College is supposed to be a time of discovery, freedom, and new beginnings, but for too many students, it has become a battlefield where the system designed to protect them only deepens their wounds. A special report by The Post has found that the Title IX process—the network of campus offices tasked with investigating sexual assault and harassment—is failing both alleged victims and the accused in deeply human ways. What began in 1972 as a landmark law to prevent sex-based discrimination in education never originally mentioned sexual violence. It was only in 2011 that President Obama’s guidance stretched the definition to include sexual assault, and then in 2020 President Trump’s regulations introduced courtroom-style live hearings. Each presidential administration has rewritten the rules, but the people caught in the middle remain the same: scared teenagers and young adults trying to survive an ordeal they never expected, often with no clear path forward. Legal experts, survivors, and accused students all told The Post that lives have been shattered by badly managed investigations, untrained Title IX officers, institutional bias, and countercomplaints that turn victims into defendants. “Two schools can have identical facts in terms of a situation involving a sexual assault, but there can be different outcomes,” said Megan Thomas, a New York-based sexual assault attorney. The law may be federal, but the way it is applied is a patchwork of discretion, inconsistency, and human error. At its best, Title IX is a promise of safety and fairness; at its worst, it is a bureaucratic maze that leaves everyone feeling betrayed.
Nobody knows that pain better than Golda Daphna, who was a virgin when she reported a male student for allegedly raping and physically abusing her during her senior year at Columbia University in 2021. Now 27, she grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community where sex before marriage was forbidden and coming forward felt like a betrayal of everything she had been taught. “For me to go out and to come out and say that I was raped and go to the police didn’t make me look good in my own community,” she recalled. “There was a lot that I had to lose.” She filed a police report anyway, but police found no probable cause to arrest. Then she reported the assault to Columbia, and the university opened its own investigation. What followed was not a search for truth but a dragging, months-long tit-for-tat war. Nearly every allegation she made was met with a countercomplaint from the accused student, including retaliatory accusations that she had also sexually assaulted him. One complaint even characterized her asking him for a hug as harassment. Under Title IX procedures, schools cannot simply dismiss countercomplaints because they come from the person already accused; they must investigate them with the same seriousness and grant both students similar procedural rights, even when police have discounted them. “It was really an eye for an eye,” Daphna said. A no-contact order offered no refuge because it applied both ways, and the two kept crossing paths. She stopped going to the kosher dining hall because he was there. As graduation approached and the investigation was still unresolved, officials encouraged mediation. Exhausted and afraid that a lack of resolution could jeopardize her diploma, she signed a mutual release and non-disparagement agreement, ending the case without any formal finding. “I was just an Orthodox girl from Long Island. I really didn’t stand a chance,” she said. Columbia declined to comment on her case, citing federal privacy law, but said it investigates cross-complaints alongside originals and prohibits retaliation.
The same sense of helplessness haunts families on the other side of the country. At California’s Saddleback College, Aurora Knight believes university officials misread her son Marcus’s innocent attempts at social connection as threatening. Marcus, 18, has autism and cerebral palsy. In 2017, two female students complained that he followed them, took photos, and made unwanted physical contact. One said he tried to put his arm around her and place her hand on his thigh; another said he repeatedly sought selfies, followed her, and forcefully placed a hand on her shoulder. But Aurora told The Post that the woman directly involved wasn’t the one who reported him, and she was never told who filed the original complaint. “I asked for security footage, I asked for a hearing, we never got one,” she said. She disputed key parts of the allegations, argued that Marcus was just trying to make friends by taking selfies, and insisted the school failed to account for his disabilities. Saddleback initially considered suspending him but ultimately issued a written reprimand. Marcus challenged the process, arguing he deserved a live hearing and cross-examination; a trial court agreed, but a California appeals court reversed the decision in 2021, finding that the punishment was minor enough that the process was sufficient. Aurora says the ordeal devastated her son, turning him into a recluse who gained forty pounds. “If you are at the mercy of one individual, they can end up thumbs up or thumbs down, based on who you are, how you look, and your demographic, or where you come from, and if they like you or not,” she said. She believes Title IX should be independent from school administration. A similar account emerges from Texas A&M, where a former Corps of Cadets member says she followed protocol after allegedly being sexually assaulted by a fellow cadet in 2024. She underwent a rape exam and reported to a senior Corps official, but instead of helping, she was blamed for her drinking and warned that another incident could send her to alcohol rehabilitation. “Someone had sexually assaulted me, but I left feeling like I was the problem,” she said. The official failed to notify the Title IX office, a mandatory-reporting violation the university later substantiated. Two months later, the same cadet assaulted her again, and she continued facing disciplinary proceedings within the Corps. When her case finally reached Title IX, the accused cadet filed a countercomplaint, identifying his desired outcome as an agreement for her to withdraw her original case. She was investigated for months afterward and ultimately signed a resolution agreement just to graduate.
