Eagle Weekend March 20

the Eagle Weekend Edition

AU under investigation for Title IX violations pg. 2

NEWS

2

theEAGLE MARCH 22, 2015 theEAGLE January 30, 2014

AU under investigation for Title IX violations

By Chloe Johnson

AU was added to the list of 104 universities under federal investigation for sexual violence violations of Title IX, The Eagle has learned.

The investigation was opened on March 11. The news was first reported by news subscription service Politico Pro on March 18.

“AU does not tolerate any form of sexual violence or sexual misconduct,” Dean of Students Robert Hradsky said in a 4 p.m. email to students. “University complaints are investigated promptly, reported properly, and steps are immediately taken to stop discriminatory behavior, prevent its

recurrence and remedy its effects, especially through support to the survivor.”

Hradsky also said in the email that the University will work with investigators to answer the complaint.

Department of Education spokesperson Denise Horn confirmed that the investigation was happening, but could not comment on the investigation to the Eagle.

Title IX legislation falls under the Department of Education.

“Since this is an ongoing investigation, I am unable to say anything else at this time,” Horn said in an email.

Under Title IX of the Education

Amendments of 1972, no educational institution that receives federal funds may discriminate based on sex, according to the Department of Justice’s website.

Nearly all universities receive some sort of federal funding.

The updated list of universities under investigation also now includes San Francisco State University and Langston University in Oklahoma. The Department of Education released an initial list of open title IX sexual violence investigations at 55 schools in 2014 and the total has now grown to 104 universities total.

The only other D.C. school on the list is Catholic University.

It is unclear at this time what sparked the investigation.

Student Government President Sophia Wirth said no University administrators had contacted her in the week since the investigation has been open.

“Part of me is surprised, part of me isn’t surprised,” Wirth said. “I think this is a pretty clear indication, as students have been saying for the last year, that AU is not pictureperfect on this issue.”

Click Here for the Rest Of the Story

AU professor sentenced to year and a day in prison

By Kate Magill Professor David Pitts was sentenced to serve 366 days in prison for second-degree burglary on March 20 in D.C. Superior Court.

Pitts was arrested in September 2014 on two burglary charges after breaking into the Foxhall Square Mall on New Mexico Avenue, The Eagle previously reported. He pled guilty to both on Jan. 23, The Eagle also reported.

Pitts, who worked in the School of Public Affairs, will also serve 182 days for theft in the first degree, according to the D.C. Superior Court. Pitts is due to the prison for both sentences May 20, according to court documents.

Dean of SPA Barbara Romzek sent a memo to SPA students announcing the sentencing. Pitts is the former chair of the Department of Public

Administration and Policy. Upon his arrest, Alison Jacknowitz took responsibility of the department.

She will remain in the position for two years.

Pitts employment status is on review by the University, Kelly Alexander, director of Public Relations, said.

Pitts has been barred from all University property upon a suggestion from the Department of Public Safety, Romzek said in the email. If he is released from jail, the bar will remain in place.

Click Here for Updates

Photo courtesy of Jeff Watts/American University

3

SCENE

theEAGLEJanuary MARCH 22, theEAGLE 30,2015 2014 Photo by Arielle Weg/The Eagle

The Gym Rat Diaries: Eating vegan at Native Foods Cafe

By Arielle Weg

When you think of vegan food in college, the first thing that comes to mind may be soggy, raw tofu thrown on a salad from the dining hall. Searching for vegan food that’s good, close by and on a student budget may seem like something that is only in our wildest dreams. But

what if you could find delicious, healthy, cheap vegan food that’s only a few Metro stops away?

Click Here for the Rest Of the Story

Run the Jewels and Biz Markie closing out SUB school year

By Mark Lieberman

Rap duo Run the Jewels and opening act Biz Markie will perform in the Tavern on March 27 for the Student Union Board’s final concert of the academic year.

Doors will open at 8 p.m. for the concert, which is free for AU students with a valid ID, according to a press release.

Related Articles The show comes on the heels of last semester’s Karmin/JoJo concert during Welcome Week and the Broad City comedy showcase in November.

