Q&A with Title IX Activist Sofie Karasek

Over the past year, a movement among sexual assault survivors dissatisfied with Berkeley’s mismanagement of their assault reports and investigations has lead to an ASUC senate bill of no confidence in Berkeley’s sexual assault policies, a state audit of these same policies, and three federal complaints against UC Berkeley.

Perhaps these actions are the “many thoughtful comments” the University of California’s press statement refers to in its official announcement on Friday of the UC’s revised Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence Policy. Sofie Karasek, a Cal junior and sexual assault survivor, has certainly made “many thoughtful comments” since helping to spearhead the campaign to uphold students’ rights under the sexual violence clause of Title IX at Berkeley.

Last week Karasek sat down with Caliber to discuss her own experiences as a student activist and give her thoughts on the revised policy and changes still to be made.

What do you think of the campus’s new sexual assault policy that has been described in Chancellor Dirk’s recent emails?

I appreciate that they’re doing something. I think it’s important that they’re recognizing that there’s a problem and that they’re working to fix parts of it. But basically what he said was, “here are some resources and let’s hire new people,” but that doesn’t mean that they’re hiring good new people.

On another note, the appeal right that was put into the policy was supposed to be there, under federal law, years ago. It’s not something that they’re doing out of their own volition. It’s something that was required of them that they didn’t have before, and that students told them to change [in April 2013]. And they didn’t implement it until September of 2013. It’s hardly anything to be proud of.

The Title IX advisory committee has met a handful of times this year, so it’s not really like that’s doing anything either. They updated the website they have, but for the most part, the website doesn’t give any guidance to survivors if they’re assaulted. And it doesn’t allow you to anonymously report. It says that you’re filing a “public incident report.” What does a public incident report even mean? It sounds like you saw someone expose themself. If you’ve just been sexually assaulted, you don’t want anything to be public. You’re trying to do this so you’ll feel safe on your campus without making it into a long and treacherous process.

There are a lot of problems that still exist. And the university will try to package each change as, “see we solved this problem,” when actually they’re not really solving the problem. They haven’t changed the policy enough in a substantial way.

What are the changes to Berkeley’s sexual assault policy that you think would be most meaningful?

There are a lot of things. First, under Title IX schools are supposed to resolve cases with a preponderance of evidence standard, which means that it’s more likely than not that the sexual violence or harassment occurred. Right now, they (the administration) are definitely not doing that. They’re dissuading survivors from reporting or thinking that they have any agency in their cases, and that is illegal.

Second, there aren’t any Formal Investigations because the administration dissuades survivors, or makes it so hard that they don’t want to participate. There’s just a general lack of transparency and accountability. Currently, you have the right to request a Formal Investigation, but that doesn’t mean you actually get one. It’s at the discretion of the administration if your case even gets investigated. Survivors should have the right to have a Formal Investigation, and the investigations should be impartial, fair and timely. It shouldn’t take a year and a half to have an investigation; it’s recommended by the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education that the investigations should take 60 days.

How has your experience of working on campus-related policy changed your image of Berkeley?

Even after all of this, I still love Berkeley. I’m very glad that I came here; I would not have wanted to go to any other university. It was my dream school from the get-go and it still is. But even though I wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere else, I’m really shocked by how the administration has acted. You’re not expecting any university to not care about the safety of its own students. Here’s this university that prides itself on social justice and on being a public institution, and the fact that they are handling sexual assault cases this way is just so surprising, especially to people who are going through this process. You just don’t want to believe it. It’s part of a systemic problem that I certainly didn’t expect.

We can expect a lot better of Berkeley than to sweep sexual assault under the rug. It’s just awful, and it shouldn’t be awful. I love Berkeley so I want to change Berkeley.

How do you juggle all of your commitments – school, activities and working on campus sexual assault issues?

Basically I’ve been skipping classes, but that’s not good. I think Google calendar has been really helpful, just being able to organize my life into hourly chunks has been great. I’m also starting to delegate more to other people. Have other people do interviews, which I think is both good for my sanity and me and good for developing new leaders to continue the work that we’re doing.

I think I’ve been fortunate enough to have some professors who have been very understanding. It’s difficult to, every semester, feel like I have to tell them this story. I really hate doing that. In many cases, the university knows about these assailants, and they’re not taking action. It’s completely ridiculous. So maybe I’m not going to get as good grades for graduate school, but at least I can help while I’m here for something that’s really important.