The Title IX office is located in Blake C 118. The office itself provides students with literature (pictured above) and services to aid students who unfortanutley encounter sexual violence. Title IX is a divsion of the United States Depatment of Education that serves to protect students from sexual harassment, sexual assault and sex based discrimination (Emma Boskovski/News Editor).
This is a developing story.
An open letter by a student who came forward with their experience is attached below.
A social media post describing a Geneseo student’s alleged assault at an off-campus fraternity house has reinvigorated campus discussions regarding sexual assault, resources for victims and accountability from those accused. In the weeks since the Feb. 15 post on a popular student meme account, students have seemingly taken it upon themselves to speak out about sexual assault, forming support-like group chats for victims as well as ostracizing organizations who count alleged perpetrators of these crimes as members.
The student body is growing increasingly frustrated with the administration’s lack of acknowledgement of the sexual assault problem at the college and the discouraging stories from those who have tried to seek justice through the school’s Title IX office. Six students came forward to The Lamron to share their experiences but emphasized that there are potentially hundreds more victims who have yet to come forward but who have encountered some form of assault or harassment while attending Geneseo.
What’s Happening
Former education major freshman Jovanna Bove contacted the Instagram page @sunygeneseomemes in mid-February to relay her story of an alleged assault at Sigma Nu Chi’s off-campus fraternity house (known as “Sig Nu”) in August of the fall 2019 semester. The account then posted Bove’s messages to their public page, receiving hundreds of likes and dozens of comments in a matter of hours. A majority of the comments were sympathetic toward or in support of Bove’s claims that the school mishandled her case and mistakenly let the student accused walk free.
Bove allegeds that during her first weekend at Geneseo as a new first-year student, she became intoxicated while attending a party at the Sig Nu house and was carried upstairs at some point during the night by members of the fraternity. The next morning, Bove awoke in a bedroom next to a fraternity member and what began as consensual sex became nonconsensual minutes later.
“His exact words, I’ll never forget,” Bove said in a phone interview with The Lamron. “[He said], ‘We’re not going to stop, we already started. You’re going to give me blue balls.’”
In the days following the alleged assault, Bove said she felt scared and unsure of what to do. While undergoing tests for pregnancy and STDs, a nurse at Lauderdale Health and Counseling Center asked Bove if the sex had been consensual to which Bove indicated that it hadn’t been. The nurse reached out to Geneseo’s Title IX coordinator, Tamara Kenney, to alert her to the incident. It was then Kenney who contacted Bove about bringing her assault to the Title IX office and pursuing consequences for the fraternity member.
Even after learning about the process and steps involved, Bove wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to officially file her case with the Title IX office. “[A student in the Title IX office] asked me, ‘Do you think he would do this to somebody else?’ and I said ‘yes.’ I realized if he’s going to do this to somebody else, I’m strong enough now mentally to go through this … so he never does this to anybody else again.”
The process began with notifying the Sig Nu member that there was a Title IX case filed against them. From there, Kenney’s office collected statements from Bove, the student accused and witnesses. Bove and the fraternity member were then able to review one another’s statements to point out details they felt were inconsistent to what really happened.
Assistant Dean of Students for Student Conduct & Community Standards Nate Pietropaolo then took what the Title IX office had gathered in terms of statements and evidence to decide if there was enough to move forward with a hearing. In Bove’s case, it was determined there was enough for a hearing and a date was set for mid-February.
Bove described her hearing as very rushed, explaining that it ended within a matter of two hours. By the time Bove left Geneseo later that day to go home to Long Island, she knew the verdict in the case. The Title IX conduct board had ruled that there was a 51% chance that the assault in question didn’t happen and a 49% chance that it did. Because of this, the student accused did not receive any punishment on behalf of the college. Three weeks after her hearing, Bove is yet to receive a written explanation from the conduct board on how they arrived at their ruling.
Bove’s story struck a nerve with a large percentage of the Geneseo campus. Students began banning together, connecting over traumas they have experienced, both from their assailants and from going through the Title IX process.
Multiple students who came forward to The Lamron corroborated that of the Geneseo-affiliated organizations, the Sig Nu fraternity is known by the student population to have members who are allegedly perpetrators of physical and sexual assaults.
Source one, a junior who preferred to remain anonymous, explained that last year, an incident occurred in which they felt trapped in the Sig Nu house by a number of members. The members claimed they would not let the student leave unless they kissed them.
“It was just so uncomfortable … just a little thing like that,” they said. “The fact that they felt like they had the right to trap me in their house.”