“We couldn’t be more excited for this show,” SUB director Mike Creedon said in the press release.

“After the success of Broad City Live and Chance The Rapper, we knew that Run The Jewels were the perfect act to bring. We’re proud to provide AU a rare chance to see an act that is

FREDDY RODRIGUEZ/THE EAGLE

so powerful and exciting live while they are at their peak.”

Creedon said his team chose Biz Markie in order to show the influence of older hip-hop music on modern acts like Run the Jewels.

“Overall, I see Run The Jewels picking up, reshaping and moving forward with this classic early era of hip-hop,” Creedon said in an email.

“Bringing both eras together is an amazing opportunity.”

Run the Jewels is comprised of Mike Render (known as Killer Mike) and Jamie Meline (known as El-P), both of whom have had active careers in hip-hop since the early 2000s. Killer Mike makes a guest appearance in the OutKast song “Snappin’ and Trappin’.”

Click Here for the Rest Of the Story

Photo by The Come Up Show / Flickr

OPINION

4

theEAGLE January 2014 theEAGLE MARCH30, 22,2015

Staff Editorial:

Title IX investigation a chance to examine campus culture

Earlier this week, The Eagle broke the story to the AU community that AU is one of 104 schools under investigation for Title IX violations related to handling of sexual violence. The investigation was first opened on March 11, but was only reported as a news brief on the subscription service Politico Pro on the morning of March 18, a week later.

The Eagle has since learned that the school’s Title IX compliance officer, Dean of Students Robert Hradsky, knew about the investigation the day it was opened. Members of the administration were aware of the complaint for a significant amount of time without informing students.

About an hour after The Eagle published its initial story, Hradsky sent a memo to the student body

about the investigation.

The timeline of these events is curious, and regardless of actual plans, the resulting appearance is that the University swept the issue under the rug for as long as possible. Those with the knowledge did not even inform Student Government President Sophia Wirth, whose main advocacy issue has been sexual assault.

Despite these failures in communication, this is not an entirely bleak situation. In fact, an inquiry from the Department of Education could be a good thing for students overall. Now that we are under investigation, we can simultaneously uncover wrongdoing in the way our school handles sexual assault and incentivize better treatment of survivors. Ultimately, it will hold us ac-

countable in making real efforts to stop sexual violence on campus.

AU is fond of playing up things that can be put on brochures, like green initiatives and sexual assault prevention programs. The University has made some significant strides in this second arena, with the rollout of the StepUp program and the hire of survivor’s advocate Sara Yzaguirre. The University has made some significant strides in this second arena, with the rollout of the StepUp program and the hire of survivor’s advocate Sara Yzaguirre. But the fact remains that the conduct process for suspected perpetrators is unclear. This makes it seem as if when dealing with sexual assault, AU does things that look pretty, without making any real sys-

tematic changes.

This is a bigger issue than just the Title IX investigation. It is clear that cultural issues surrounding assault are a major problem on campus.

We need to take this opportunity to examine, as a community, if we are really making our campus safe for all students, whether we are preventing assault or following the disciplinary process after one occurs.

The attitude among whoever chose to withhold the information for a week only harms the people who need this investigation most.

The University created an awful image for itself, and a bad environment for students, by not coming out in front of the issue. -E

Op Ed: Boys will be boys

By Emily Dalgo “Boys will be boys.” The saying that I hate the most. What I hate more than this gender-constructing, biased, oversimplified statement, which allows those who say it to brush away aggressive behaviors, is the reminder that society apparently really does believe that boys will be boys, and that it’s just fine to live in a world so blind.

The quality of the food in the Terrace Dining Room tends to correlate with the quality of the weather. Knowing this, my roommate and I decided to go off campus for lunch on a dreary, icy Sunday. Where else would we go besides the Tenleytown Chipotle?

Emily Dalgo on everyday microaggressions

After settling in with my bowl full of rice and love, someone grabbed me from behind. I turned around to see four boys at a booth, maybe 12-years-old, hunched over their burritos laughing hysterically.

I turned back to my roommate who said, “I mean, you definitely don’t know them, right?”

