Ithaca College’s Title IX infrastructure is inadequate to ensure the safety of its students. The fault does not solely lie on the lengthy procedural processings of offenses, but additionally in the ineffective preventive sexual assault programming. This is a reflection of systematic problems that plague college campuses and higher education across the nation.
The 2024 Campus Climate Survey, with 27% of undergraduate student participation, found that 13% of student respondents indicated they experienced unwanted sexual experiences. From the 2025 Security and Fire Safety Report, 13 incidents of rape on campus were reported in 2024, more than double from the previous year. At IC, Sexual Harassment and Assault Response & Education (SHARE) utilizes forms of programming, workshops and campaigns with the goal of sexual assault prevention. But their overall strategy is insufficient. Awareness campaigns and social media posts are not enough, rendering themselves useless if there is no meaningful mobilization and engagement continued after.
Title IX is more than a procedural framework to follow after an offense is committed. The proper resources must be allocated and utilized correctly to lead to impactful change that will ensure the safety of students on campus to prevent offenses in the first place. There must be a shift to implementing evidence-based research and approaches with a focus on student experiences.
Most higher education programming offered is in one size fits all lectures or one-off training modules. This style of prevention is unproductive and does not promote the behavioral change required to protect students. Especially as the programming is not properly targeted to the needs and experiences of students. Incidents of sexual assault disproportionately impact students from marginalized communities regarding race, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. Targeted resources and programming must be offered to account for these specific disparities.
Additionally, there is no mention of the Red Zone in the college’s data on the topic. The Red Zone refers to the period of time from the beginning of a fall semester to Thanksgiving break when 50% of sexual assaults occur on campuses. This is another alarming reflection of the gap between the college’s programming and the actual experiences of its students. How will students feel motivated to engage in the resources the college offers if they do not see their needs represented? It is one thing to have resources available to students, but unless students use them, they are useless.
A remedy to this is more student input into the prevention efforts that is representative of the student population because no one knows what it is like to be a college student better than other college students. Since 2020, when the Honors Civic Engagement Course collaborated with the Title IX Office in Breaking the Stigma to create a recorded presentation, no student input with office partnership on programming has been publicly initiated or published.
The college is unfortunately not unique in its Title IX deficiencies and limitations. Rather, the flaws are representative of greater structural setbacks that impact forms of higher education across the nation. These complications could negatively impact the safety of students, as the risk of sexual violence for all college students is increased compared to their non-college counterparts.
Female college students ages 18-24 are three times more likely than women in general to experience sexual violence and male colleges students ages 18-24 are 78% more likely to experience sexual assault or rape than non-students of their same exact age. These are staggering statistics that colleges and universities must account for, as college students face distinctive issues that need collaborative initiatives and measures to combat.
If not changed, these institutional shortcomings will lead to continued lack of student engagement and overall distrust in the system itself. To combat the larger systemic failures of Title IX infrastructure, the work SHARE, the Office of Public Safety and the Title IX Office does is impactful, but not enough, and must continue to improve to meet the needs of students.
