 Okay, good afternoon, welcome back to Senate Education. It's Wednesday, May 5th, 3.32 in the afternoon. We are now shifting our attention to H183, an act relating to sexual violence. As senators may recall, Senate judiciary asked that we look at a section, I believe a section 10 of this, or it doesn't matter, section of this bill having to do with sexual violence prevention council. And so we've asked the drafter, Ms. Childs to come in and kick this off, Ms. Childs, how are you? Great, thanks for having me in. So a committee I don't visit very often. Well, we have two senators here that you probably don't know, Senators Taranzini and Senator Chittenden. I suspect perhaps you've crossed paths with the rest of us, but two new additions. And it's great to have you here with us. And so you know that Senator Sears reached out to us and initially they were thinking they might pull this section. He asked our committee to look at it and see if it makes sense to reintroduce this section. So any background you might give us would be great as well as taking us through it. And I believe Jeannie has posted it for senators to... I think she has. And are you a committee that likes the attorneys to share the screen so you can see the language or do you prefer to look at it separately? We actually have it right on our iPad. So works best for us, thank you. Okay, great. So as you mentioned, this was, there's language with establishing an intercollegiate sexual violence prevention council. And it was in the bill as passed by the house and Senate judiciary removed that section and a couple of related sections that had a seven year sunset out and a small appropriation for staffing that council. And they removed that. So the bill that they voted out on Friday that is now in Senate appropriations does not have the intercollegiate council in it. But I did walk through the bill yesterday with Senate appropriations and they're gonna hold it waiting for you to give your recommendation to judiciary and judiciary to speak with appropriations because of that small appropriation in there. And then they wouldn't wanna weigh in on that with the addition, if there's an addition of the council. So these sections relate to a prior task force which was the, and I'm gonna pull it up on my screen just so I don't forget the correct name. It was the Vermont campus sexual harm task force. And that task force was created in 2019 by the legislature and passed an act 77 which was our miscellaneous judiciary procedure spell. And it created this task force on campus sexual harm to examine issues relating to responses to sexual harm, dating and intimate partner violence and stalking on campuses of post-secondary educational institutions in Vermont. And then it required that task force to report to the general assembly in spring of last year, which they did. And the very first recommendation of the task force was to create a statewide council of network professionals who are focused on both prevention and response to sexual harm on college campuses and as well to focus on how to best support both survivors and other students who have been impacted by sexual harm. And so what you have in H183 as it came over from the house was establishing this council. And again, the idea that it wasn't like the task force to be a short essentially study committee but something that would be permanent going forward. There is a seven year sunset on that because it was reviewed by house government operations and they put in a seven year sunset really on any new governmental bodies like that or councils or boards or things like that. So that we don't have these ones that kind of start and then kind of fall to the wayside and are still on the books. And so there's kind of a fresh look at least every seven years. And there was also an appropriation, a small appropriation in the proposal for funding the staffing of the council. There are no legislative members on this council as opposed to the task force did have a couple of legislative members. I'll walk through the legislation in just a moment with you about it. But the appropriation is to allow the network against domestic and sexual violence to be doing the staffing of the four annual meetings a year. So if I look to the language of the bill, if everybody has that is you'll see that. So it's establishing a new section 2187 in title 16, creating the council for the purpose of a response to campus sexual harm, including across institutions of higher learning in Vermont. There are a large number of folks on the council. It's first it's a title nine coordinator and a campus-based prevention educator coordinator from an institution of higher learning appointed by the chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges. There are similarly to those same two positions to be also appointed by the president of the University of Vermont. And then similarly those same two positions appointed by the president of the association of Vermont independent colleges. So there'll be three title nine coordinators and three campus-based prevention education coordinators appointed there. There's also to the two community-based sexual violence advocates appointed by the network to law enforcement or public safety representatives who have experience specific to responding and investigating campus sexual violence. And those members would be appointed by the commissioner of public safety. There's to be two college students, at least one of whom has lived experience as a sexual violence survivor and one who represents a campus-based racial justice organization. And those two student appointments would be by the Center for Crime Victim Services. There's also a person with expertise in sexual violence responses within the LGBTQ community. And that appointment would be made by the Center for Crime Victim Services as well. There's to be a sexual assault nurse examiner who is appointed by the network against domestic and sexual violence. These are nurses who are trained specifically to work with survivors of sexual violence to be there when somebody reports to an ER that they have been sexually assaulted and they have specific training in that around the emotional needs, but also how to do the examination of that survivor because as you can imagine, when they do that, they're actually collecting evidence that is important if there's going to be criminal charges. And so it's very important that that evidence be collected in a certain way and that there's a chain of custody with regard to that evidence. There's also to be a prosecutor who has experienced prosecuting sexual violence cases and that prosecutor could be from either one of the state's attorney's offices or it could be from the office of the attorney general. And yet that appointment is made by the AG. There's to be an attorney with experience in sexual violence that's appointed by the defender general. And so those are the folks who are all on the council. The duties of the council are interdisciplinary planning and