Students attending colleges and universities in the U.S. who experience Gender-Based Violence (GBV) incidents may report Title IX incidents either to their university’s Title IX Office, or to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). However, the current system is reported by many to be ineffective and with many problems. At the same time, students impacted by discrimination based on race, color, and national origin (Title VI) face similar issues.
Our Veritas Task Force (VTF) focused on finding common themes among OCR investigations and discrimination complaints of Title VI and Title IX violations to examined the consequences faced by universities and colleges, and discuss whether the victims had adequate justice. It accomplished this by dividing the findings according to the type of discrimination, as follows: sexual harassment, denial of benefits, retaliation, and sexual violence. All information was extracted directly from the OCR database for the years between 2010-2023 in each category previously mentioned.
This investigative report was executed by 10 Investigative Journalists and 5 Mission Support Team members. Meet the Team.