Alexandra Hughes: Welcome to season three of the ASCA Viewpoints Podcast. The podcast where we talk about the student conduct profession in higher education. I'm Alexandra Hughes, your Viewpoints host.

Alexandra Hughes: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the ASCA Viewpoints Podcast. As always, I'm your host Alexandra. We are now in March and mid-terms are here and spring break is here. Spring break is a thing y'all, like my goodness. I don't know about you guys, but I do know that for some of us we have spring break now, I wish and I'm going to say congratulations. For those of us who have spring break next week and the weeks following, just hang in there. We got this. We can get to it.

Alexandra Hughes I know for me I was thinking about if I was going to go anywhere for spring break. I'm not. I'm actually just going to stay in the office and hopefully try to catch up with all things student conduct-related. Maybe the students will allow me to have a quiet spring break. I'm hoping. I'm very optimistic. I'm going to have those well wishes upon everyone else as well for their spring break and whatever it is that you decide to do.

Alexandra Hughes: Before we get started on this episode, I actually have a couple of announcements from ASCA. I'm going to go through those relatively briefly. Just please stay tuned and take down this information as needed. First off, we have a call for Reflections authors that we'll be opening up soon, probably around mid-March. Please be on the lookout for that. It will be coming if you guys would like to be an author in the Reflections, please stay tuned.

Alexandra Hughes:  Let's see, March 16th Gehring scholarship applications are due. For anyone who would like to possibly attend Gehring this summer, I know I talked about it on my news episode last month, but Gehring is an amazing opportunity. I will be there this summer. If you want to connect with me, please feel free to come. But if you want to possibly get some scholarship money for your professional endeavor, then go ahead and make sure that you fill out that application. Again, that's going to be due March 16th.

Alexandra Hughes: March 20th we have a drive-in in Michigan. If you have any information about that, if you need more information, please be on the lookout in your email for that. Lastly, March 30th conference committee applications are due. For anybody that wants to be a part of the conference committee, it's a wonderful experience. Please make sure you're a part of it. But if you want to be a part of it, please make sure that you turn in your application by March 30th, okay.

Alexandra Hughes: Those are my updates as of this week. If you guys have any questions, please feel free to email asca@theasca.org for any more information. Check your email because all of these things are going to your email. For some reason if you haven't gotten these things in your email, please make sure that you log onto your ASCA account and just double check the membership and make sure that all of your information is up to date to ensure that you are getting the most updated information from ASCA because it does go to that email account that we have on file.

Alexandra Hughes: Let's get into this week's episode. For this week on the show and for this month's viewpoint, I am so excited. I am so excited because I had a really great interview with a particular person in our field by the name of Jessica White. Some of you know her and for those of you who don't know, Jessica is a phenomenal leader in the field of higher education. She is an expert on all things related to Title IX. Let me just say that it is incredible just to sit down and talk with her because she really has a wealth of knowledge that is so helpful for really just all of us who are in student conduct.

Alexandra Hughes: At the annual ASCA conference this year, Jessica, as well as another member of our ASCA community, Dr. Kyle Williams, did a presentation that was titled Black Bodies and Title IX. The room was packed. It was incredible to see how many people came. I heard so many people talk about how they wanted to attend it and even if they didn't get the chance to. We figured it would be a really great opportunity to kind of speak about it on the podcast. In their particular presentation, they looked at the idea of Title IX from the angle of examining the historical context of our country, more so the history that our country has with people of color.

Alexandra Hughes: Let's be honest. All right, let's take a pause. Let's be honest. These are hard topics. They are hard topics to talk about because they center around a lot of things that are challenging. But this is what I think makes a really good episode because it's the conversations that we're striving to have on this podcast. Because quite simply put, this podcast is a place where people can learn and not feel judged for maybe not being aware of a particular topic. That's okay.