information sharing to support sexual violence prevention programs on every college campus in Vermont. There's to be an annual review of trends and aggregate data collected by institutions of higher learning regarding sexual violence on campus and development and distribution of best practices and recommendations on violence prevention, sexual health education and strategies for mitigating sexual violence and tertiary violence on college campuses. As I mentioned, the network's going to be doing the staffing of this that was just, they volunteered because there wasn't kind of an obvious entity to staff it. And so the network seemed them because of their background and experience in this particular issue seemed the best choice. There is a report that is due on or before December of 2022 and then annually thereafter and there to submit a written report to the general assembly with a summary of their activities and any recommendations for legislative action. They're supposed to have their first meeting no later than September 15th of this year. And there is, as I mentioned, a small appropriation. I think when we were looking at those members in house appropriations it is likely that the vast majority of those people who would be participating on council would be being paid by their day jobs to be attending those meetings four times a year and that it's likely that it's really only the two student representatives who would be putting in for the per diems and expenses. And so that's how it was calculated out for those. So the section on appropriations has $11,990 being appropriated to the center to provide a grant for staffing the council. And that's just how we had to do it because the network is not a state entity where as the center is a state entity and so you're appropriating the money to the center and then they will issue a grant to the network to do the staffing. And then there's a separate $1,000 and $1,010 that's appropriated for the per diems and expenses. And then also, as I mentioned, there's the repeal in seven years, which is just intended as a kind of a regular kind of taking a look to make sure that you want to continue on with the council. And that's all, that's all I've got, any questions? Questions or comments at this point? We do have a series of witnesses, but this is very helpful. Senator Perslick. Just a quick question on the appropriations. Is it something that would have to be done every year because this is only a one year appropriation but it will be around for seven years. So it's just every year the legislature would have to address that issue. Likely, unless there was a grant or they could use some federal funds for it or something like that, but it's likely that it would be an annual appropriation and this one is just for FY22. I have another question, but if you'd rather do that way. No, please go ahead. This was all in house, which issue, right? Yes, it was the bill was in house judiciary with government operations took this and specifically reviewed this section and they took testimony on it and they made recommendations to judiciary and judiciary incorporated those suggestions into the judiciary amendment. And then on the Senate side, it came out of Senate judiciary. And do you know, Michelle, that because I've read the task force report last night and there's like 15 recommendations or more in there. If you take some of the recommendations, there's only like nine main one, some of them have sub recommendations. Did they like go through all those recommendations and then choose these kind of three tasks for this? Cause I thought there were some other really important recommendations in that report, but aren't mentioned at all. And this, I don't know if they kind of went through all those and decided, well, you just focus on these three for this for now or I just wondered if you could tell me anything about the process in relation to the recommendations from the task force report. To the judiciary committees did not go into the task force report in depth. The establishment of the council was part of the bill as introduced. I believe the three main sponsors were representative Copenhagen's representative grad and representative Colburn and they had been meeting with folks prior to the start of the session on developing this bill. And I think getting input from the community around what are the important things if they were going to proceed on a sexual violence bill, what are the key issues out there that would be helpful? And I think the recommendation was to establish the council, but there was they weren't hearing necessarily, we want you to do X, Y or Z also this year with regard to the specific issue. I think the primary goal was that they wanted to make sure that all the folks who are working on these issues are getting together at least a few times a year and collaborating and sharing their experiences so that they can learn from one another's work. Right, and as you said, the first recommendation was create council and representative Colburn was on the task force. So it's good to hear that she was involved in this. All right, thank you. Interliance. You know, I think I'll wait until we've had testimony. I've got a long list of things here. So I think it'll be helpful to hear what folks have to say. But maybe Michelle, in terms of any definition of sexual violence, was that, was that a discussion? Okay. No, I think, you know, they didn't want to be too prescriptive around that and it can encompass a lot of, you know, things. And so I think they're just leaving that up to the council. Okay, so there would be a distinction between sexual harassment and sexual violence or would they, would the council, was there a discussion about allowing for the council to go into the issues of sexual harassment? I mean, that expands it greatly and moves it toward perhaps staff and faculty in a way that may be slightly different. I don't know. You know, they did not really discuss that, but I'll go back and look at the language. I don't know necessarily that it was intended to be narrow in terms of violence, but looking, you know, I recognize that the language that was used for the task force was sexual harm and could, you know, tweak the language a little bit there if you wanted it to be a little more inclusive. What I will say, and I think is something that you guys know from sitting on committees summer study committees and creating these summer study committees, there's nobody really policing, well, you guys reported to us on this and we didn't ask you to report to us on that or things like that. So I think generally it's to try to get the, the specifics out there about what you want, but on this issue, if you want it to include a variety of issues, maybe you would want to tweak the language and, you know, obviously the Title IX coordinators are not just looking at sexual violence, they're looking at discrimination based on sex and they're looking at harassment and other issues there. So maybe that's appropriate and