Right. I didn’t know them. I turned and stared at them, hoping to cause some discomfort, when one of them asked me, “What?” I told him I was trying to figure out why I was just touched without permission, to which he replied, “That wasn’t us, why would we touch a random stranger?” More giggles. I

asked them to stop and told myself not to be angry. They were young.

They didn’t know any better. A few minutes later, they threw a wad of napkins at my roommate’s face, and that’s when I lost it.

Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal and environmental slights, snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership. More colloquially, a microaggression is a sometimes-hard-topin-down, casual act of degradation toward a group. These aggressions

can be racial, ethnic, sexual or gender-oriented. Being grabbed by a 12-year-old boy in a public restaurant and then having a ball of napkins hurled at your roommate’s face isn’t necessarily a “slight,” but it is more than just general rudeness; it is an insult that I 100 percent attribute to my sex.

When I got up and began explaining to the boys that what they were doing was not okay, they ignored me, continued laughing and eating their food.

Click Here for the Rest Of the Story

SPORTS

theEAGLE MARCH 30, 22, 2015 theEAGLE January 2014

5

2015

Women’s Basketball loses in First Upcoming Round of NCAA, 75-67 Games

By Jennifer Reyes Correction appended.

AU Women’s Basketball took No.3 seed University of Iowa to the edge in the first half, but ultimately fell short of a win, 75-67.

However outmatched, outskilled and out-experienced the Eagles may have felt, they did not show any insecurities in their first appearance in program history at the Women’s NCAA Tournament. The Eagles and Hawkeyes engaged in a full game, going back and forth and trading hot shots from start to finish.

While AU was making its first appearances at the tournament, host Iowa was making its 24th overall appearance and eighth in a row.

“Through out the entire game they [the team] fought, and if you told me we were going to shoot 44 percent from two, 43 percent from three and 70 percent from the line and lose, I would have been shocked,” two-time Patriot League Coach of the Year head coach Megan Gebbia said.

Click Here for the Rest Of the Story

MARCH 21 Wrestling (NCAA Championships) @ St. Louis, Mo. MARCH 21 W Lacrosse @ Old Dominion, 1 p.m.

MARCH 28 Track & Field @ Navy Invitational MARCH 28 Track & Field @ University of Maryland

SHANNON SCOVEL/THE EAGLE

MARCH 28 W Lacrosse @ Bucknell, 1 p.m.

Members of the women’s basketball team leave on March 18 to board a bus to the airport where they will fly to Iowa.

Women’s basketball sees disappointing attendance this season ByVincent Salandro The AU Women’s Basketball team’s success on the court during the season did not transfer to large volumes of student support in the stands. The Eagles, who recently secured the Patriot League regular season conference title for the third time in program history, are experiencing only marginally higher attendance than previous years.

Low attendance at home games is not limited just to the women’s basketball team, however. AU

women’s sports teams in general do not receive large fan support.

AU’s Field Hockey team averaged 241 fans, the Women’s soccer team averaged 188 spectators and the Women’s Volleyball team, which won Patriot League regular season and tournament titles for the fourth time in the last five years, averaged 462 fans, according to attendance records on aueagles.com.

Low attendance at women’s sporting events is a national trend that is a pressing issue not just at AU but across the country, AU Athletic Director Billy Walker said.

“I’m going to continue to keep this issue in my focus as an emphasis item,” Walker said. “We have such fantastic women’s sports here at AU, we just need to keep marketing them and expanding the fan base beyond the dedicated fans we have currently.”

In the Women’s Basketball team’s 12 regular season games at Bender Arena this season, the Eagles average attendance was 493, according to figures from aueagles.com. While these numbers are an increase from the 350 fans the Eagles averaged in the 2013-14 season, AU ranked

seventh out of the 10 Patriot League schools in average home attendance, according to attendance statistics on patriotleague.org.

“We don’t really get many fans. I don’t think its really picked up over the years,” senior guard Jen Dumiak said in an interview with the Eagle on Nov. 12, 2014. “I don’t see people supporting women’s teams as much [as the men’s teams].”

Click Here for the rest of the story