Alexandra Hughes: Maybe they don't have all of the knowledge on a particular topic and that's okay as well. Maybe they might be a little bit afraid to ask questions if we're in a public setting. Luckily with this podcast, you're not necessarily in a public forum and you can listen and process on your own time. The podcast was originally created that way we can become better professionals. That's what we're going to do. Always remember if you have any questions, you can feel free to reach out to me at ascapodcast@gmail.com and we can most definitely connect on there.

Alexandra Hughes: I am so excited because luckily after this presentation I was actually able to grab Jessica. She sat down with me to talk about what she did in that presentation with Dr. Williams. Dr. Williams won't be on this episode. He will actually be a guest on the show later in the future, but both of them will be faculty at Gehring this summer. If you'd like to learn more about the work that they do, that would be a wonderful place to connect with them.

Alexandra Hughes: In this conversation that I have for you guys, Jessica talks about a brief history of perception and stereotypes and how it impacts the way that we may view our students and the importance of being able to recognize those. She gives great tips and really good tricks. Really gives some good information that we can use in our role as student conduct professionals. She even gives us a book review at the end. Please make sure you stay tuned for that. This is a great educational piece. I'm so excited to keep this conversation going. Stay tuned.

Alexandra Hughes: We're here at ASCA 2020 at the conference. I have Ms. Jessica White in front of me.

Jessica White: Thank you for having me.

Alexandra Hughes: Thank you for coming on our podcast. We are excited to have you. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this because I think it's important and the work that you're doing is extremely important. For our listeners that we have on our podcast, can you please introduce yourself and tell the listeners where you work?

Jessica White: Sure. My name is Jessica White. I am the Title IX coordinator at University of the Sciences located in Philadelphia, PA.

Alexandra Hughes: Can you tell us a little bit of how you got there on that journey? What your journey in higher education and student conduct, what that looks like?

Jessica White: After grad school, I knew I was going to work in higher ed. I never left higher ed and student affairs. I started off though not understanding or not knowing what functional area. I've worked in residence life. I worked in orientation. I've done student activities, but then I found myself in the office of student conduct at University of Delaware. I worked at University of Delaware for nine years. Got a lot of great experience, a lot of great mentoring and fell in love with student conduct.

Jessica White:  Then in 2011 when the Dear Colleague letter came out, there was lots of conversations about how do we adjudicate sexual misconduct cases and trainings became available. I was able to take advantage of that. That kind of opened the door into the Title IX role.

Alexandra Hughes: Would you say your passion is Title IX?

Jessica White: Absolutely.

Alexandra Hughes: Can you talk a little bit about why Title IX? What drew you to it? What made it your passion? Because I know some people listening are like, "Woo, Title IX. We don't want to touch it." Because it's scary. It's a lot of law involved with it when it comes to like what you're talking about like the Dear Colleague letter, OCR. I think that there's a lot that happens with Title IX based upon like our political climate, our administration and it scares people.

Alexandra Hughes:  Then the other side of it too, Title IX that's our lingo. But it's dealing with cases, dealing with things like domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, all those different things. That in itself is a very hard topic. It can be triggering for some. It can be really hard to deal with because there is no winner when it comes to these cases. What kind of made you really latch onto it?

Jessica White: I think one of the things that made a huge difference in my career was when I went to ASCA conference in 2010 when we had St. John Dixon, Fred Gray-

Alexandra Hughes: And the different people that were there.

Jessica White: ... all the people who are associated with Dixon v. Alabama, they came to speak. I really took away from the fact that these individuals, these students' voices weren't heard. They felt ignored by the administration and how tough it was to fight for something that they believed in, but not have the opportunity to have a voice.

Jessica White: I kind of saw the same thing happening in Title IX cases. Students felt like their voices weren't being heard or they weren't being understood or they weren't being taken seriously. I wanted to hear from all the students involved. Everyone needs to get treated fairly, whether they're respondents, whether they're complainants. I made that my passion in Title IX cases. Title IX just continued to roll from there.