maybe some of the witnesses from the schools might comment on that about whether or not there should be a different term used. Thank you. Yes, I know, cause it can grow like gangbusters really. Right, yeah, maybe it should be narrow because then. I don't know. I want to hear what everyone has to say. So, but thank you. Sure. Michelle, you may have already covered this and I apologize if I missed it, but can you speak a little bit to why again, Senate judiciary decided to remove this? You might not feel comfortable doing so, but just having been part of the conversations. Yeah, I don't want to obviously speak for anyone. I understand. So, Senator Baruth was the Senate appointee to the task force and his viewpoint in Senate judiciary was that if the folks who are designated to be on the council wanted to get together and do something like this anyway, they could do that on their own and they wouldn't need the general assembly necessarily to establish this council to do that. But I would say you might want to speak directly with him or other members. Okay. Of that. I don't want to get their purpose without incorrect. Any other questions for Ms. Child before we start to hear from our witnesses? Thanks a million Michelle for walking us through this. You know, I have a feeling since we've been asked to take this up, you know, we'll continue to have you on committee a little bit. I know your schedule is also tight and so as much time as you can give us will be much appreciated, but for now that was a great walkthrough and very helpful. Sure, thanks. I am probably going to bounce back and forth between with another committee, but if I do leave and you guys have some questions for me or something I can circle back around, let me know and just have Jeannie email me. And in general, I think the question would be if we have language suggestions, changes that we make, is this something that you'll go back and listen or do you want us to take notes and then provide you with that? That's what I'm saying is if you have, if you decide some tweaks that you'd like to make again and then sit with you and we'll chat. Okay, that sounds great. You can just tell me that way. I can ask you questions to make it really clear that I know direction. And I do know that Ms. Koenig has submitted some, like a tweak there and I do have that language. I didn't in what I presented to you because it hasn't been adopted by anybody, but I do have that language because I know that y'all will discuss that. Great, thank you. Sure. Ms. Koenig, you're not up yet, but have you emailed that language to Jeannie? No, I sent a copy of it to you, but I'm happy to send it to Jeannie. Send it to Jeannie and then Jeannie, would you please put it up on our website? That'd be great. Thank you. Okay, Ms. Robinson, thanks for joining us. Appreciate you being here. You've been involved, I believe, with this bill all the way through the process. So looking forward to hearing what you have to say as it relates to this language. Good afternoon, thank you so much for having me. For the record, Sara Robinson, I'm the deputy director at the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. I don't believe I've had the pleasure to be with this committee yet, this session. So it's wonderful to be with you all. And thank you so much for taking up this section of H183, you're correct. This is, it really is a broad and comprehensive bill to address sexual violence in our communities and on campus and in various settings. And so we're very grateful that the Senate Education Committee is looking at this particular section. But I thought I would start by just providing a short amount of framing around the issue that this section of the bill and the bill in general seeks to address, knowing that it's not the complete focus of your work probably in the day to day. So from our perspective, the Vermont Network really serves as a statewide voice on issues related to domestic and sexual violence. And we are a membership organization. We represent 15 independent nonprofit organizations that provide direct services to victims of domestic and sexual violence across the state. And together, those organizations serve every square mile of Vermont. And last year they answered about 17,000 hotline calls from individuals calling for assistance related to domestic and sexual violence. Would you repeat that number, please? Sure, our member organizations answered 17,000 hotline calls last year in the state of Vermont. Yeah, for people seeking assistance related to domestic and sexual violence. And we know that sexual violence is in fact a significant issue certainly in our country and here in Vermont. So nationally, approximately one in five women have experienced rape in their lifetime and one in three women have experienced other forms of sexual violence such as sexual coercion or unwanted sexual contact. And although national prevalence studies certainly indicate that women carry the greatest burden of sexual violence over their lifetimes, men are very much also impacted by sexual violence. And as with other forms of violence, some communities are disproportionately impacted by sexual violence. And that includes black, indigenous and other people of color and transgender and non-gender conforming individuals. And here in Vermont, unfortunately we are not exempt from those trends and the overall impact of sexual violence. So I thought it would be interesting for this committee to know that the most recent Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicated that one in 10 female students in Vermont report being physically forced to have intercourse when they did not want to. And students of color in Vermont are more likely than white students to have been forced to have sexual intercourse. Likewise, LGBTQ students are more than three times as likely to be forced to have sexual intercourse compared to their heterosexual or cisgender peers. So the section of the bill that you are addressing today really seeks to look at campus responses to sexual violence. And we certainly, at least this week don't need to go much further than news outlets to understand that this is not an isolated issue, that this is an issue that is very important to students and institutions of higher learning across Vermont. And as you've noted, this was really the primary recommendation of the previous legislative task force on campus sexual harm. I, sounds like some of you have seen the report from that previous task force, but I did also submit that to Jeannie. So I know it is posted on the website. But the council will really serve to coordinate and innovate responses to sexual violence on college campuses across Vermont. And we know that nationally one in five students and just over one in five transgender students are sexually assaulted on college campuses. And that age period, age period between 18 and 24 is the age period of highest risk for women in terms of being sexually assaulted. So there are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted