{"id":3791,"date":"2026-10-22T22:55:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/?p=3791"},"modified":"2026-10-22T22:55:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:55:15","slug":"inside-on-the-wrong-side-sociologist-nicole-bedera-on-how-universities-shield-perpetrators-and-fail-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/?p=3791","title":{"rendered":"Inside ‘On the Wrong Side’: Sociologist Nicole Bedera on How Universities Shield Perpetrators and Fail Survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sociologist Nicole Bedera recently joined co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell on the Fiction\/Non\/Fiction<\/em> podcast to discuss the high-profile Cornell 7 case and her new book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence<\/em>. <\/p>\n

During the wide-ranging interview, Bedera explored how the recent allegations involving an Ivy League student who reported a gang rape at a fraternity party mirror a long-standing historical tradition of institutional mishandling. Rather than being isolated incidents, she argues, these structural failures reflect how universities routinely prioritize reputation management and liability avoidance over the safety and equal educational access of their students.<\/p>\n

The conversation deepens as Bedera outlines the history of Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, and traces how sexual violence eventually came to fall under its legal framework. The discussion also addresses the fluctuating effectiveness of Title IX since its 1972 inception, the impact of shifting federal regulations under successive administrations, and why university administrators consistently frame systemic failures as anomalous events. Furthermore, Bedera draws on her fieldwork inside an anonymized Title IX office\u2014conducted during her time as a victim advocate\u2014to propose radical administrative reforms, including the potential reimagining of Title IX as an independent state agency.<\/p>\n

The Cornell 7 Case and Systemic Institutional Responses<\/h3>\n

The interview opens with a discussion centered on the case known as the Cornell 7, which has drawn intense public scrutiny. The case has captured widespread national attention largely because none of the alleged perpetrators have faced criminal charges, nor have the universities involved issued any significant disciplinary punishments. Observers have noted striking parallels with similar controversies unfolding at other elite institutions, such as the University of Chicago, keeping institutional accountability for campus sexual assault at the forefront of public discourse.<\/p>\n

Ganeshananthan asked Bedera whether the intense public focus on the Cornell case represents a genuine game-changer or merely another typical chapter in how universities handle sexual violence reports. In On the Wrong Side<\/em>, Bedera details how women who report assaults to Title IX officers are frequently met with bureaucratic stonewalling, discouraged from filing formal complaints, and subjected to systemic paperwork shufflings designed to minimize institutional liability.<\/p>\n

According to Bedera, while the Cornell case should<\/em> serve as a turning point, it will only do so if the public demands structural change. She contends that the case is, in practice, entirely typical of how higher education institutions operate. <\/p>\n

"No matter what we\u2019re seeing in public, I can almost guarantee that the conversation happening at Cornell behind closed doors is school administrators being defensive, saying that people just don\u2019t understand their process, don\u2019t understand what a good job that they did," Bedera explained during the interview.<\/p>\n

To illustrate how deeply entrenched this defensive posture is, Bedera recalled her own research inside a university that experienced a massive public scandal during her study year, marked by multiple murders in the campus community, including the killing of a female student. When she asked administrators if the institution planned to reform its safety and disciplinary processes in the wake of such a profound institutional failure, their response was dismissive. Rather than evaluating their own shortcomings, administrators blamed the victim, suggesting that the tragedy could have been avoided if only she had utilized the existing institutional mechanisms more effectively.<\/p>\n

Bedera noted that a parallel narrative has emerged around the Cornell case, with local police and district attorney offices subtly shifting focus toward how the survivor\u2014referred to publicly as Jane Doe\u2014reported the incident, rather than examining the underlying alleged assault. <\/p>\n

"That\u2019s really how schools tend to respond in these moments," Bedera said. "We\u2019ve already seen some of that response from Cornell, certainly from the police and the DA\u2019s office, making it sound that if Jane Doe just would have reported better, everything would have gone fine, so we really have to push back on that."<\/p>\n

When evaluating whether the Cornell case is an anomaly, Bedera emphasized that its only truly unusual aspect is that Jane Doe managed to navigate the entire Title IX process to completion. Many survivors are forced to drop out of the process entirely because the investigations interfere with their education, exact a heavy emotional toll, or because they are actively discouraged from proceeding. <\/p>\n

"That\u2019s the only thing that makes this case exceptional," Bedera said. "Aside from that, the way that Cornell responded to Jane Doe could have been at the university that I studied. I\u2019ve heard from so many readers, ‘I can tell you were at my school,’ and I wasn\u2019t. So it really is very, very widespread."<\/p>\n

The Evolution of Title IX and Its Legal Framework<\/h3>\n

Shifting the conversation to the broader regulatory landscape, Whitney Terrell asked Bedera to explain how Title IX became the primary legal framework through which universities govern and discipline issues of sexual violence and sex discrimination. <\/p>\n