Jessica White:  The other thing I like about Title IX work is that it's not just case adjudication. We have the opportunity to collaborate with lots of individuals on our campus communities, on our local communities, the students, their parents. There's so much opportunity to really look at student success, to look at student engagement. Do programming, all the different things that we talk about in student affairs as being so important, it all comes together in Title IX.

Alexandra Hughes: I know at this year's annual conference that you did a presentation regarding Title IX and black bodies with Dr. Kyle Williams. Can you talk a little bit about that presentation? It was extremely popular. There were a lot of people there. It went over really, really well.

Jessica White: Thank you.

Alexandra Hughes: Could we maybe get a little bit about that on our episode? For those listeners who were unable to attend this session, I know there's so many that are going on. Maybe we could just talk about that and kind of the things that you talked about there and then that way they know?

Jessica White:  Yeah. We thought it was important to take a look at how race, particularly the image of the black body, how that intersects with sexual misconduct cases and Title IX. At first we went through some of the historical pieces, how slavery impacts our vision of the black body, how we were property, dehumanized. We took a look at some historical cases that have impacted the work. So Emmett Till, Scottsboro boys, the Tulsa race riot, all of these started with different allegations because of someone's race, because a white woman accused a black man of rape.

Jessica White:  We also then talked about how do we take the historical pieces and then transform to modern day. How does the media play a role in that? What shows are on TV? How is music influencing that work? Then lastly, what does that mean for adjudication? How can we as conduct administrators be aware of our own race and the bias that might be present and still offer a fair and neutral process? What are some points we can be considering and conversations we can be having, trainings we can be offering to make sure that we're able to fully see the students who are in front of us.

Alexandra Hughes: That's important. I want to kind of go back a little bit to some of the historical context that you're speaking of. I know one of the cases you mentioned with Emmett Till. I think that was a very popularized case. It's more so people know about it. I think it's important to even talk about that. Just actually right now we are in DC and over at the African American Museum, one of their exhibits is actually his casket. Even the fact that you guys talk about that, and I know on my first day here I actually had the opportunity to go visit that. It was right on par with really the message that I think this year's conference was really talking about.

Alexandra Hughes:  Even to understand his story and what happened like you said, these allegations that came about. Then how his body was treated. That's kind of the history behind it. He was actually pulled out of his house. He was a young black boy from Chicago. He had gone down South to visit some family. While he was there, he was accused of whistling at a white woman. After that, some people came after him, took him out of the house where he was staying in the South, dragged his body on the ground and ended up sinking him in a body of water. I think it was like a lake.

Jessica White: Not just dragging him and sinking him. They shot him, gouged his eyes out, dismembered him, it was a brutal and horrific rape that we got to see when his mother had an open casket funeral. Lynchings really were a way of making sure that the white race protected its women and made it clear to the black race, "You are not to rape our women. You are to stay very separate." It was a way of keeping in our place. It was a way of instilling fear. We might see some of that in our sexual misconduct process in this fear of processes because historically lynchings were the process.

Alexandra Hughes: Lynchings were when they would take people of color, black bodies and actually tie someone to a tree with a rope. What that looks like when someone was accused of someone and the actual violence that occurred for black bodies in these cases is really just something that's absurd to think about. But then to see how that has continued in our systems, in our institutionalized systems. Like you said, in the media. What are we seeing? The over sexualization of these people of color and the bodies of people of color is extremely important and how that dynamic plays into as we are investigating these cases.

Alexandra Hughes: You mentioned implicit bias earlier and what that looks like in bias. Could you talk a little bit about that and why it's important for our people that are investigating these Title IX cases to know what bias is and maybe their own bias is and awareness about it?

Jessica White: Yeah. Anytime we have individuals who might be filling in the gaps in the case with stereotypes or assuming things simply because of what they may have seen in the media or some of their life experiences or even been taught from their own previous generations, it becomes dangerous because essentially what we're doing is taking a race, a whole race of people and assigning an identity to them, which may or may not be true in this particular situation.

