New Anonymous Title IX Reporting Form Must Be Promoted

The University’s Title IX Office launched an anonymous online reporting system last week, which hopes to make it easier for students to report incidents of sexual misconduct. The form heavily emphasizes privacy and anonymity, monitored by an external agency and linked to the Title IX office via a generated and anonymous user login. The form’s optional questions allow potential reporters to share as much or as little as they would like.

When plans for this system were released this summer, we felt the announcement lacked sufficient details for us to weigh in on the form’s merits. But now that the form has been fully unveiled, we are pleased with how student input was considered in its creation, and support its introduction.

We believe the anonymous reporting form functions well as an option for those who may be uncomfortable sharing experiences of sexual or gender-based misconduct in person or simply non-anonymously. We have called on Harvard to strengthen its infrastructure for supporting victims of sexual misconduct in the past, and we commend it for creating a new resource that supports students and faculty.

The original version of the form was designed in a way that made many students uncomfortable regarding their anonymity, and responding to such feedback, the Title IX Office updated the form accordingly. We believe these adjustments will increase the form’s effectiveness, because they make respondents more likely to share their experiences. We appreciate the effort the office has put into genuinely eliciting and engaging with student perspectives.

We are also glad that the platform is communication-focused and not necessarily geared toward a flurry of next steps and follow-up actions. The primary purpose of the system is to help victims, not pursue perpetrators. As such, the platform will hopefully provide a space for students to express their experiences and trauma in a way that feels contained and controlled, and that takes into consideration their emotional response to reporting.

In the wake of the recently released Association of American Universities’ Student Survey on Sexual Assault, it is important to consider how victims of misconduct perceive their experiences and feel comfortable reporting them. Given the survey’s statistic that only 41 percent of women and 27 percent of men made contact with a Harvard program or resource after situations involving “penetration involving physical force or inability to consent,” it is important for the University to consider how to make resources such as this form more available to survivors. Moreover, this platform may be an opportunity to collect additional, aggregate and non-personalized data on misconduct across campus, and increase the Title IX office’s awareness of certain patterns and trends manifesting in reports.

We hope Harvard will continue to work with students to increase awareness as this tool goes into effect. Information and support is essential, and students should have more knowledge about the resources available to them. There is little point in having a resource that people do not know about or know how to use. The University should continue to help students and faculty understand the differences between reporting-based resources available to victims of misconduct.

Though we do not expect it to, we hope the University also does not use this tool as a justification to cut down on elements of the Title IX Office and automate other aspects of student care, as Harvard University Health Services did with Urgent Care and its new tele-nurse program. Telecommunications and Internet technologies are not a replacement for in-person care, and though many students may value their anonymity, others may value other more interpersonal means of reportage.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.