The two, separate federal complaints that sexual assault survivors have filed against UW-Whitewater are complaints against that institution for the failure to comply with lawful requirements for handling these alleged survivors’ claims (regardless of the underlying facts in any given claimant’s case).
(That’s why, when Title IX complainants seek federal recourse, they say that they have been assaulted twice – once from an assailant, and a second time when they feel they have been denied the required Title IX support from their own campuses. A federal Title IX complaint is against a school for failing to respond as required to the request for local assistance.)
These complainants allege that, apart from the underlying facts of each assault, UW-Whitewater and one of her principal administrators failed to provide the standard of care and responsiveness that the law requires. Both women allege not merely that UW-Whitewater’s Dean of Students, Mary Beth Mackin, was deficient in her response, but that she was unlawfully so. The second complaint, pointedly, claims that UW-Whitewater acted in a sexually discriminatory way, itself an additional violation of the law.
More seriously, these two women allege that UW-Whitewater has actually and effectually obstructed the required processing of their complaints.
The inescapable legal issue here is how UW-Whitewater processes complaints, and whether that institution has done so as the law requires. The practical issue is that failure to treat all complaints as the law requires will dissuade future sexual assault survivors from coming forward.
If officials oppose applicable federal laws, the legitimate response is to petition for an amendment or repeal of those laws.
No one employed at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, regardless of his or her role, has a right to disregard existing legal requirements. It does not matter how much those in the administration might wish to balance the law against other (often self-interested and self-protective) reputational considerations.
The law does not allow that balancing. No official is above – nor any individual below – the law. It does not matter how important officials believe they are, how much other work they feel has gone well, etc.
The legal question is how public officials, receiving public funds, bound by federal law, complied with that federal law (regardless of the underlying facts in any given claimant’s case). There is neither a legal (nor an ethical) escape from this fundamental question.
Practically, the most important question is what actually happened to sexual assault survivors, and the well-being of those survivors and future ones.
The nature of these Title IX complaints, as matters under law, concerns how an institution has addressed the requests for assistance that it received from those within its care.
See, concerning these two claims:
How UW-Whitewater Treated a Sexual Assault Victim
A Second Sex-Assault Survivor Files Federal Complaint Against UW-Whitewater