The Title IX Process is Like a Trial. Many Survivors Navigate it Alone.

After Riley K. Sutherland was harassed by multiple professors at the University of South Carolina, she filed a Title IX complaint. The ensuing investigation was “one of the most harrowing challenges” she’d ever experienced, lasting for three years.

“It was like having a full-time job on top of my classes,” Sutherland wrote in a message. She was thrust into the weeds of the process, tasked with making statements, undergoing interviews, adhering to deadlines, and presenting evidence on her own.

The process was beyond burdensome — “every step of the way, I struggled with panic attacks and chronic illness flares caused by trauma.”

Unable to afford an attorney, she felt defeated. She missed a deadline because she didn’t have knowledge of legal jargon.

Then, a local attorney offered his help pro bono. “He completely transformed my experience,” Sutherland wrote. “I couldn’t possibly have navigated the hearing process without his help.”

A spokesperson for the University of South Carolina did not respond to a request for comment.

Now, as a Harvard graduate student, she’s helping her friends who can’t afford legal assistance navigate the Title IX process.

At some peer institutions, this kind of support doesn’t have to fall as much on students’ shoulders. Stanford University offers to pay for over 11 hours of legal services, and its law school has a pro-bono law clinic that provides unlimited, free representation for survivors. Columbia University likewise provides an attorney-adviser to students at no cost.

Harvard has taken small steps in this direction. Harvard Law School provides financial assistance to law students unable to afford an attorney. In 2021, the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers successfully fought for a $100,000 fund to cover the legal expenses of graduate students “relating to their working conditions at the University,” including those incurred from the Title IX process, but those funds are now tied up in a dispute over implementation.

The rest of the University’s students are left to fend for themselves. As epidemic sexual assault and harassment continue to rock Harvard — sanctions were announced against another professor, Eric Rentschler, just this past week — more and more survivors are left wondering: How am I supposed to do this without a lawyer?

‘I’m Just Done’

When a University affiliate submits a formal complaint of misconduct with Title IX, the Office for Dispute Resolution begins an investigation, launching survivors into a complicated, confusing process that can take years to deliver justice.

Charna E. Sherman ’80, a lawyer who was harassed by former Government professor Jorge I. Domínguez when she was an undergraduate, put the stakes of entering the process simply, in an emailed statement: “The choice, in the very first instance, about how a victim proceeds may prove to be the most consequential of her/his career.”

No one would be expected to go through a high-stakes trial without a lawyer. Harvard, however, seems to assume students can navigate the complaint process without one.

The ODR investigation, which requires complainants to undergo interviews, cross-examination, and present evidence, is a legalistic process — confusing, time-consuming, and full of pitfalls.

One survivor wrote to me in a statement that when she filed her original complaint, she had “no idea what needed to be included.” She reached out to ODR for clarification but found it unhelpful — “We can’t give legal advice,” she claims they told her.

(In response to these criticisms, Nicole G. Rura, a University spokesperson, told me that “all parties, including those who do not have attorneys as personal advisors, are repeatedly invited to ask their Investigator any questions they may have about the process.”)

In 2019, only about 20 percent of Harvard students reported being very or extremely knowledgeable about what happens after a student reports an incident. The ODR website offers flow charts on how the investigative process works, but these resources are littered with vague terms and legal jargon.

According to a 2021 letter signed by over 100 faculty members, “the secrecy of proceedings makes it impossible for participants to understand what is entailed in participating in an ODR investigation.”

A 2021 Anthropology department review conducted after a harassment scandal involving professor John C. Comaroff and two other professors found that a complainant could spend 150-200 hours, go through several days of interviews, and write hundreds of pages over the course of their months-long ODR investigation.

And while the current procedures for sexual harassment complaints against students claim that an investigation will typically be completed within 90 days, Denish K. Jaswal, the HGSU-UAW’s grievance co-chair, said that she had never seen a case completed within this time frame. When three graduate students filed a complaint against professor Comaroff, for example, it took over a year to produce disciplinary action.

Rura told me that “ODR has no expectation about the amount of time a participant will engage in the process” and noted that the process was “voluntary.” Nevertheless, these immense burdens wear survivors down.

For Sutherland, the Harvard graduate student and University of South Carolina graduate, two Title IX cases dragged on for three years.

“During that time, I had to drop a class for my mental and physical safety, which jeopardized my scholarship funding,” Sutherland wrote. “I spent up to thirty hours a week trying to navigate paperwork, interviews, and lengthy investigative reports.”

A pro-bono lawyer changed everything, helping Sutherland “understand confusing legal language and keep track of deadlines” as well as write statements for her hearing.

Similarly, Austin Siebold ’23, a survivor with whom I worked as an organizer for the Harvard Feminist Coalition, told me that she became fed up with the endless interviews during her ODR process.

“The number of times that Harvard has requested to interview me — it’s at every stage of this process,” she said. “I’m done speaking to them, I’m just done. I’m not doing it anymore.”