Rachel, a junior who asked that The Lamron withhold her last name, attended a Sig Nu party with friends during the fall 2018 semester. That night, Rachel said she was the ‘sober friend’ in the group and upon arriving at the Sig Nu house, she collected her friends’ jackets to store in a safe place while they were at the party. She walked into the living room of the house to see a member of Sig Nu and a woman arguing after the woman had fallen down the stairs. At one point, the member allegedly noticed Rachel standing there and he began physically attacking her.
“I said ‘don’t touch me,’ and [the Sig Nu] member said, ‘you’re in my house. I can do whatever the fuck I want to do,’” Rachel said.
Rachel explained that she went to the Title IX office the next morning but because the alleged incident occurred off campus, Title IX instructed her to report it to the Geneseo town police department. Her case was picked up by the New York State Police and she filed three charges against three members of Sig Nu. The investigator on the case interviewed between 30 and 40 members of the fraternity, according to Rachel, but she was eventually instructed to drop the charges and the case.
“The investigator kept calling me, telling me that they were sure that I was drunk and that they needed to know if I was drunk. Although I wasn’t drunk for sure, it’s just sad that that’s an excuse to be [assaulted],” Rachel said. “The investigator … decided that the 30 plus guys and their story was stronger than my two photos [of hand marks on my face] and the three witnesses that were with me.”
Despite Sig Nu’s reputation amongst the student body, the students that came forward acknowledged that the problem does not lie solely with one organization or with certain members of that organization. There are a number of other fraternities and athletic team houses that students warn one another about and advise using caution when attending parties there on the weekends.
Another student, a sophomore, who came forward to The Lamron, but asked to remain anonymous (and will be referred to as source two), experienced a sexual assault at a separate fraternity organization’s house. The morning after, she explained that she blamed herself but wasn’t surprised by the incident because it had not only happened to her before, but to friends as well.
“Every time that I thought I was going to [go to the school], I was just very discouraged by other people who had told me, ‘Oh I’ve tried to come forward and nothing happened,’” source two said.
The students that came forward attested to the fact that each of them knew many other students who had also experienced sexual and physical assault, either on Geneseo’s campus, off campus in the town of Geneseo or at houses of Geneseo-affiliated organizations. Most never took their stories to the school due to a general consensus that they wouldn’t be believed or that the Title IX office is ineffective in holding perpetrators accountable.
“As soon as I started talking about this, even … in broad terms … there was always one other person in the room who said, ‘I have a story like that’ or ‘I’ve been there.’ That is really eye opening because this is something that gets talked about a lot. But it doesn’t feel as severe until you or someone you know goes through it and then all of a sudden it does impact your life every day,” source two said.
When speaking with The Lamron, each source corroborated that the air of party culture surrounding Greek Life influenced the manner in which their claims were perceived. Bove specifically noted the social pressure placed on fraternal organizations to meet stereotypical standards.
“Fraternities have pressures to have girls at their parties and to have sex with lots of those girls. I think that it's more possible [for assaults] to happen in a Greek life setting because of our society and that static world that exists at Geneseo,” Bove said.
Rachel mentioned the power that the words of fraternal organizations carry when members band together to debunk a victim's claim. She cited this as to why she believes her case was dropped, despite the three witnesses and two pieces of physical evidence presented.
“[The police] interviewed somewhere from 30 to 40 members of Sig Nu, asking what had happened that night. All of them came up with a story about how I broke ten expensive composites … how I had tried to steal someone's vodka bottle because I was blackout drunk … illiterate. They were able to lie and tell the same cohesive story,” she said.
Sources one and two said they often feel disappointed in themselves for returning to specific organizations, yet feel that their social lives should not have to suffer because of a lack of accountability by the Office of Fraternal Life.
According to Coordinator of Fraternal Life and Off-Campus Services Bethany Hettinger, who oversees over 1,200 students in Greek life, her office is not notified when allegations are made against students in Greek organizations. This is mainly due to a student’s protections under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which prevents Title IX from alerting most outside groups about open cases.
If Hettinger is made aware of an open investigation or a “responsible” verdict against a member in Greek life, her office doesn’t currently have any specific disciplinary procedures and it typically falls on the member’s organization to carry out any punishments.
Hettinger, as well as Dean of Students Leonard Sancilio, were unable to provide a threshold that the number of accusations made against members in the same organization would have to reach before the school or Office of Fraternal Life would step in. Hettinger explained it would be difficult to determine because of the discrepancies that exist between an individual’s conduct and an organization’s conduct.
“A major thing that we talk about in Greek life is that ‘you’re always wearing your letters, you’re always representing your organization.’ The action of one person could impact 100 people and reflect on 100 people,” she said. “It definitely makes for a difficult dynamic. If there are concerning trends, that’s something that I would be open to looking at how we can have those conversations.”