between the ages of 18 and 24 than they are at other times in their lifetime. And sexual violence within institutions of higher learning is complex. You know, there are issues of both state and federal law. There's overlapping criminal jurisdictions sometimes. There are very important issues related to student privacy. And certainly the extrajudicial Title IX proceedings are a completely different layer that victims of sexual violence have to navigate if they choose to report their assault. And really despite many efforts of institutions, the process of reporting a sexual assault and making a formal Title IX complaint often doesn't go well for survivors. Many don't feel like they received the support and justice that they're seeking through that process. There was a recent report that was released actually just about a month ago from a national organization called No Year 9 referring to Title IX. And it found that 39% of survivors who reported sexual violence to their schools experienced a substantial disruption in their education. So over a quarter of those survivors ended up taking a leap of absence, 20% transferred schools and nearly 10% dropped out of their educational experience completely. And so campuses really have varying resources and approaches to addressing sexual violence. And that's one of the things that we were really hopeful that this council would be able to address, both the support services and the resources that are available for students at public and private colleges and universities, at small and large colleges and universities, at residential versus commuter schools really vary based on the institutional resources that are available and those that are dedicated to these efforts. Now just note that, we certainly don't view that these problems can be solved by institutions of higher learning alone. They really require an interdisciplinary approach with stakeholders from law enforcement, from advocacy at the table. And those are the kinds of complex issues that the council would seek to address. I would just make a note on the length of the council that was established by the house. As the bill was introduced, there actually wasn't a sunset and that was something that the house added, which I think was an excellent addition. And I would just note that the previous task force on campus sexual harm in 2019 only existed for about nine months. And met six times in that nine months. And I think one of the big lessons learned was that the reforms that are needed, the institutional and community-based reforms that are needed, take time. And that ensuring that there's adequate time and resources to addressing this particular issue ought to be a priority for certainly all of us that work on these issues day to day and that this was going to be an effective mechanism for getting there. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions on the composition or the duties of the council or anything else. Ms. Robinson, I may just kick this off. So you're supporting this language as written? So we supported the conversations as those evolved in the house. We are very much expecting that the Senate would take its own fresh look at the language. We didn't have an opportunity to have robust conversations about that in Senate judiciary. So we supported the language that came out of the house, but very open to additional suggestions that senators may have about ways to improve the language. So again, just to clarify, the language that we have before us, which left the house, you are supportive of. Correct. Okay, thank you. Senator Lyons. Just a couple of questions. You obviously mentioned support services that are so critical for people in recovery. But is there also opportunity here to talk about some primary prevention, some work that's done. And I think in particular about students who call us within a group environment with a support person to educate their peers and others about what sexual violence is and to initiate prevention activities. And so much of what we're seeing here is how to react to sexual violence when it happens. And we're trying to, you know, obviously we need to do that, but shouldn't we also, or would you think we'd like to have some other focused attention to prevention period? Senator Lyons, I think that's an excellent question. And I think that's exactly a bit of a shift that we were hoping to see in this council. The previous task force really did look almost exclusively at responses, which I think is incredibly important. But the hope was certainly that with this council, there would be a closer look at primary prevention efforts and efforts to change overall campus climate and to prevent the violence before it happens. And I think that that was the intention of the first duty listed of the council, interdisciplinary planning and information sharing to support sexual violence prevention programs on every college campus in Vermont. So that, I mean, that works. There's a significant emphasis in the membership. It feels like a significant emphasis on enforcement rather than prevention. So, or it's more on intervention and reporting. And so I'm very interested in how to turn that corner. So it is really looking at best practices for prevention, what kind of training activities on campus, ongoing for staff, faculty, students, and maybe in particular the cohorts of students that are ordinarily associated with sexual violence. So we already know a lot. So maybe there's a way to approach this from the prevention side rather than the intervention and treatment side. Yes, I appreciate that. And I would just note that actually the bill is introduced didn't really have any representation from at least the criminal legal perspective. And those were additions that were requested by the Association of States Attorneys and the Defender General to add those individuals to the council. And we were fine with that. We know that some survivors do seek legal remedies, criminal legal remedies as a result of their experience. But I completely agree with you that our hope is certainly that the council as a whole will be taking a look at primary prevention, not just responses to violence after it occurs. So then to that end, going back to something Senator Perchlich asked earlier, why not pick up the recommendations made by the previous task force that do suggest best practice and other areas related to prevention? So I won't ask any more questions. I just wrote down a whole lot of things we'll have to, maybe that people want to talk about, maybe not, but anyway, just some ideas. Sort of just picking up on that idea. You know, what are we doing or what are we not doing also in pre-K through 12th grade? I mean, we're talking about here, I think largely campus culture, but that campus culture is not just being created out of thin air. And so I think that would be my other question and something that hopefully we can also work toward addressing. I would love to have that conversation with the committee. At