Jessica White: Oftentimes for black males it is that they are aggressive or animalistic. For black females that they want it. There's this insatiable appetite for sex. "Of course, they want it. They would never say no." In terms of credibility, it can't be believed. There's some other historical situations or cases where the black woman was found to have lied, therefore all black women cannot be trusted. When we are adjudicating these cases, we need to make sure that we are looking at the facts of the case or hearing the case before we decided. That we're weighing the information that we have in front of us and not letting some of these assumptions, these stereotypes creep in and be assigned to our students when that may or may not be pertinent to the case.

Alexandra Hughes:  I think as people who are investigating these cases, what would you say to someone who's like, but "I'm not someone that's assigning these stereotypes. I'm not doing that. I'm really am looking at the student as they come in. I'm not biased at all. I've never been biased." How would you talk to someone who's like, "No. I do not have these biases period."

Jessica White: Even if you don't have those biases, our students are coming into the case with these concerns. Will this person believe me? Especially if you're thinking about reporting, there's already this hurdle, "Will they believe me? But then will they believe me again because of my race?" Or, "Do I need to explain what this means for me to be black on this campus? Then I can now tell you what happened because you understand the context?" Even if someone is not acting on their bias, it's still going to show up in the room when we're interacting with our students of color.

Alexandra Hughes:  That's important to understand too, what barriers may exist. Not that us as administrators or investigators are putting those there, but just like the same way it's possible for us to biases, our students may have biases as well. I think you really brought up a good point.

Alexandra Hughes: We know that when it comes to Title IX and the types of things and we're looking at what's going on in the country, a lot of times victims don't feel comfortable saying what happened because they're scared that they're not going to be believed. That's why we're doing all this work to make sure that these things are in place that way they know-

Jessica White: Absolutely.

Alexandra Hughes: ... we believe and we're here and we're going to help. We want to help you work through that and whatever that looks like of course in each particular case. But it's now the added layer of as a person of color, as a black woman or man or whatever that may be, right, "Are they going to believe me because of the stereotypes that exist about people like me?" Also, making sure maybe administrators are understanding the campus climate.

Jessica White:                                         Oh, absolutely.

Alexandra Hughes: I think that a lot of times on campuses, and of course as administrators and faculty and staff are like, "Oh, yeah." We have a very different experience than our students to start off with because we getting paid to be there. They're in school. We have the degrees. They want them.

Alexandra Hughe...:                                    But then on top of that, how does that dynamic look at a campus, whether that's racially to where would the student be comfortable even coming in and saying like, "This is what happened and I need help."

Jessica White: When we talk about slavery, Jim Crow era, black individuals felt like second-class citizens. We know they were 3/5 of a person at some point. Today I would ask administrators, how do your students feel on your campus? Do they feel like first-class citizens on that campus or do they feel second to others? For each campus that other could look very different. When we think about students coming forward and reporting other incidents, how are they handled? How are they treated? Do they feel like their voices were heard?

Jessica White: If a student is complaining about a roommate or a student is complaining about a racially-charged incident, when they walk away from that situation, how do they feel? Do they feel respected? Do they feel like it was taken seriously? If we can accomplish things like that, that's one less hurdle we need to overcome when thinking about then reporting for a situation where this notion of believability is that much more complex.

Jessica White: Something else I wanted to add based off what you said. This notion of start by believing. We know that is so important. It's foundational to this work. We want to make sure we are getting victims and survivors connected to the resources that we have on our campus and in our community to make sure that they are working towards that healing process.

Jessica White: However as adjudicators, I want to make sure that we are also listening to the information and not simply believing just because the first person came forward or it's something that fits the narrative that we have in our own minds about what occurred. Or it's an easy answer because we're getting pressured by athletics or our donor office or whatever office has political clout on our campuses. In listening to the information that we receive, it's more than just believing who came forward or believing the victim, believing the respondent. We are neutral and fair and listening to the facts of the case.

