Clarity About the New Title IX Office

The new location of the Title IX Office. Source: Lily Jandrisevits '25

“I honestly don’t know too much about it, but it seems like it’s a good resource,” said Bridget Duffy ’25 when asked about Marist College’s Title IX Office. This opinion was shared by many students who have heard of the Title IX office but are not clear how it functions at Marist.

Prior to this school year, Marist moved the Title IX office to the Murray Student Center and hired a full-time coordinator and investigator. 

These changes came after student protests in April 2021 when students critiqued Marist’s alleged lack of transparency and inaction in cases of abuse and harassment. They especially wanted to see more funding for the Title IX Office, which previously had only one interim coordinator. 

Kelly Yough, the new coordinator, said, “the Title IX Office’s general purpose is to help alleviate sex and gender-based misconduct and discrimination that could potentially interfere with one’s right to an education.” 

The Title IX office provides education and training to the campus and programs to raise awareness and reduce risk on topics such as stalking, dating, domestic violence, sexual assault, affirmative consent and more. The office also responds to all reports of sex or gender-based misconduct and discrimination. 

Aidan McQuaid ’24 said he had not heard much about Title IX. The only things he has seen are “some posters in the lobby of the Student Center.”

In terms of visibility, Yough said it is “absolutely” a priority. Moving the office to the Student Center and programs like speaking to all freshmen during Welcome Week were meant to spread awareness.

However, many freshmen said they didn’t find the videos shown during Welcome Week to be helpful. Elise Rosenthal ’25 said they seemed “outdated” when trying to address topics like prejudice and hazing on campus. Duffy agreed and said they were “not serious enough” and made many students laugh with their cheesiness instead of taking the topics seriously. 

Jack Navin ’25 disagreed, saying that he thought most of the videos did a “relatively good job” and “using former Marist students as actors made them seem more real.”

To address this, Yough said, “we will look to improve programs each time based on student feedback,” but she believes this is the first time that Title IX has been able to speak to freshmen in person, and it shows “a huge first step.”

Yough also explained the Amnesty Policy, something students may not be aware of. She described it saying, “simply, the College will not pursue a drug and/or alcohol violation if a student reports an act of violence, including dating violence, domestic violence, stalking or sexual assault and was using drugs and/or alcohol at the time the violence occurred.” 

The Amnesty Policy was created to help alleviate the concern of a drug or alcohol violation for the reporter. It encourages a victim to come forward if they experienced an act of violence against them even if they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident. 

“Bystanders are present more than 60% of the time when an incident occurs,” Yough said. “The goal of this policy is to help promote a culture where students step in and disrupt or prevent incidents from occurring and escalating.” 

The new location of the Title IX Office is room 352 of the Student Center, near the Nelly Goletti Theatre. Yough shared that there is an “open-door policy for students to meet with the staff when they have questions and concerns.”