Siebold’s lawyer — provided by a pro bono legal center — was able to provide some relief, informing her that she could send written statements to ODR in lieu of interviews — an option she said Harvard had never presented.

Another Harvard graduate student wrote that she came close to running out of funding for her degree after spending hundreds of hours on her case. Unable to afford a lawyer, she did not know she had a legal right to extend her degree program to make up for time she lost to the process.

Fortunately, through a free one-time legal consultation, she learned her right and exercised it. Despite how helpful the lawyer had proven, however, she couldn’t afford to retain them. Legal support remained out of reach.

‘A Distinct Disadvantage’

When survivors cannot afford legal counsel and their perpetrators can, an already difficult process becomes even harder.

The 2021 Anthropology department report found that in recent misconduct cases involving department members, 100 percent of respondents were able to access legal counsel, compared to zero percent of complainants.

Professor Elizabeth A. Armstrong, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, said that “it isn’t surprising that the respondents would on average have access to more resources.”

“When individuals are selecting targets, they are selecting people who have less power and are not going to be as credible — are going to be less likely to have the resources to get representation,” Armstrong told me.

Many survivors are unable to afford a lawyer. As a graduate student, Jaswal said she’s seen cases where it would have taken an entire year’s salary to pay the legal expenses a Title IX investigation would entail.

Lopsided access to legal representation exacerbates inequalities in the law itself.

Ahmed Mostafa, supervising attorney of the Stanford Campus Survivor’s Pro Bono Project, explained that because respondents are more likely to sue universities, the case law tends to favor respondents.

On the federal level, policy changes from the Trump administration that have made live cross-examination standard in sexual harassment hearings further undermine survivors.

In 2019, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, which includes Harvard, directly acknowledged how required live cross-examination can hurt those without legal counsel.

“Where one party with economic means retains a skilled lawyer as an advisor,” the statement reads, “the other party who cannot afford such representation, whether complainant or respondent, will be at a distinct disadvantage.”

Because respondents could face huge consequences for losing a Title IX case, “they have so much invested in hiring a strong attorney,” Mostafa, the Title IX attorney, told me.

“You’re a complainant, and you just got cross-examined by sometimes a former U.S. attorney,” Mostafa said. You’re “forced to relive the worst moment of your life.”

In this way, cross-examination is not just disadvantageous — it can be seriously re-traumatizing.

A survivor recalled being forced to “relive the most minute details of traumatic experiences” in four back-to-back days of prying interviews.

Mostafa, the Title IX attorney, said that in his experience representing survivors at Stanford and other universities, he’s seen attorneys attempt to cross-examine his clients on previous sexual experiences — in his words, “essentially slut-shaming my clients.”

When Sherman, the attorney who was harassed by professor Domínguez, was advising a survivor in an ODR interview in 2020, the complainant said that the investigation process was making her feel suicidal. Instead of stopping to acknowledge the alarming disclosure, Sherman wrote, the ODR interviewer “didn’t skip a beat and continued on.”

Thankfully, Sherman was there to intervene, and after the interview, she told me, successfully advocated for counseling services to help the complainant with her trauma.

The emotional consequences of these experiences can be severe. The 2021 Anthropology report found that several survivors had reported that they were diagnosed with PTSD from their harassment or the ODR process itself.

This is what makes representation so essential: “Having legal counsel holds Harvard accountable during the process,” Siebold, the Harvard undergraduate survivor and HFC organizer, explained.

Too Much for One Student to Bear

The Title IX process is often one of the most difficult ordeals a survivor will ever endure. Under the current system, many survivors go through the investigative process lawyer-less and with the cards stacked against them actually achieving justice.

It shouldn’t be this way. As Siebold put it, “Nobody should have to be an expert in order to be believed.”

But they do. Without a lawyer, it’s no surprise that many people see the difficulty and complexity of the process and avoid filing a Title IX complaint altogether.

There’s a “lot of things that violate Title IX going on in the University that do not get reported,” Jaswal, the union official, explained. “Because people do not feel like they can adequately go through the process and get the outcomes that are warranted.”

Lawyers can help. The Title IX process shouldn’t be so complicated, but the reality is that the strenuous demands of the investigation — from undergoing cross-examination, to compiling dossiers of evidence, to understanding confusing legal procedures — are too much for one student to bear, especially when faced with a powerful attorney representing the respondent.

With many survivors unable to afford or access legal support, Harvard must step in and expand free legal services to the entire University. Amidst an epidemic of sexual violence on campus, Harvard can show it is serious about protecting students by providing survivors with this essential support.

Until then, for many, going through the Title IX process will be like enduring a high-stakes trial with an unfriendly jury and unfair laws without even a lawyer at their side.

Rachael A. Dziaba ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Currier House and an organizer for the Harvard Feminist Coalition. Her column, "A Broken System," runs tri-weekly.