Brown reaches settlement on Title VI complaints

The Schooling Division’s Workplacefor Civil Rights has settled with Brown College over the establishment’s dealing with of about 75 antisemitic or Islamophobic incidents reported between October 2023 and March 2024, the workplace introduced Monday. OCR criticized Brown for failing to finish investigations and, in some instances, abandoning complaints when the complainant didn’t reply to the college’s emails.

In a letter to Brown president Christina Paxson, the OCR detailed a number of complaints that the college failed to analyze, together with one wherein a Jewish pupil stated they had been referred to as a “Zionist pig Jew” and one other wherein a Palestinian pupil stated they had been aggressively accosted by one other particular person.

Based on OCR, Brown, which acquired important consideration for pro-Palestinian protests on its campus—two of which led to arrests this fall—didn’t comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the regulation that requires faculties that obtain federal funding to guard their college students from discrimination on the premise of race, nationwide origin or shared ancestry. By neglecting to comply with up with complainants, the workplace stated, Brown failed to meet its obligation to answer, examine and treatment complaints.

“OCR is worried that the College could have conditioned a fuller Title VI response on replying to the College’s outreach emails, fairly than on assessing if the experiences constituted discover of a hostile setting requiring extra steps to redress the particular issues raised and whether or not they individually or cumulatively raised potential hostile environments based mostly on shared ancestry requiring redress,” the workplace wrote to Paxson.

It’s the newest settlement OCR has reached with a college over shared ancestry violations of Title VI because the Israel-Hamas warfare’s onset. In agreements with Metropolis College of New York, the College of Michigan and Lafayette School, the workplace reported comparable shortcomings, critiquing the establishments for subpar or inconsistent responses to complaints.

Brown already sought to treatment its Title VI course of in February, releasing a brand new coverage that claims if a complainant doesn’t choose to maneuver ahead with an investigation, a newly created campus Workplace of Fairness Compliance and Reporting will tackle the position of the complainant.

Whereas OCR recommended the college for being proactive with coverage modifications, new initiatives surrounding Title VI schooling and new trainings associated to antisemitism and Islamophobia, it questioned whether or not the insurance policies would sufficiently cowl Title VI complaints from people not affiliated with the college.

Below the settlement between OCR and Brown, the college’s subsequent steps will embrace persevering with to evaluate its insurance policies and procedures, conducting annual antidiscrimination trainings, sustaining data associated to Title VI complaints, conducting a evaluate of the college’s Title VI responses, and creating an motion plan based mostly on the outcomes of a campus local weather survey about shared-ancestry discrimination.

“The College is glad that the voluntary decision with OCR enforces and reaffirms Brown’s dedication to strengthening our insurance policies, methods and operations to make sure a campus setting the place college students, college and workers are secure and supported,” Russell C. Carey, Brown’s govt vp for planning and coverage and interim vp for campus life, stated in an announcement launched by the college Monday.