some point, I know that the last time the legislature really looked very comprehensively at sexual violence prevention was after Brooke Bennett died in Vermont several years back and Act One was passed around mandating sexual violence prevention in schools. And that remains a largely, actually completely unfunded mandate to provide sexual violence prevention. So I think that that would be a really worthy conversation. Senator Perchlich. Thank you, Chair. The Senator Alliance point that the title is violence prevention council, but in the first sense of the creation, it says create a coordinated response, like that we're creating a council to create a coordinated response. So just maybe it's semantics, but adding prevention in that first thing. Of the three goals, it does say prevention in that first goal, but you might wanna, we might wanna think about just adding prevention in there. But my question, when I went through all these recommendations that I thought were good, one that I think specifically you might be able to answer is one of the comments in the recommendation to create a council, it said the task force agrees that a council would be best facilitated by on-campus stakeholders. And it looks like this is not facilitated by on-campus stakeholders. And I just, I'm assuming that was a conscious decision or it was, I think as Michelle said, the network was just like, well, if nobody else is gonna do it, we're gonna do it. Can you have any response to that? Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that. So the previous task force in discussing this recommendation, there was a conversation of the task force about where this task force should essentially live and whether it should be a state agency, whether it should be higher education stakeholders that would kind of house this. And there weren't volunteers. And the network said, we're willing to do it, but we would also be very happy to step back if there was a different entity that would like to step forward. Our sincere hope, and you'll see that in the language indicates chairs will be elected or decided on from the membership. And it is our sincere hope that there would be leadership of this council that would be on campus leadership. We certainly believe that institutions of higher education need to have a leadership role in this conversation. And so if that would be worth clarifying in the language, I think that would definitely be something we would be open to. And again, we are truly, we're trying to be helpful and also happy to step back if there's another volunteer that would like to take on the coordination of this council. Okay, I appreciate that. I have a couple more questions. That's okay. The second duty is to review the aggregated data. When I looked at the recommendations, there was like three big recommendations about data, about data gathering, and that we should require institutions to collect this data and about a survey that should go out and that they should be kind of disaggregating the data to those historically disadvantaged groups. You had given some statistics for LGBTQ victims, but I didn't know if how we were, it seemed like that was the big part of the task force recommendations. And do we need to put anything in there about that we're getting the data that we need? Is that problem been solved? It's a great question. And I would also say that the version that passed the house was not, the version of the bill that was introduced, there was actually more specific language around campus climate surveys and data in the original language of the bill. And there was feedback from higher education stakeholders that, and I don't wanna speak for them, but hopefully Wendy may be able to speak to this that they did not necessarily want to be boxed into collecting data in the same way or collecting the same kind of data every year and that they already had individual mechanisms for collecting data. So we landed on this language around annual review of trends and aggregate data because institutions are already collecting some climate data in their own ways. But I can let those witnesses speak to that. Okay, well it's something maybe for the committee to think about because we're requiring a lot of data collection like on our expulsion bill about all the data that needed to be collected and having it break down by the disadvantaged groups and everything. So we're requiring that of our K through 12. So the interesting why we wouldn't require of our higher education. There's two other recommendations that I wondered if you could just complete talk about. One was, and I thought it was pertinent to the Senate because we just passed the bill that would not exempt but make people not subject to criminal prosecution that they report a crime. I think it was around specifically around trying to help people with drug overdoses and things like that. But one of the recommendations was don't prosecute student report sexual assault if they were like underage drinking or if they were in violation of the campus policy and they were afraid to come forward. That was recommended. And there's nothing about this. And then also about requiring transcript notation of suspensions and expulsions resulting from Title IX adjudications. That also seemed like a real big one that I didn't see mentioned. So those, I wondered if you could just say anything about those two recommendations. Sure, absolutely. So taking the second one first on transcript notation I think that actually probably both of those are the original thinking was that that would kind of fit in the larger bucket of duty number three which is development and distribution of best practices and recommendations. And that certainly we would absolutely concur that reducing all the barriers for individuals to be able to report harm that they experienced coming forward without fear of their own disciplinary actions is incredibly important. And I would say that that is certainly a best practice that is not as you rightly noted is being advanced not only in the criminal legal system but on campuses across the country. And on the transcript notation issue it was not a unanimous recommendation of the previous task force. There was not a unanimous agreement about that so it wasn't presented as one of the unanimous items. That being said, I think that is an issue that is worthy of continual conversation in Vermont. It's a complex issue. There are a lot of individuals that feel very passionately and strongly that that is a very effective mechanism to providing information about individuals who have caused harm on previous campuses. And I will also say from our perspective, we have historically been a little bit wary of anything that can function like a registry just because we think that they can sometimes create a false sense of security and don't exactly serve to create real safety or provide supports to survivors which is really where our focus is. And so I think that again, that's a complex issue that hopefully this council will be able to continue discussing. Thank you. Any other questions from Ms. Robinson? We're gonna be at this probably for a couple of days if you will. So if you don't mind continuing to partner with us, I don't know if you have additional comments at this point. At this point I don't. Just be interested to hear other witnesses and certainly open to any suggestions of the committee and happy to work with you all in the coming days. Thank you very much. We really appreciate that. And yes, please stay. And we may reengage you before we adjourn today. Thank you. Ms. Koenig. Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. Great to see you. See you. For the record, I'm Wendy Koenig, Director of Federal and State Relations for the University of Vermont. And Wendy, you have a bad connection. Maybe it's my connection. Are you okay at your end? Yeah, I can see you. And you're okay. Yeah, you were just a little pause there. So that's good to know. Okay, the floor is yours. Thanks. So I did send some language to Jeannie. I don't know if you all have it, but if not, you can take a look. I'll read a little bit of it. I wanna say that I think that from the perspective of higher education, practices in prevention of sexual violence and harm are evolving all the time. I think that a council could be helpful to inform new strategies and help frame prevention in a variety of different ways. And I really liked what Sarah had to say about the fact that, you know, this is something that we can work together on to try and make this the safest place that we can for students and to continually evolve our thinking about these issues. I mean, I don't think that this is static. I think it's something that we're always working on and other campuses are working on. You know, I think that in terms of the makeup of the council, you know, we have Title IX coordinators named in the 2019 council, we did have our Title IX coordinator participating. I think that that's appropriate. I know that for the state colleges and for us, they're asking for two folks, a Title IX coordinator and a campus-based coordinator. So I think that we just wanna ensure that we have a little bit of flexibility. I think UVM is a little bit different in the fact that we are big. We probably have more staff than other institutions. I think sometimes it is hard when you're conducting adjudications on campus to have two people from your Title IX staff be at meetings every time, but we'll do our best with that. In terms of the language that I'm talking about, if you're looking at the bill, it's in section C, the duties section. And the language now says development and distribution of best practices and recommendations on violence prevention, sexual health education and strategies for mitigating sexual violence and tertiary violence on college campuses in Vermont. What we are suggesting is to say identification and sharing of effective practices on violence prevention, sexual education, sexual health education and strategies for mitigating sexual violence and tertiary violence. So we're taking out the term best practices and asking for identification and sharing of effective practices. Our legal counsel had a little bit of a problem with the term best practices and would prefer the other language. I don't think it really changes anything substantively. It's just a little bit of a language tweak for us. Happy to, yeah, take any questions. Senator Chinden. Wendy, I also see the replacement of the word development with identification. I'm guessing that's because we don't, are we trying to not necessarily scale this back but not to reinvent the wheel or is that okay? Yeah, and the other thing is, I think one thing that we've sort of had some discussions about when talking about this in the prior council and talking about the development of this one is that we just want to be careful to not try to have one size fits all either. I mean, I think that what we need for prevention efforts on UVM's campus might be quite different from what we need for prevention efforts at Sterling College. And so I think we want to be mindful of the fact that we want to share with each other and innovate with one another. And I will be the first person to say that UVM, even though we're big, can learn a lot of things from some of our smaller counterparts in the private colleges and the state colleges. And we want to be participatory with all of our colleagues in doing those things. But I do want to be careful that the council does not try to have a one size fits all solution for every institution and to be mindful of the fact that when we are developing solutions, we do have to understand that a lot of what we are bound by on campuses with this is federal law and that we have to be mindful of that when we're making these recommendations. Senator Lyons. So knowing that the university does reproduce culture and sends it on its way into society, the issue I think also is learning respect and non-discrimination within the college community. And so with that in mind, and I know UVM is confronting this right now. I know that there's a lot going on and you're bringing people together. I think that it's good to see the response to the kids, frankly. But is there any thought, are there currently on UVM's campus, is there currently a prevention council or a group of folks who plan and provide educational opportunities for students during orientation or other times of the year for social adjustment and prevention sort of thinking about all of these various issues? Yes, that's a very good question. And the answer to that is yes. I think that you may have seen some of the materials that went out in conversations with the students this week. We do have a group that meet to talk about education and every student at UVM in their first year is required to take some training in this area. We also have a separate training program that targets young men, which is a little bit different than the regular training that goes for every student. I think that one of the things that we have talked about with students this week is enhancing those trainings and maybe having them go further throughout a student's time at UVM. So a sexual violence prevention council, we have something that functions in that way. It's not called that right now, but we do have training for every student that comes into the university, but we absolutely can do better and should do better with that. And we'll be enhancing those things as we move forward. And I'm certain that as part of this council, we'll have a lot of discussions about what other schools are doing about that and how we can do that better, what we can learn from other folks and what folks can learn from us. So it's part of identifying most effective practices. So I'm not sure that this is the council that would do an assessment or an evaluation of what each college is doing, yet I think it will be important for folks who represent institutions to be able to bring information that allows for some judgment on what has happened. So there's historical data and it can be analyzed to build more effective results. Agreed and I think Title IX coordinators being named as the representatives or the exact right people to do that. They're the folks that are doing this on the ground. Okay, so you've answered most of my questions that I had right now. I'll turn it over to somebody else. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Childs, while we have you back, Ms. Cronig made a lot of comments and made a language change and identified it as really not not that we're questioning you Ms. Cronig, but it wasn't going to change things dramatically and just want to check in with you as well that this doesn't. If it's the language from earlier and it hasn't changed, no, it's just semantics and I guess it's the same as before Michelle. Right. Yep. Great. So committee, I'm looking for a question, opposition to that language change at this point. Okay, great. So we'll make that change if you would be so kind Ms. Childs. Thank you Ms. Cronig. We'll likely, as I mentioned at the start of this we're going to probably take a couple of days on this. So we may invite you back but really appreciate you being at this point. Really appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. Great. Patty Turley, Catherine LaVecere. Ms. Turley, welcome to Senate Education. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And great to see you Ms. LaVecere. Ms. Turley, this being your first time if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself for the record prior to telling us your thoughts on this piece of the bill. Certainly. I'm Patty Turley and I'm the general counsel for the Vermont State Colleges. Relatively new to this role. So there may be some, if you have certain questions I may need to refer back with answers. But yes, Vermont State Colleges has title, sorry, let me start again. We have title nine coordinators associated with each one of our campuses as well as title nine coordinators with CCV which does not have a specific residential campus. Your, the title nine coordinators served as an immediate source of support to students and they provide information and support. Their role is really governed by the title nine law, the federal law. So due to our size, all of our VSC title nine coordinators also have other responsibilities at their respective institutions. An example of a dual role is a coordinator who also serves with ADA disability accommodations for students. So the, our title nine coordinators are quite involved with students in student facing positions. And we're very cognizant of the need to preserve their, their time to best serve our students. We have one of our, some of our employees have participated. There was the prior legislative task force that you've been discussing and one of our employees was involved in that. We've also had an employee involved in a voluntary, I'm not quite sure it's intercollegiate sexual violence group that met regularly a couple of years ago. And we've heard from those employees that the participation in these groups was quite valuable. They in turn shared the information on with the employees across our organization. And so that our system did benefit from this, from this participation. So we support the intercollegiate sexual violence prevention council. We, our full disclosure is that we were a little hesitant of an earlier version of the bill. We were a little worried about the size of the council, not the, not so much just the size of the council, but the size of what we might be required to have all of our, our title nine coordinators attend, which would be pretty, would be pretty difficult for us. And we also wanted to understand what the time commitments would be in terms of the amount of the meetings per year. And the house version really addressed those concerns. We feel really good about the, the one coordinator and the one other educator from, from the Vermont state colleges. We, so I am not a title line coordinator. And we did have a title line coordinator who was testifying, who testified in front of the house government operations committee. Regretfully, I, she would be your, your better, a very good witness for you today, but she was not able to be here. What, what she has provided for me and I've also pulled our other coordinators is the kinds of resources that they have available to them now are, we, we belong to some national groups and there's some trainings through that that they attend. We also have resources that they tap into from those national groups that are just regular materials distributed to them. Our timeline coordinators are very interactive with each other. They provide peer to peer support and consultation with each other. And they do meet together as a group on, on occasion or regular occasion. We also have a, a system investigator who is the assistant general counsel here in the office. And she supports their roles as they go forward the, but the, our coordinators have made it clear that they really do appreciate the opportunity to network with others to be part of this, this type of collaboration, which is really the design of this council. So that is, we support the, the makeup of this council and the goals of it. Thank you so much. Very helpful. Very much appreciate that. Committee, questions for Ms. Troy. Ms. Lava, sir, are you, are you here? Did you want to say anything? I'm here in a support capacity. So if there's a question that's better suited for me I'm here to answer it. Thank you so much. Senator Lyons. So as we're talking about sexual violence and prevention of sexual violence, and we know that it's a, it's, it's easily to slide into so many different areas, including academic discrimination and, and so on. So as, as you're thinking about this, and as, as we're, as we are all thinking about this, how can we make this the most effective collaboration so that we get results that change campus culture? And so for me, it's all about the campus culture. And if the culture is one that supports violence it's going to happen regardless of how many educational opportunities and workshops and or, or small group events take place. And so the campus culture for me begins with faculty and staff, as you know. So how can we inculcate in this group the ability to transform? This is a little job, something little, transform culture on our campuses that move us away from sexual violence. And obviously you folks have probably thought about this a lot more than we have. But if you're title nine people have been working together and there's so much going on through orientation and other things that are happening on campus but we're still seeing the results of a dysfunctional culture. So it doesn't matter how many groups we have unless we begin to target this shift. So. Well, that's, that's an excellent point. This is, this is an enormous problem that is reflected in our campuses but that doesn't originate in our campuses. Exactly. Yeah, and so we, we're trying to, we are