In November 2024, the Dickinsonian ran an article by Managing Editor Ella Sizemore ’28 discussing federal changes to Title IX that were released on April 19, 2024. These changes, known as the “2024 Final Rule” required that all student employees act as mandated reporters.
According to Dickinson’s Title IX policy, employees designated as mandated reporters must “report to the Title IX Coordinator any and all information… that reasonably may constitute Title IX Sex Discrimination.”
Previously, the only student employees who were mandated reporters were Resident Advisors and students working for the Department of Public Safety (DPS). Other faculty and staff, such as professors, have always been mandated reporters.
However, this update was not in effect for long, as the 2024 Final Rule was vacated in January 2025 by a federal district court for the eastern district of Kentucky, impacting about 26 states and 600 institutions, such as Dickinson, which had begun to implement the change.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Policy surrounding gender- and sex-discrimination is constantly changing and evolving. The 2025 reversal is only the latest in a series of back-and-forth between the Biden and Trump administrations surrounding Title IX regulations.
“Of course, we have to abide by the laws as an institution,” said Kat Matic, Title IX Coordinator at Dickinson. For Matic, what’s crucial is educating students about the process and their rights, as well as “focusing on the ethical responsibility, so that we can protect people who have been harmed.”
Mandated reporters can play an important role in this as a “critical bridge” between survivors and the resources they need. “When I get a report… it opens that door for me to be able to send that email, and sometimes that has made the difference between somebody getting really critical help they need… It can mean the difference between a student being able to continue their education or not,” said Matic.
As of today, there is no longer a legal responsibility added to most student employees, but “I still always strongly recommend for people to report,” said Matic. She emphasizes to students who may have worries about reporting that the process is “highly trauma-informed and survivor-centric”: “in almost all cases, I look to the survivor to ask them what they want and don’t want to do next.” The priority is “doing right by the survivor,” she said.
The process is different for each survivor according to their various needs. Some choose to pursue restorative justice, which “focuses on a voluntary agreement between two parties,” as opposed to a formal investigation with a hearing.
During the interview, Matic spoke about the changes to her role since she began working on Title IX policy in higher education about 20 years ago. Over the past ten years, the role of the Title IX Coordinator was separated from that of the investigator and final decision-maker. This is intended to eliminate potential biases and enable the Coordinator to emotionally support survivors and “prepare them for the next steps in the process,” said Matic.
Other changes have been more recent. Under the Trump administration’s 2020 rules, which were reinstated this year, an investigation is required to have a live hearing (over video call or in-person) where both parties have the right to hear and see everything in real time.
According to Matic, the impact of this is mixed. While it can be hard for survivors to be in the same room with the respondent, it also encourages transparency and “creates kind of an additional layer of rights for parties,” she said.
Matic has noticed an increase in the number of people coming to have private meetings with her, which she in part attributes to an alleviation of the stigma around her office, as well as advancements in neuroscience and a better understanding of how trauma works. Emphasizing the survivor-centric goals and processes of Title IX “alleviates a kind of mystified pressure that we’ve put on ourselves that doesn’t actually exist in the field… We’ve created, as a society, an illusion of how Title IX works.”
For those seeking confidential support, there is a select group of faculty who are not mandated reporters at Dickinson. Faculty designated as confidential resources enable students “to access support and resources without filing a Complaint,” and include on-campus counselors, health service providers, members of the clergy/chaplains, as well as the Directors of the LGBTQ+ Center, Women’s Center, and Center for Spirituality & Social Justice (Tommy Walcott-Lee, Katie Schweighofer, and Rev. Jessica Chapman Lape, respectively). More information can be found at https://www.dickinson.edu/titleix.