Geneseo has, as of publication, yet to issue any official statement on sexual assault or address the posts on social media in the spring 2020 semester. Sancilio said in an email statement to The Lamron that the school works in conjunction with University Police to send out timely warnings when there is a danger posed to students. “Most conduct decisions are not shared publicly. With groups, however, we do notify the appropriate administrative and governing bodies of sanctions.”
Students and organizations, instead, have been communicating with one another on how to put an end to the problem.
Stemming from an incident that allegedly occurred earlier in the spring 2020 semester, a number of sororities have canceled planned social events with the Sig Nu fraternity. Sources confirmed to The Lamron that at least six of the thirteen sororities at Geneseo have significantly scaled back their relations with the fraternity for the remainder of the semester.
Hettinger views these “self-governing” kind of acts as a privilege to the Greek organizations. “I think that if an organization has concerns about associating or spending time with another organization … due to whether it’s a rumor or gossip or an actual report … I think that organizations are well within their rights to determine what sort of relationships they want to have within the Greek community,” she said. “That’s not something I want to tell them to do or that I would ask them to do. It’s a privilege for them to decide … here’s who they want to have a relationship with.”
Rachel explained how it feels that perpetrators of assaults that occur off campus are not held to an appropriate level of accountability because the crimes didn’t occur on Geneseo’s property. Source two elaborated on the disparities between when the school intervenes with organizational activities and when it doesn’t.
“Fraternities have been suspended for underage drinking … but when it comes to multiple people coming forward against the same organization for assault, [the school does] absolutely nothing,” they said.
Bove echoed similar sentiments.
“Now that [sexual assault] is being talked about by students, the administration doesn’t even want to acknowledge it. Students have to come forward in order to [make a change]?”
Retaliation
Something several sources noted that has either deterred them from reporting or made them feel unsafe is fear of retaliation from the school, the student body or the person they accused.
Source three, a junior who asked to remain anonymous, said they felt uncomfortable reporting at the original time of the sexual assault because they were intoxicated and underage. They were unaware that they would not be punished for underage drinking if they reported the assault at the time of the incident.
Assistant Chief of University Police, Christopher Prusak, explained that while cases like these often go unreported for those exact reasons, students should feel comfortable talking to UPD.
“You know [the victim is] afraid that they may not be believed … I believe a lot of our officers have seen it before … if you're comfortable talking to the police, no one's going to pass judgment on you. No one's going to make you feel like it's your fault,” he said. “Come and report and … we'll make sure that you have the support services, whether it's Title IX, whether it's through Lauderdale … we will make sure that we get you the support that you need depending on how you want to move forward.”
Another facet of the fear of retaliation is that victims are often afraid the attackers will retaliate against them while encouraging others to turn against the victim as well.
In the case of source three’s experience, their attacker threatened them and their friends with violence, as well as legal action.
“He threatened to shoot me and a bunch of my friends and we went to UPD about it and they determined that he was not an immediate threat,” they said. “[UPD] said, ‘Well, we can't 100 percent guarantee anyone's safety all the time.’ All I was ever told from Title IX was, ‘You need to stop talking about it. You need to stop making the situation worse.’”
Sources were also afraid of the general population retaliating against them and worried that their friends wouldn’t believe them, especially where at a small school, word can travel fast.
“The threat of what's going to happen to me if I come forward from him or from other people in this organization or people that know him because especially in a small school like this, people usually know the person or you have some weird connection to them,” source two said.
Title IX Office and Resources
Geneseo’s Title IX office has one full-time employee, Kenney, as the office’s coordinator. In Kenney’s position, she provides services to students and employees who experienced acts of interpersonal and sexual violence. Within these broad categories are dating violence, domestic violence, stalking and gender discrimination. “If somebody has experienced something like that, we encourage them to come in,” Kenney said.
When a member of the campus community member brings an incident to Title IX, the office begins with an intake process. This involves determining and providing whatever kinds of support services a victim may need. Support services include a support group that meets on Fridays, sending notices to the reporting student’s professors and relocation to new safe housing.
According to Kenney, if a student decides to file a case with Title IX, as long as their perpetrator is another Geneseo student, they’re able to take campus conduct action.
For students coming forward about sexual assault specifically, the Title IX office will assist the victim in finding support groups, counseling services and medical attention, if within the 96-hour window to gather forensic evidence.
“We try to offer as many services as we can … but it’s very specific to [each individual] person,” Kenney said.