trying to change the culture. We're trying to improve that culture. It does start with orientation, our student, the orientation of our student includes this culture of respect that is the right way forward and for some of them that is a new, you know, that's a, that's a unfortunately a new concept. The other aspect is that it also starts from the top, right? And the culture of respect doesn't just, it's not a student problem. It's a, it's a system wide or society wide issue. And so we do have trainings for employees. We have trainings for students. That, that's where we are at this point. I agree that one group or even many groups is, if it can make a dent, I do think that's helpful because every time we make inroads to improve and lessen that, that tendency then we've, we have made progress. But I agree with you. It is, it is daunting at times. Yeah. So, I mean, so we're focused here on preventing violence and harm. And we're looking at students causing harm to other students through sexual violence. But as, as you have said, it is ubiquitous and it's horizontal as well as longitudinal. So maybe there's something we could add into this, the charge of the committee. And I'm going to have to think about it. I, I share your concern. I share your concern. Yes. Senator Persley. Thank you. I miss Charlie, would you, would this, the Vermont State colleges be opposed to language? I don't think we could actually do it at this late of the game, but maybe we would have the council work on our recommended language that would lead to statutory protections for survivors of sexual harm, but they not be punished for reporting incidents, why they might have been behaving in some illegal behavior. So, I mean, we certainly want to protect the student who would make a complaint. Our problem is that Title IX from the federal perspective is, is really a very, it's a significant legislation. It is very detailed. So what we don't want to have is a situation where however well intentioned, we then run up into a place where our, our state legislation creates some type of friction with our obligation under the federal law. But certainly the, if this council wants to, you know, can look at language that provides protections, they would have to be aware of the fact that Title IX has some very specific requirements for us. Okay, I think in the report, they listed like six or 10 other states that did it. So I guess, well, they figured it out, we could figure it out, but I'll investigate that further. We're going to return to this tomorrow afternoon, and I'm hoping that centers will have an opportunity to consult with Ms. Childs about possible language changes that you all might be interested in as we move forward. I'm hoping to get back to Senator Judiciary by Friday with a little bit more specificity around, you know, what direction we might be heading in. Additional questions for Ms. Turley or Ms. Lavacer. Okay. Can I ask, let me ask a quick question. Have you have any students who have been identified as causing sexual violence to other students? How are they sort of, how are they adjudicated and punished? Do they get, did they get thrown off of sports teams? Do they get, I mean, do they get taken out of classes? What, just trying to sort out what it is that has happened recently. I mean, I know a lot about, I know do know a lot about this, but I'm just wondering what is the current activity that's going on? Sure. Well, so if a student has been, has violated Title IX, which those, what you're saying would be a violation of Title IX. There's first the investigatory process and then there's a finding of responsibility and then discipline and consequences come. Those, the discipline and consequences will range depending on the severity of the conduct. But that is my understanding is that a student, we are, so we're in a pretty new title, the Title IX was updated a year ago. So we are, I don't know that we've had an adjudication that's gone to that stage under the new Title IX regulations. So, but it is my understanding that those are the types of disciplines and consequences that are available. At what stage is law enforcement engaged? So law enforcement is engaged if the complainant wants law enforcement engaged. We have to report crimes under the Clery Act, which is not just about sexual violence. It involves other crimes as well. But really that, I believe that that tends to be up to the complainant if they want the police involved. It may well be that, well, I believe that that would be the typical way. Thank you. Thank you both for being with us. As I mentioned, we will return to this conversation tomorrow afternoon. I am going to tell Senator Judiciary unless I see senators saying no, that we are going to, as soon as we're going to suggest that we return this language to the bill with changes. I don't see anybody who is opposing this at this point. So they can anticipate that over the next couple of days we will work on edits and again return this to the Senate version. Yes, Ms. Childs. I just wanted to mention that if there are certain things that you know that you might like to see language on for tomorrow if I could draft those in anticipation of that because I'm booked all afternoon in other committees on markup. So I'm sure I can pop in and whatever, but I just don't know. Absolutely. So what I'm going to ask senators to do is to reach out to you individually because I think different people are having different thoughts at this point and have senators bring that language with them tomorrow afternoon. So everybody have different amendments or? Well, I don't think you're going to hear from everybody but I think there are a couple of people that are just thinking about some suggested language changes. I don't know if we're in the stage where they even need to be drafted, but I would like people to come back with their ideas at the very least tomorrow and perhaps having run them by you in some way just to make sure that they would work. Sure. Okay. Great. The other final request committee is that you review the amendment that we are going to present tomorrow on the floor to the school construction bill. And if I don't think there's a need for us to gather at nine tomorrow, but if everyone would please get back to me by nine tomorrow if you are supportive of that amendment. And that is in your inboxes now. Senator Chinden. That is the Radon Amendment. Yes, yes. Thank you. Radon Amendment. Have a look. It's very brief and just let me know. It looks good. Okay. Okay. Tomorrow we do have, we're returning to this, we're returning to 106, which needs to be voted out on Friday and we're also jumping back in to some church and state language, returning to some church and state language that we started working on earlier this session. So that's where we're at. So thanks for a productive afternoon and Senator Turnzine, did you? No, okay. Senator Purcell, if you don't mind sticking around for just one moment so we can talk about the floor tomorrow. Thanks everybody.