The next Title IX Training workshop for faculty and staff is scheduled to take place on Dec. 19 after the Nov. 16 meeting was canceled without notice to some of the attendees who signed up.
The nine faculty and staff members who showed up on Nov. 16 waited for 20 minutes in the State Transportation Building until Writing, Literature and Publishing Senior Affiliated Faculty Leslie Brokaw sent an email to the event’s primary contact, Associate Vice President of Title IX Access & Equity Pamela White.
The automated email response read that White was out of the office Friday, and the Title IX Training Workshop that morning was canceled. White responded in an email to the Berkeley Beacon on Nov. 19 that she canceled the workshop for personal reasons.
White wrote that she sent out email notices at 2 a.m. that Friday to as many people she knew who signed up for the training. Brokaw confirmed that she did not receive the email even though she signed up for the workshop in September.
Title IX Training Workshops are required for faculty to attend because they are mandated to report Title IX disclosures, like if a student discloses that they were the victim of sexual violence. Faculty and staff are required to attend a workshop once every two years.
White wrote that the last workshop this semester is Dec. 19. Once the spring semester workshops are scheduled, the Title IX office will post them on the Emerson events calendar.
Brokaw traveled from her home in Watertown, MA, to the 10 a.m. workshop.
“I think that the intentions of the workshop is great, it’s very frustrating to show up for a workshop and have it canceled when you only find out when you get a reply email,” Brokaw said.
WLP Affiliated Faculty Kit Haggard said she missed her composition writing class for the workshop even though her students had a paper due that day.
“I took a diversity training workshop earlier which I thought was really fantastic and so I was sort of prepared for something that kind of caliber,” Haggard said. “I’m frustrated though, that there has been this sort of lapse in attention of Title IX.”
The faculty and staff left quickly after the automated email response was read out loud.
“I don’t know why the meeting [was] canceled,” Brokaw said.