Kenney explained, however, that her office must be fair and neutral in their treatment of students involved in a conduct case; both the reporting student and the student being accused. “We will assist [the student being accused] in finding an advisor … to go through this process because our office does have to do that. Whether we like what someone did or not, they’re still our student,” she said.
Another component to the intake process is collecting statements from the parties involved. Kenney will meet with the reporting individual, record their statement and then contact other people she feels she needs to meet with in order to understand the full story. She will then bring in the responding student (the one being accused) and collect their story and those of their witnesses. After each party has reviewed one another’s accounts, Kenney will send the entire report to the student conduct board.
Members of the conduct board receive special training in how to participate in cases that include traumatic events. “We know that people who experience these acts of interpersonal or sexual violence don’t remember things [the same]. Our board gets trained in that there may be some gaps in memory … it’s not a fabrication but just that people remember things differently,” Kenney said.
She described the conduct board’s work as “heavy,” indicating that panels sometimes take as long as eight days to arrive at their decisions. Verdicts in a conduct board hearing are read as “responsible” or “not responsible,” rather than “guilty” or “not guilty” like in a criminal trial. “If someone is found ‘not responsible,’ … it doesn’t mean that something did not happen. It just means there’s not enough evidence,” Kenney said.
In terms of the true number of sexual assaults taking place at Geneseo compared to the number that come through the Title IX office, Kenney believes that she only sees a sliver. She describes her work as fighting an uphill battle, acknowledging that a number of reasons exist that prevent students from bringing their assaults forward.
“People don’t want to get the other person in trouble, and people don’t think they’re going to be believed,” Kenney said. “That’s horrifying that in 2020, we still have students that believe that someone’s not going to believe them when they say ‘this person harmed me.’”
In terms of the number of conduct cases that students decide to pursue and that result in “responsible” verdicts, Kenney said the number is “not many.” She explained, however, that a majority of students who experience some form of assault don’t even want or let their case go to the conduct board. Pursuing a case can be retraumatizing and time consuming for students, according to Kenney.
In response to student frustrations that the school doesn’t handle assault cases appropriately, Kenney said it’s wrong to view the situations like that. “It’s disrespectful to the college and disrespectful to [the victim’s] healing. It makes it very easy to say, ‘well, the college didn’t do anything,’ … [but I] can’t be transparent because I want to protect their privacy,” she said.
Underfunded
Several of the anonymous sources as well as Kenney noted that the Title IX office is extremely underfunded. Currently, the one full-time employee paid through the school is Kenney, who applies for grants to be able to hire other employees or graduate students to help with the work.
Rachel said “I think it's unfair to expect Tamara to deal with all of that happened as far as all the [assault cases]. Like everything it’s spectrum having something from a physical assault, sexual assault and to … a severe rape and people that are [trained] for every category.”
Kenney also recruits interns, of which she currently has five, but ultimately Kenney is the person handling every Title IX case that comes through her office.
Hannah, who asked The Lamron to withhold her last name, is now an intern at the Title IX office after having gone to the office with her own assault experience.
“I went and told Tamara [about my complaints with the office] and she gave me an internship, so I’ve been working with her and trying to help her with the process,” Hannah said. “[The reason I wanted to do this] is because something that helps me is talking to other survivors about it.”
Not only is the office understaffed but the office recently moved out of Struges Hall and into Blake C so Kenney also worries about students being able to locate her.
“I speak to my supervisor on a regular basis [about] staffing. We’ve got to beef up staffing so that we [can] have multiple places students can go and report to and … [know] they’re going to be believed and that they’re going to be assisted,” Kenney said.
Overall
The sources that came forward to The Lamron stressed an overall desire for more transparency on behalf of the school and the Title IX office to help alleviate the sexual assault problem at Geneseo, as well as ensuring that when students come forward, they’ll be believed and their perpetrators will be held accountable.
There is currently no school-wide training courses students must undergo that strictly cover sexual assault. All on-campus residents must take a fire prevention course. First-year students, transfer students, intercollegiate athletes and members of Greek life must take mandatory hazing prevention courses or else a hold is placed on their accounts.
Source two explained that even if some of the prevention courses touch on sexual assault, they are not effective in preventing the issue. “Clearly it’s still happening. So why aren’t we changing those protocols?”
The students who came forward feel a culture change is needed, both in the party scene and in the perception of victims who report their experiences hoping to be believed.
“I should feel safe going out. I don’t think it’s fair that women have to be so cautious and protective of having fun on the weekends in college when men don’t feel that way,” Rachel said.
