective paradigm to reduce sexual violence, and I believe that Macalester can do better. “Consent is Mac” is part of a larger trend of presenting consent as easy. We’ve all read the think pieces and comics on…
Disclaimer: this is not every female-identifying person’s experience at Macalester, but these are some of our experiences. A subtle yet highly problematic issue on our campus is sexism. This sexism is not the blatant sexism we typically think of, like job discrimination or the wage gap, but rather it is hidden under the liberal ideology….
In a recently dropped federal lawsuit, a former Macalester student sued Macalester and the Department of Education for violating his right to due process and failing to provide him reasonable accommodations for his disabilities during an Title IX investigation against him. During his attendance at Macalester, the student was investigated by the college for an alleged case of sexual assault. The student’s appeal for a restraining order against Macalester, which would have prevented them from carrying out his investigation while the suit was pending, was denied, and the student withdrew the lawsuit and withdrew from the school a few days later.
This year all sophomore, junior and senior students are required to complete a 45-minute online module about sexual violence prevention and Title IX, by Jan. 31. All upperclassman students have received an email with the link to the training. “We don’t only do this because it is a federal mandate. We do it because we…
“Sometimes we think, ‘I don’t want to worry about it until it impacts me.’ But it impacts somebody, and if it impacts someone in our community, then it impacts all of us.”