Alexandra Hughes: I like what you said, it's start by believing. I think it's important for people to understand that just because you start by believing this person doesn't mean that you don't believe the other person. I think sometimes people think that it's a duality, it's one way or the other, it's adverse.

Alexandra Hughes: But in fact that's not necessarily the case when we're looking at these investigations and how do we support people involved. Respondent's rights in these cases and what does that look like?

Jessica White: So important.

Alexandra Hughes: Extremely important, especially because there's so many different outcomes of these cases. It's impacting people's lives. I think that's important because we want to make sure that we're doing the people of the situation justice, the victims justice. But everyone justice, because that's fair. How would someone as an administrator connect with maybe campus partners to talk about things?

Alexandra Hughes: For example, you said, "Hey, look." If someone's coming forward and saying, "Look, we have this residence life concern. I brought this forward some time ago and no one listened to me. That's why I don't report anything because you guys are terrible." We've all heard that before. We're like, "We didn't know." How do we do better in that sense? How do we get the word out there? What do we do that way in case there is an important situation, students know that their voice will be heard.

Jessica White: I think one of the important things as administrators is that we are collaborative. We are building networks on our campus, having conversations. Title IX cannot be done in a silo. Whether we're working on various committees or building partnerships throughout different divisions, academic and student affairs, other functional areas, it's really important to at least have doors open and being able to engage in those conversations.

Jessica White:  Some offices are always going to be more challenging than others, but it doesn't mean we're not at least making that effort and making sure that our campus knows who we are and know that we are accessible to talk with. When we think about reporting, are there various ways that individuals can report? Do they feel more comfortable talking with someone that they trust, maybe one of the deputies or a responsible employee? Do they feel more comfortable going online and filing an anonymous report? Having that variety that meets the needs of our campus is going to be so critical as well.

Alexandra Hughes:  Here's a question, and maybe this is a hard question. What advice would you give maybe two professionals that are on a team of people and maybe they don't have the power of being like the Title IX coordinator. Maybe they're just like an investigator. It's unfortunate, but it's real in our line of work. There's the power dynamics and what that looks like.

Alexandra Hughes: What advice would you maybe give to an investigator who is aware and is seeing some type of bias play out, whether that's in someone else's case, whether that's in their supervisors review of their case? Maybe they're like starting to say, "There's some type of bias going on here." But how do they say that to the powers that be. How would you walk someone through that, kind of that process?

Jessica White: I think anytime we are reviewing cases or having conversations with individuals throughout the process, there's an opportunity to ask thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. I think it's through that clarification of information even if there's bias, we're going to get a better outcome. Help me to understand your choice of words. There appears to be some information omitted here that could help us understand this particular point of the case.

Jessica White: On my campus, our investigative reports, I really take a lot of time to review the analysis of the information. What information do people agree with, the complainant and respondent? What information do they diverge on? What information supports this? When we take time to do that analysis, I think we can also look for points of bias. These two points aren't adding up. Why is that? Where's the information should support or maybe we don't have information to support. Why is that?

Jessica White: I think even though it may be racially-charged or there might be some unconscious bias at play, I think the answer for those who are working the case, hearing officer's, appeal officers is being thoughtful and critical in how we review that information.

Alexandra Hughes: Just making sure that we're being open and honest about what we're seeing and making sure that really we're saying, "Hey, this doesn't add up." Or, "This doesn't look right." Or, "Something here just doesn't feel right." You know what I mean?

Jessica White: I think it's also important that we recognize our own bias. I can't be an expert in all things. If there is something happening in the case that I'm not aware or I don't have that cultural context for, what are different ways that I can get further understanding? Are there individuals I can talk with? Are there other resources available where I can then understand what does this mean? What's the context? How does this play into the case? I think if we overlook moments like that, that's another opportunity for bias to slip in.

