Rose McAvoy ’20 has been given a prospective date for her trial date of Jan. 3, 2022 after McAvoy filed a lawsuit against the college claiming that they failed to investigate her assault promptly and transparently in August 2020.

The college filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in October, claiming that they had not been deliberately indifferent. If the judge for the case rejects the college’s motion to dismiss, the trial will take place on the given date. 

In January 2020, Rose McAvoy wrote a piece for The Dickinsonian, detailing the college’s unresponsiveness to her assault. After a student organized sit in, the college agreed to meet with students to create an effective Title IX agreement. In August 2020, McAvoy filed a lawsuit against the college claiming that the school had continued to fail to investigate her Oct. 2017 assault on Dickinson’s campus efficiently and transparently.

When asked about the college’s motion to dismiss McAvoy said, “We’re still waiting on the judge to make a ruling on the motion to dismiss, it could still not happen and hypothetically if not between now and then if someone decided to settle.”

Kendall Isaac, general counsel at Dickinson added, “If the judge does not dismiss the case based on the current motion, there is a second opportunity to pursue dismissal before the trial date and, assuming the case has not been resolved by way of settlement, we would certainly pursue dismissal again.”

When asked if the college has been implementing the rules that had been agreed upon with Rose and other students, Isaac said, “We have implemented everything we promised we would implement so far via the Title IX agreement we entered into with the students. The last implementation date for the very few remaining items from the agreement with the students is July 1, 2021 and we are well on track to implementing those, too.” 

“Additionally, we have updated our policy to be compliant with the new Title IX regulations and we are fully following those regulations,” Kendall added.

When asked if the college has been implementing the Title IX agreement that was agreed upon by administration and Dickinson students Rose said, “they’re meeting certain aspects of our agreement that they are required to meet.” 

McAvoy said that the reason she is choosing to continue her fight is because “after the agreement, they continued to act in bad faith and I had no confidence in them taking any of this seriously.”