An Open Letter:
Dear Geneseo students,
I am writing this to make everybody AWARE. I was not aware when I was assaulted. This is not to scare anybody, but to raise awareness as to what is truly going on at Geneseo.
My first weekend of college, I was so excited for this night. It felt like I had been waiting forever for this weekend to come. I was finally independent! But, I was welcomed right into Geneseo by being assaulted at Sigma Nu Chi. I initially thought this incident would not affect me, that I could forget about it and enjoy my time at college. I tried hard, but I absolutely could not forget what happened. Wherever I went, the incident replayed in the back of my head. Will I see him again? Will this happen again? I was scared walking around the campus that was supposed to be my new home.
Due to feeling unsafe on campus and becoming emotionally unstable, I did not return for my second semester at Geneseo and withdrew. Geneseo is NOT a safe place for me. I do not have the pleasure of smiling when I say the word “Geneseo” like many people do. This place was supposed to be where I had the best years of my life. My second home. For me, it became the place where my biggest nightmare came to life.
I was encouraged to follow through with a board case. This was a difficult decision for me because initially, I was scared to go against the guy who hurt me. But I was asked, “do you think he would do this to someone else?” When I answered yes, I knew I had to be the one to stop him before he hurt anybody else. So, I proceeded forward. I did this so he could NEVER hurt anybody again. For months I relived my hell. Retelling the story of that day over and over, with intimate details. The incident I wanted to forget did not have a chance of being forgotten about, it became engraved in my head.
I was doing this for me, for justice, to once again feel strong. To show my attacker I am stronger than ever and that what he did was NOT acceptable. Finally, the day for the hearing came. I came from 7 hours away to stand strong, to show I was no longer a victim. I came well prepared with a lawyer, and felt confident he could not get away with this.
My case lasted a total of about 2 hours. Some cases last 2 DAYS, why did mine last 2 HOURS?! I was told right away before the conduct meeting started that someone on the panel had to be somewhere by 1:30. WHAT? Is my rape that unimportant? Barely any questions were asked to either side by the panelists. My attacker ADMITTED to carrying me upstairs blackout drunk. His friend who was there ADMITTED to laying next to me while I was drunk in bed. Geneseo, is it okay to carry drunk people up to bedrooms? This case all came down to consent. It came down to did I truly withdraw my consent?
I told him to stop. I told him it hurt. I will NEVER forget his words, “We already started, we’re not going to stop, you’re going to give me blue balls.” The panel came to their decision within a few hours the SAME day. I got the call while driving home. The panel found him NOT guilty. My heart dropped. I felt sick. I could not stop crying. I felt helpless. I went through this process for months. I did it to rebuild my strength. The board ripped that away from me and made me feel the weakest I ever had.
The ruling said there was about a “51% chance it did not happen.” The person who had to read off their pre-written statement of how I gave consent was found not guilty. What could I possibly do now? I was informed I could “appeal” the ruling. I was also informed that the verdict rarely changes through the appeal process. Title IX, haven’t you put me through enough?
I wanted to protect others since Title IX and the board are not protecting their students from rapists. I reached out to all sororities and warned them to be careful of this fraternity. That was not enough, though. All people have to know what can happen at Sigma Nu Chi and other frats. I reached out to the Geneseo meme page, where I came into contact with numerous people who have been assaulted at Sig Nu and Title IX at Geneseo did nothing. Geneseo, if there are multiple assault cases against this frat, why are they still allowed to be an organization?
Students please be aware. A lot of assault cases have been pushed under the rug. Geneseo wants the school to look pretty. They don’t want a frat that THEY RUN to have assault cases. The carpet is coming up now and it will all come out. Geneseo, Title IX, was covering up your assault cases and failing students truly worth it?
I am Jovanna Bove. I’m not scared to say my name anymore. I am ready to gain strength and make a change in assault cases here. I can’t do it alone. I need students’ help. Rape should NOT be normalized in colleges. Geneseo, get ready, once this all comes out, there’s no going back.
If you or anyone you know is dealing with an issue of sexual assault, harassment or domestic violence, you can reach out for help at the following:
Title IX Office: (585) 245-5023
University Police Emergency: (585) 245-5222 (x5222)
University Police Non-Emergency: (585) 245-5651 (x5651)
Lauderdale Health Center: (585) 245-5736 (x5736)
Lauderdale Counseling Center: (585) 245-5716 (x5716)
Geneseo Village Police: (585) 243-2420
Restore (Confidential): 800-527-1757
Chances and Changes (Confidential): 888-252-9360
Livingston Rape Crisis Center: 1-800-527-1757
If you have a story you’d like to report to The Lamron, you can do so by emailing lamrontips@gmail.com.