Enacted in 1972 as part of the Education Amendments of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX was originally designed to combat widespread gender and racial discrimination across American schools. However, Bedera pointed out that the statute famously consists of a single sentence prohibiting sex discrimination, leaving the federal government to define its enforcement mechanisms, compliance standards, and practical applications primarily through subsequent court rulings and federal regulations.<\/p>\n

The legal bridge connecting sexual violence to sex discrimination was established in the landmark 1980 federal court case, Alexander v. Yale<\/em>. That ruling determined that rampant sexual harassment and violence on campus compromised victims’ educational experiences by introducing trauma that interfered with their ability to fully participate in their studies. Furthermore, the court recognized that the climate of fear surrounding sexual violence inflicted psychological and practical harm on all women on campus, not just direct victims. Students altered their daily routines, avoided office hours with male professors, and restricted their movements after dark to mitigate the risk of assault.<\/p>\n

"When we\u2019re talking about sexual violence, we tend to talk about it from a criminal framework with an individual perpetrator and an individual victim, but under Title IX, we\u2019re talking about it from a systemic framework," Bedera explained. "Which says that as long as this is happening here, this school is not equal, it is discriminating against women in particular."<\/p>\n

For decades, universities resisted gender equity mandates\u2014largely because many elite institutions had historically operated as men-only spaces and integrated reluctantly. Clear enforcement mechanisms remained absent until around 2001, when federal leadership began issuing guidance letters instructing institutions to establish formal reporting structures for sex discrimination. When many schools failed to comply, subsequent Department of Education "Dear Colleague" letters reiterated these demands.<\/p>\n

A major turning point arrived during the Obama administration, when the Department of Education launched systematic federal investigations into dozens of prominent colleges and universities for failing to fulfill their obligations under Title IX. This aggressive oversight thrust campus sexual assault into the national spotlight, transforming Title IX into a deeply contested political battleground. <\/p>\n

However, Bedera argues that universities ultimately responded by building elaborate bureaucratic apparatuses designed to project the illusion of compliance while insulating the institution from legal exposure, leaving the internal experience for survivors largely unchanged.<\/p>\n

Administrative Discipline, Legal Accountability, and Policy Shifts<\/h3>\n

Addressing a common public question about why universities handle matters that could potentially be routed through the criminal justice system, Ganeshananthan noted that the rationale for internal campus disciplinary systems is rooted in an institution’s legal obligation to swiftly eliminate sex discrimination so that educational access is not impaired. <\/p>\n

The conversation then turned to the legal fallout surrounding the Cornell case, where Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against the university over its failure to prevent her assault and its handling of the aftermath\u2014notably the revelation that some of the accused students were allegedly assigned to write essays as a disciplinary measure.<\/p>\n

Terrell asked Bedera to evaluate how subsequent federal policy changes\u2014specifically actions taken by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during the first Trump administration\u2014altered the landscape and made it easier for universities to evade accountability.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on how her assessment of those regulatory changes has evolved, Bedera noted that while experts initially raised alarms that the Trump-era rules would weaken protections, reduce reporting, and unfairly protect accused perpetrators, the reality on the ground has proven even more permissive for institutional bad actors. <\/p>\n

Rather than focusing solely on the technicalities of specific regulatory provisions, Bedera emphasized that the administration’s broader message signaled to universities that federal oversight and enforcement of institutional mismanagement were effectively over.<\/p>\n

According to Bedera, research conducted during the 2018\u20132019 academic year revealed that even before the regulations formally took effect, many university administrators recognized that the proposed rules aligned comfortably with their existing practices. <\/p>\n

"Once schools had seen the draft of the Trump regulation… a lot of the schools that I was at, at least, said we\u2019re not going to change almost any of our policies and procedures, maybe a couple of little tweaks, but the Trump administration is just allowing us to do what we\u2019ve already been doing," Bedera said.<\/p>\n

She cautioned against accepting the narrative from universities that they would prefer to support survivors but are constrained by federal rules. Instead, Bedera argues that the regulatory shifts have merely provided institutions with a convenient political shield, allowing them to lean into policies that favor perpetrators and undermine survivor protections without having to maintain the pretense of rigorous Title IX compliance.<\/p>\n

"I think the real issue is that schools have been discriminating the whole time, and they now have an ally in the Trump administration who is allowing them to discriminate more flagrantly and on a much less defensible basis," Bedera concluded. "They don\u2019t even have to pretend to be following Title IX law anymore."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sociologist Nicole Bedera recently joined co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell on the Fiction\/Non\/Fiction podcast to discuss the high-profile Cornell 7 case and her new book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence. During the wide-ranging interview, Bedera explored how the recent allegations involving an Ivy League student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286],"tags":[5983,287,1103,111,288,5982,5984,289,5062,4334,5981,4389,1687,4118],"class_list":["post-3791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-and-literature","tag-bedera","tag-books","tag-fail","tag-inside","tag-literature","tag-nicole","tag-perpetrators","tag-reading","tag-shield","tag-side","tag-sociologist","tag-survivors","tag-universities","tag-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}