At the October meeting of the Brown University Community Council — a forum for Brown community members to discuss University-related issues — University policy and support systems related to sexual violence and misconduct were at the forefront of the discussion.
The topic of conversation at the council’s first meeting of the academic year comes amid a national conversation surrounding sexual violence on campus after former Cornell student Jane Doe filed a lawsuit alleging she was gang-raped and sexually assaulted by several members of a campus fraternity in 2024.
Associate Vice President for Institutional Equity, Accessibility and Compliance Martha Alexander shared what she called a “Care Compliance Continuum,” a system to alleviate the disconnect between mandatory federal Title IX regulations and person-centered care in sexual violence cases.
Alexander was joined by BWell Health Promotion Director Tanya Purdy and first-year Ph.D. student Siddharth Yende ’26 GS, who is a sexual assault prevention education peer facilitator. The two shared available education resources such as the BWell and Office of Equity Compliance and Reporting workshops and BWell’s peer education groups.
They also discussed survivor support resources, including the BWell Sexual Harm Acute Response and Empowerment advocates, compliance and mandated Title IX reporters and broader community support. “We all play a part in this, and so how we do that is by training a lot of our community partners across the entire institution to understand their role in survivor support,” Purdy said at the meeting.
“We will always support people who experience violence, regardless of whether there is an internal resolution option available,” Alexander said during the meeting.
After their presentation, the meeting was opened up for questions. The discussion that followed centered on why the only mandatory sexual misconduct training is for incoming first-years, while the vast majority of other programming is optional.
The reasoning provided by Yende and Purdy for most trainings being optional was that building connections with invested attendees is more productive than “having 200 people half-listen to us,” which is more likely at compulsory meetings, Yende said.
In an interview with The Herald following the meeting, Undergraduate Council of Students President Ariel Shifrin ’27 said that the UCS plays an important role in improving the campus environment surrounding sexual assault and misconduct.
“What I’m very sensitive to this year is thinking about how UCS can add to the conversation rather than talk over people who have a more valid reason to be in the conversation,” Shifrin said. “I know that the incident at Cornell is highlighting the importance of this work, but it’s not the start of this work at Brown.”
The meeting then transitioned to presentations on the Community Dialogue Project and updates on the University’s security measures.
Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Sarah Latham shared security updates from the summer, including the release of an executive summary of the Dec. 13 after-action review and a security action plan, both conducted by global consulting firm Teneo.
Latham discussed the new Safety and Security Steering Committee, which is advised by the Campus Safety Advisory Committee. These committees will discuss ongoing security topics including the use of body cameras on Brown security officers, whether officers take their firearms with them when off the job and whether Brown should connect to the Providence Real Time Crime Center.
Chief of Staff to the President Dacia Read then spoke about the Ever True Roadmap to Recovery. She shared three facets of recovery systems: safety and security; targeted comprehensive support for students, faculty and staff; and public health programming.
The meeting ended with a presentation on the Community Dialogue Project from Director Anthony Medeiros and Dean of the College Ethan Pollock. The CDP holds trainings, facilitated dialogues and group experiences for faculty and students to increase the level of discourse on campus.
“Our goal in these dialogues is not to get people to agree, not even close. It’s for folks to get comfortable with divergence,” Medeiros said in an interview after the meeting. “It’s to create a space where people can share totally different points of view and hear what are the stories, values and experiences underlying that, and not just focus on that top-line position.”
Student organizations can bring in the CDP to run a dialogue workshop with their members. “I would personally encourage any student organizations on campus that want to have CDP run a module at their meetings to do so,” Shifrin said.
Jeremiah Farr is a senior staff writer covering university hall and higher education.
