Cooper, Miller Named Title IX Coordinators

The College has appointed a former freshman resident dean and the current case manager of the Administrative Board to serve as its first-ever Title IX coordinators, Dean of Student Life Stephen Lassonde said yesterday.

The recent appointees are William Cooper ’94, who also currently serves as associate dean of student life, and Emily J. Miller, an Ad Board case manager. Cooper previously worked as a freshman resident dean and Miller served as interim coordinator for the Office of BGLTQ Student Life in spring 2012.

Cooper and Miller will work with faculty, students, and staff on “issues of sex discrimination at the College” in their new roles, working with the University’s Title IX officer, Mia Karvonides, according to an email from Lassonde to College students announcing the appointments on Wednesday.

The new coordinators will also “oversee efforts to address concerns of sex discrimination at the College” and “work to identify and address any patterns or systemic problems” as they go on with their review, according to the announcement.

“I am delighted to have Emily and Will in these important new roles,” Lassonde wrote. “Through open communication with the coordinators, I am confident that we can address these issues at the College and serve our faculty, staff, and students to the best of our abilities.”

Cooper’s and Miller’s appointments follow recent efforts on the part of the University to evaluate its sexual assault policies and adherence to Title IX, which bans gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment in federally-funded education programs. In 2010, the Office of the Assistant to the President started to review Harvard’s policies and collect data in an effort to evaluate the University’s compliance with Title IX.

In spring 2013, Karvonides, a federal civil rights attorney, was appointed as the University’s inaugural Title IX officer. Later that spring, she convened a working group to evaluate Harvard’s sexual assault policies.

The working group convened to consider both the University’s policies as well as those of Harvard’s individual schools.

These efforts came amid increasing pressure from students for the University to re-evaluate its sexual assault policies. In November 2012, a referendum on the Undergraduate Council presidential election ballot that called for the reconsideration of Harvard’s sexual assault policy passed with 85 percent of the vote.

In the announcement email, Lassonde highlighted the importance of preventing sexual discrimination at the College.

“For the good of our community and Harvard’s scholarly enterprise, we must ensure that sexual discrimination in any form is not tolerated, and that students who encounter these issues have a clear place to report incidents and to receive the support they need and deserve,” Lassonde wrote.

—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.