Syracuse University changed a policy last week that forced students to pay hundreds of dollars for Title IX hearing transcripts, and now offers those transcripts at no cost to students.

The change came after Susima Weerakoon, a graduate student in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, directly asked university administrators why SU required students to pay for their Title IX hearing transcripts at a forum last week.

Chief Human Resources Officer Andy Gordon said the following day that SU would make funds available to pay for transcripts.

“Once it became apparent that this set of fees was a burden to students, we took immediate action,” Gordon said in an SU News release.

Weerakoon received an email in September from the university, which stated she’d need to pay between $200 and $600 for a transcription of her Title IX hearing. She needed to use the transcript as evidence to get an order of protection against her abuser, who was a graduate student at SU.

“When I got that email … I just knew that this was something that needed to change,” Weerakoon said.

Weerakoon now participates in the Recognize Us movement, a student group at SU that demanded the university host the forum with administrators, deans and members of the Board of Trustees last week. She and Katherine Sotelo, a senior in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, put out a call for students to request their transcripts from SU and to tell Recognize Us how the school can better serve survivors of sexual and relationship violence.

It wasn’t until the release of the Theta Tau videos and the formation of Recognize Us that Weerakoon said she was able to have a platform where she could directly ask university administrators why students had to pay for transcripts.

“Those are big things, but they’re really superficial,” Weerakoon said. “They kind of just put Band-Aids on the problem.”

Weerakoon and Sotelo agreed SU needs a culture change around sexual and relationship violence.

“The predominant culture of Syracuse University is toxic for minority students, women and victims of sexual assault and relationship violence,” Sotelo said.

SU should help and support low-income women who are victims of sexual and relationship violence, Weerakoon said.

Weerakoon said she left SU for her own safety, and that she had to forfeit scholarships she’d earned because she left. She was forced to pay hundreds of dollars for a lawyer after she was deemed ineligible for a public defender, she said, and a lawyer from SU’s Student Legal Services said they couldn’t help her in a case against another SU student, Weerakoon said.

She eventually got the order of protection from the city of Syracuse, and she was also granted a no-contact order from the university. But the no-contact order did little to protect her off campus, where she and many other graduate students live.

“Off campus, I didn’t feel safe at all,” Weerakoon said. “It was horrifying. I couldn’t focus on school.”

There are still barriers for students looking to seek help with sexual and relationship violence at SU, Weerakoon said. She said women she’s spoken with are uncertain how the Title IX process works, how they can file complaints and whether their cases will be taken seriously.

“The university can definitely put policies in place and train their staff better to make sure that they’re handling survivors with more sensitivity,” Weerakoon said.

Published on April 30, 2018 at 10:18 pm

Contact Kennedy: krose100@syr.edu | @KennedyRose001