Alexandra Hughes:Even looking at things like intersectionality.

Jessica White: Absolutely.

Alexandra Hughes:  In this particular session that you guys did, you really talked about black bodies. I think that's important, but we also want to say, intersectionality in spaces if that's queer identities, what does that look like exists as well.

Jessica White: Absolutely. When we talk about trans people of color, that's a whole nother session right there waiting to happen. We talked about the Tulsa Riots and Black Wall Street. There's the intersection of affluence or SES along with race and how does that play out? There's lots of different opportunities where we may see that in a case or where students may bring that into the room. Along with it becomes questions of safety in reporting and accessing services afterwards and their comfort with being able to do that.

Alexandra Hughes:  Maybe one of the things that we can do to be better prepared is to, one, I think maybe create our teams to where we have diverse teams. Because quite frankly, like you said one of us can't be an expert in everything. I think we all have very lived experiences and different lived experiences. If one, we could start off by creating diverse teams, that would help first off because we can obviously bounce those ideas off of and make sure that we're really doing justice to the process.

Alexandra Hughes:  But then maybe after that, we'll say, "Hey, look." If I know that my team isn't as diverse as I want it to be, finding those on campus resources and places and people to connect with that way you know that's there on top of also providing those different types of services and knowing what's there for our students that are involved in it.

Jessica White: You have to know who those places are and who you can connect people with. But then how are you making your students know about these? How are you sharing these resources? Where are you sharing it? If it's only on one website, maybe our students are accessing it and maybe they're not. What are the places that they're going to in order to access these services?

Jessica White: Many of our campuses are going to have various levels of resources, but there are also many national organizations who are looking at issues of sexual misconduct and race, whether it be African American, whether it be Latinx, whether it be Asian, and plenty more. Being able to identify those as well and get our students connected if we don't have those in our own communities.

Alexandra Hughes: That's important. I think that's really good information. At least a starting ground. You know what I mean? For people to go, because we do want to make sure that we're giving people, like I said, the real justice that they deserve and what that looks like. Is there anything maybe that I didn't ask you that you would like to add for our listeners?

Jessica White: I think it's important that we stay well read and on top of current trends that are happening. I will say over our winter break, I had the opportunity of reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, Talking to Strangers. That's going to be my recommendation.

Alexandra Hughes: We need to buy that.

Jessica White:  Yeah. The reason I think he asks a lot of great questions about the intersection of race and adjudication processes and how does that play in? How do we process information in order to make decisions? There was a lot of great examples, both from a cognitive perspective as well as an interpersonal dynamic perspective. That really got me thinking. It really challenged me in how I do my work. That's going to be my recommendation.

Alexandra Hughes:Everyone needs to go get that. It's Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell, right?

Jessica White: Yeah.

Alexandra Hughes:  Then I'm going to add that to my list of readings because I can do that now. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Jessica, for coming in our podcast, for sitting here and speaking with us. You have a knowledge and wealth of information that is just incredible to see and just to learn and to hear from and to know that.

Alexandra Hughes: I'm glad to know that you are doing great work. You know what I mean, where you are and with your students. We're excited to see that.

Jessica White: Thank you.

Alexandra Hughes: Thank you so much. With that, listeners, we are going to conclude our episode. We will see you next time. Make sure you tune into ASCA Viewpoints Podcast. Thanks so much.

Alexandra Hughes: This episode was produced, edited and hosted by Alexandra Hughes. That's me. If you're enjoying the podcast, we ask that you like, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps others discover us and become more visible to our podcasting community. If you have suggestions for future guests or would like to be featured on the podcast yourself, feel free to reach out to us by email. At ascapodcast@gmail.com or on Twitter @ASCApodcast.

Alexandra Hughes: If you'd like to connect with me on Twitter, you can find me at @Alexandrasview. Talk to us. We talk back.