Title IX Protections for College Legislative Interns: What Should You Know and What More Can Your Program Do

Abstract

The #MeToo movement brought new attention to sexual harassment in legislatures. The number of scandals is disconcerting, especially in light of how institutes of higher education (IHEs) send students, particular those in Political Science Departments, to intern in these offices. This article examines what protections are provided for interns by the legislatures and, specifically, looks at the Title IX responsibilities IHEs have in these situations. While, in spirit, Title IX would apply to these environments—it is not clear that IHEs could actually be held liable. We make the case that IHEs should still provide protections and provide details for the types of trainings that could be developed to provide protection to our student interns.

Keywords:

• Title IX
• sexual harassment
• sexual assault
• training
• internships

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Holly South of the National Conference of State Legislatures for information on current policies on interns in legislatures. We also thank Deborah Dodge for practical advice on interim measures and Dr. Jess Bonnan-White for comments on an early draft.

Notes

1 While our focus are IHEs, students at a wide variety of levels and institutions have these same Title IX protections.

2 The Department of Education recently rescinded Title IX guidance provided under the Obama Administration and published a Q&A that provides interim guidance prior to releasing more changes (Office for Civil Rights 2017). While it is unclear exactly what the new guidance will include, the Q&A clearly indicates that changes will be focused on the how investigations and adjudications of sexual misconduct cases should proceed. These are not of primary concern for our purpose.

3 The Chronical of Higher Education keeps an updated count of Title IX cases here: (https://projects.chronicle.com/titleix/).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bridget K. Diamond-Welch

Bridget K. Diamond-Welch, PhD, is a Professor of Criminal Justice in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Dakota. Her research focuses on attributions about sexual assault, how trauma disclosure affects mental health, and human trafficking. She is the Director of an OVW DOJ grant on reducing sexual assault at the University of South Dakota and works closely with responders on victim-centered and trauma informed best practices.

Melanie D. Hetzel-Riggin

Melanie D. Hetzel-Riggin, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Penn State Behrend. She is a licensed psychologist and serves as that Program Coordinator for the Master of Arts in Applied Clinical Psychology. She is a faculty research associate at the Susan Hirt Hagen Center for Community Outreach, Research, and Evaluation (CORE). Dr. Hetzel-Riggin’s research focuses on the effectiveness of bystander intervention to reduce interpersonal violence and peer mistreatment and on the relationship among interpersonal trauma, coping style, risk and resiliency, and mental health outcomes.