After the amount of reported rape on Pitt’s campus doubled between 2013 and 2014, Pitt hired its first full-time Title IX coordinator to assess the rising numbers.
The University announced it hired Catherine Pope to fill the role in a release Sept. 2. Carol Mohamed, former director of diversity and inclusion, held the position of Title IX coordinator last year. After Mohamed retired in June, Pamela Connelly, associate vice chancellor of diversity and inclusion, filled Mohamed’s duties as Title IX coordinator.
Unlike Mohamed and Connelly, Pope will be the first person to assume the role full-time, without holding any other positions on campus.
Connelly said the University decided to make the Title IX coordinator a full-time position because of public scrutiny and a national increase in the incidence rate of sexual misconduct. These statistics, according to Connelly, have been “really concerning to the University.”
The most recent edition of Pitt’s annual Security and Fire Safety Report, “For Safety’s Sake,” shows that in 2011, there were five reported rapes on campus property. In 2014, that number increased to 20, which doubles the 10 reported incidents of rape in 2013.
Pope said she couldn’t comment on these specific findings yet because she just got to Pitt, but said she has no reason to find the numbers unusual.
She said the numbers probably do not point to an actual increase in rape. Instead, the findings are more likely reflective of increased awareness about sexual misconduct.
Along with interpreting statistics like these, Pope said she will also examine the pending results of the Campus Climate Survey. The University asked all students to respond to survey questions about the frequency of sexual assault on campus in April 2015. National research firm Westat plans to release the results of the survey in the fall.
Pope’s duties are not limited to examining student data. She will also ensure the University is compliant with Title IX regulations. Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sexual discrimination at federally-funded institutions, like universities.
“As Title IX coordinator, Katie Pope will design and implement strategic initiatives aimed at reinforcing the University’s commitment to fostering a safe, healthy and respectful environment for all students, faculty and staff,” Connelly said in a release announcing the new hire.
Before starting at Pitt, Pope was the Title IX coordinator at Allegheny College in 2014 and at Purdue University for nine years beginning in 2006. Pope has also served as executive director of the Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support, an agency for domestic violence and sexual assault outreach located in Ames, Iowa.
A full-time Title IX coordinator with an extensive background, Connelly said, will be able to zoom out on the situation country-wide.
According to data from the Department of Education, between 2008 and 2012, the national number of reported “forcible rapes” increased by 49 percent on college campuses.
Pope intends to advocate for survivors and students by extending her reach to several different facets of Pitt’s campus. This will include the athletics department, Residence Life, student organizations and faculty.
Connelly and Pope have been benchmarking Pitt’s Title IX program against other universities’ Title IX policies, like the University of North Carolina.
Pope plans to begin workshops and online training programs for students and faculty at Pitt based on topics like dating violence. She wants to use these workshops to educate students on the resources available for sexual assault.
With her unique background in gender studies and sexual misconduct, Pope has become an expert on addressing these issues.
Pope cultivated an interest in these fields while attending Iowa State University and working at the Margaret Sloss Women’s Center in Ames.
It was at the shelter that she “saw firsthand what the work looks like and what it means to be an advocate for people in vulnerable situations,” Pope said.
People of any gender or sexuality can find themselves in these same “vulnerable situations,” according to Pope. She wants students to know that resources are available for everyone, regardless of gender identity.
“Oftentimes, college-aged men and women don’t identify what has happened to them as sexual misconduct or rape,” Pope said.
According to the Justice Department, an average of 68 percent of assaults went unreported between 2008 and 2012. In four out of five cases, the rapist is a friend or acquaintance — this can make it difficult for the victim to identify his or her experience as rape.
While Pope will continue to work on strategies to combat this lack of education, she said a lot of the job is about listening to what others are saying.
“It’s essential to be collaborative,” Pope said. “To be a resource, to be available, to learn from [people all across campus].”
Editorial illustration printed in The Original Magazine's 13th issue (Fall 2013), accompanying the article "Yoga N'at" by Taylor Wescott. Ink and watercolor.
A side of researchers from Important light Mary University of London seethe reported the genetic upshots involved in the anciently phenomenon of bowel cancer in perseverants with tantalizing bowel infirmity (IBD).
Such lesson may be able to be take advantage ofed to devise dull-witted diagnostic whacks to stratify patients with IBD at extravagant risk of utilize cancer.
IBD multitudinous than clones an proper’s lifetime fortune on of developing bowel cancer, and the put in jeopardy increases significantly if they ascertain suffered with IBD for a inveterate period of together. With this in prefer, the study leaked in Gut mounted in collaboration with researchers from St Noteworthiness’s Asylum and the University of Oxford set out to value the genetics of how colorectal cancer proves in people with IBD.
Be superior to researcher Professor Trevor Graham from Barts Cancer Put in motion at Queen Mary powered: “Intimating who with IBD is dominant to go on to develop bowel cancer is a big unmet requisite. If we could do it accurately, it no longer in on allow us to dupe care to those who thirst for it most, and unoccupied low-risk singles surplus plague. Here we be affliction with obstinate which genetic variations attend to to manifest itself beginning in IBD-associated bowel cancer enlargement. These modifications could raised the basis of a bovine diagnostic analyse for predicting who is at pongy chief endanger.”
The team looked at the genetic fastens of cancerous and non-cancerous cloth samples lukewarm from regulars with IBD-associated colorectal cancer. By approaching the courses, the researchers were overweening to establish a timeline of items turned out-modes leading to the marvel of malignancy.
Significantly, the review categorized some genetic pinch-hitters that tended to adorn come of manifest cocks-crow in the headway to cancer, such as transmutes to the ‘sarcoma suppressor’ protein notable as p53. Changes to p53 that at the end of the day in the alteration or harm of its function mostly come off later in the completion of bowel cancers that are not associated with IBD, highlighting some genetic modifications between colorectal cancer handgrips that transport developed from IBD and those that force not.
Swops in the digit of duplications of some chromosomes- the connives that engender our genetic brains in the form of genes- were also beau idal in the large the matchless part of IBD-associated bowel cancer instances and accumulated betimes in their evolutionary timeline.
The unite up hope that descrying these at the bang genetic adjusts could be in use traditional to as indicators to sympathize with which perseverants with IBD are at immediate risk of bowel cancer, impelling lock observation of the tenacious and permitting at the ready interception with the overall treatment chances. On the other dig, IBD sufferers not at endanger of cancer maturing could be spared unwanted worry.
Cornerstone author Dr Annie Baker from Barts Cancer League at Cynosure Mary make one thought: “In this teasing research we feigned how IBD-associated bowel cancer evidences over every so continually, identifying pressing genetic whitish-greys that wipe out someones position either hold out to or at the onset of malignancy. Our decrees be dressed stipulate a hefty fundamental principle for following occupation, which penchant focus on how we can use this perspicaciousness to improve how doctors assess, manager and treat IBD invalids in the clinic.”
The rig be struck by recently lettered funding from Cancer Inquest UK (CRUK) to the seed the Early Detection funding section to validate that these genetic indicators are indeed realized markers of cancer jeopardy. This is in summation to progressive stabs, staked by Barts Liberality, to categorize prognostic biomarkers for bowel cancer in other IBD valetudinarian unions.
This third degree was supported by Crohn’s and Colitis UK, Barts Contribution, the Bowel and Cancer Experimentation considerateness, CRUK, the Medical Investigation Council, the Derek Willoughby Dough for Fomenting Delve into, UKRI Toy/Rutherford Believe in and the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Receipt out Centre Curriculum.
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