The investigation process itself often re-traumatizes survivors rather than helping them heal. Shailey Ostlund reported her former boyfriend for alleged sexual assault at Indiana University in 2015 and was told the investigation would take six weeks. It lasted six months. With no physical evidence from the night—only a video she had recorded of herself reminding her of the attempted assault—going to Title IX was her only option. She obtained a protective order through the Bloomington Police Department in 2017, but the university process was a nightmare. Personnel kept changing, communication was nearly impossible, and much of the evidence she submitted was redacted from her case file. “They would tell me what I was allowed to add. I would compile the evidence. I would check over it with them, and then I would submit the evidence,” she said. But when she returned to review her file, “The majority of the evidence that I submitted ended up being redacted. I never got a clear answer as to why.” Her former boyfriend, a prominent young jazz musician named Chris Parker, was allowed to testify along with multiple character witnesses. Ostlund described constantly chasing answers and pushing the investigation forward herself, an impossible burden for someone still deep in trauma. “They’re making these people who are deep in the recent trauma be the ones that have to advocate for themselves, and that’s nearly impossible to do,” she said. Indiana University ultimately suspended Parker for sexual assault, issuing a no-contact and no-trespass order barring him from campus. But Ostlund said he repeatedly violated those restrictions, including returning to record music for a radio broadcast. Instead of expelling him, the university imposed another suspension, and Parker eventually completed his degree virtually. She suspects his standing in the local jazz community and family prominence influenced the university’s handling. A former IU professor, Monika Herzig, called Parker a “victim of a bunch of weird circumstances” and questioned the school’s right to squash his potential. Following his suspension in 2022, Indiana students protested the soft punishment, urging the school to “hold predators accountable.” Angela Reddock Wright, an attorney and former Title IX investigator, said schools may face competing interests when prominent students are involved: “Maybe the discipline is not as strong because there’s a level of wanting to protect that person because of their purported contributions to that environment.” Indiana University told The Post it takes reports of sexual misconduct extremely seriously, citing expanded investigative staffing and mandatory-reporting training.
Beyond individual horror stories, the system itself is built on shaky foundations. Although all universities operate under the same federal law, they have enormous discretion over how investigations are conducted, and the qualifications of the people handling them vary wildly. There is no national professional license or standardized exam for Title IX investigators. Required training lasts just a few days, is available to anyone regardless of background or experience, and has no minimum number of hours or frequency. Yet these individuals make decisions that can alter students’ lives forever. Devi Jags was 20 when she reported a male student at Xavier University in Cincinnati who claimed to have a gun after she rejected his romantic advances in 2016. Her Title IX complaint ultimately failed, and despite a no-contact order, she kept encountering him on campus. “It absolutely impacted my education,” she said. Frustrated, she decided to become a Title IX officer and serve on a university conduct panel herself, hoping to make the system fairer. But she was shocked to learn she received only three days of training. “Nobody is qualified to be on a university conduct hearing, in my opinion, with that basic level of training,” she said. Kayleigh Baker, vice president for practice excellence at TNG Consulting, which manages the Association of Title IX Administrators, said federal requirements don’t explicitly cover practical skills like detailed credibility assessments, report writing, and trauma-informed interviewing. “The regulations set the floor for compliance, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they set the best practices,” she said, noting that ATIXA goes above and beyond current requirements, but not all trainings do. Title IX personnel also aren’t subject to the same nationwide continuing-education requirements as many licensed professionals, even as federal rules and campus expectations keep shifting. The consequences of poor training were on full display at Cornell University, where seven fraternity brothers were accused of drugging and gang-raping a student. One accused student later alleged in a lawsuit that a panel hearing member drove for roughly forty-five minutes during live Zoom testimony from a key defense witness, and that her “repeated inattention” “irreparably compromised” the proceeding. The hearing, meant to resemble a court, was anything but.
The need for reform has never been more urgent. For Devi Jags, becoming a Title IX officer was supposed to be a way to fix a broken system, but she soon realized that one motivated individual could not undo deep structural flaws. The report calls for more consistent oversight, ongoing training, and a recognition that every policy decision has a human consequence. Some changes are beginning to emerge: in the case of the Cornell seven, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced in late October that she intended to have state police handle all sexual offense complaints instead of campus police, hoping to strengthen trust in investigations. But that is just one response to a much wider crisis. Experts say schools need to invest in investigators who understand trauma, can accurately assess credibility, and are trained to write clear reports. They need to balance the rights of the accused with the needs of survivors, and they need to do it with transparency and impartiality, not institutional politics. Students should not have to be their own advocates while navigating the worst moments of their lives. They should not have to sign mutual release agreements because they are too exhausted to keep fighting. They should not have their evidence redacted for reasons nobody explains, or be blamed for drinking when they were assaulted, or be punished for asking for a hug when they are coping with trauma. The Title IX system was never intended to be a full criminal justice system, but it has become the only recourse for many students. And for those who have been through it, the scars remain long after graduation. As Shailey Ostlund put it, “It was very much a situation where I was going through the worst period of my life, and I had no support from the Title IX process. I was a teenager. Title IX itself was just a s**t show, a mess.” Her words are harsh, but they reflect a broader truth: until schools treat Title IX with the seriousness it deserves, the promise of equal education remains hollow for the thousands of students who enter that system every year, hoping for justice and leaving with only pain.
