“Suddenly Everyone’s an Expert in Our Field”: Campus Victim Advocates and the Promise and Perils of Professionalization

Abstract

Changes in how campuses respond to sexual assault under Title IX may dramatically alter the experiences of survivors and the roles of responders. This exploratory study examines how the roles of campus-based sexual assault victim advocates are changing and the effects on advocacy and survivors. Although most advocates agree that Title IX has increased awareness and reporting of sexual assault, they are concerned about the loss of confidential outlets for reporting, conflicts with other responders, and devaluation of their role. Some advocates see professionalization as a solution, whereas others worry that professionalization might negatively affect their ability to serve survivors.

Keywords

campus victim advocates campus sexual assault professionalization

Introduction

Since the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued its Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) (U.S. Department of Education, OCR, 2011), attention to campus sexual assault has increased dramatically within scholarly, practice, policy, and public arenas. Research on the topic has filled special issues of journals focused on various aspects of campus sexual assault, and large-scale studies and campus climate surveys have attempted to accurately measure its prevalence across campuses and among particular groups and communities.

In the center of these developments are campus victim advocates, who are in a unique position to observe, assess, and participate in the response to campus sexual assault. Campus advocates have always interacted with individuals in a number of different roles and around a number of different processes, both on campus and in the community, and they are typically the responders closest to victims/survivors themselves. The DCL has introduced new mandates, processes, and roles to campus sexual assault response, and these have affected the advocate role and how they serve victims. As the “voice” of victims, advocates’ perspectives are critical to assessing and understanding changes to the myriad services, roles, and priorities of campus providers and policies and how they affect victims. Given the increasing changes to how campuses respond, the role of advocates is at an important juncture; their experiences of campus sexual assault developments are largely neglected in the literature, however.

This article begins to fill that void. Based on an exploratory study using in-depth interviews with campus-based victim advocates in the wake of new approaches to campus sexual assault framed largely through a renewed application of Title IX, the findings suggest that while advocates perceive a number of positive consequences of Title IX as a framework for campus response to sexual assault, they have also experienced challenges both to defining their role and to serving survivors. Adapting to new personnel and processes has required that they clarify and redefine their roles. Advocates describe, for example, an increasing number of individuals involved in campus sexual misconduct, including police, Title IX officers, attorneys, and community advocates, many of whom are insufficiently trained to respond to survivors. They also describe an ongoing and constant struggle to support survivors in a context of an increasing administrative commitment to compliance and mandated reporting and diminishing commitment to confidentiality and survivor empowerment. As their role, expertise, and training are compared with those of Title IX officers and attorneys, advocates must work to not only support and defend the rights and needs of survivors, but they must also defend their own competence, expertise, and professional value. In response to these dynamics, some advocates look to the promise of professionalizing the role in hopes that more formal credentialing and licensing processes will enhance their value, credibility, and authority, while others fear that such a move would compromise the integrity of the profession as well as undermine survivors’ interests.

In this article, we focus on the study’s findings regarding impacts of Title IX’s framing of campus sexual assault on advocates’ roles and their ability to serve and support survivors, contributing to the literatures on campus sexual assault and advocacy in general. We then further examine the prospect of professionalizing the field of advocacy, a theme that emerged during the study, analyzing our findings using theoretical concepts of professionalization from public administration, as well as feminist critiques of the professionalization of other female-dominated fields. We conclude with a discussion of potential benefits and drawbacks of professionalization for campus-based advocacy and recommendations for policy, practice, and future research.

Title IX and Campus Sexual Assault

Since the DCL reiterated the Title IX enforcement of campus sexual assault, attention to the problem has intensified in a number of areas. Not only has research on the topic of sexual assault increased and expanded, the ways practitioners are addressing the problem on campuses have changed as well (Jordan, 2014). Researchers have attempted to measure the prevalence and frequency of sexual assault (see, for example, Belknap & Sharma, 2014; Cantor, Fisher, & Chibnall, 2015; Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin, 2007; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014), find accurate definitions (e.g., Rennison & Addington, 2014), and confront measurement challenges (e.g., Hamby, 2014; Krebs, 2014). Studies have addressed reasons why victims do not report, ranging from those applying to the general population, such as uncertainty whether sexual assault occurred, concerns about confidentiality, and fear of retaliation and of being blamed (Sable, Danis, Mauzy, & Gallagher, 2006; W. A. Walsh, Banyard, Moynihan, Ward, & Cohn, 2010), to those specific to members of marginalized communities, such as concerns about losing a community’s support and reinforcing negative stereotypes (Brown, Clarke, Gortmaker, & Robinson-Keilig, 2004; Donovan, 2007; Guadalupe-Diaz & Jasinski, 2017; Jimenez & Abreu, 2003; Orloff & Garcia, 2004), as well as mistrust of formal systems that have historically revictimized them (Dwyer, 2008; LaFree, 1989; Liang, Goodman, Tummala-Narra, & Weintraub, 2005; Willis, 1992).

Some researchers have examined the perspectives of those in specific roles that are addressing sexual assault on campuses, including campus police (Oehme, Stern, & Mennicke, 2014), administrators (Amar, Trout, Simpson, Cardiello, & Beckford, 2014), sexual assault nurse examiners (Veidlinger, 2016), and counselors (Conley & Griffith, 2016). Suarez (2017), for example, provides a “discussion on several organizational prevention and response dimensions of our colleges and universities” (p. 166) informed by interviews conducted with Title IX coordinators and other campus administrators. The main themes suggest that the myriad changes to how campuses are addressing sexual assault have created a number of challenges to creating meaningful changes to campus culture and processes. The article addresses a number of campus processes that focus on compliance, including investigations, conduct codes, adjudication, and others, suggesting that these new mandates are often at odds with the “victim-centered response,” typically emphasized by advocates, and new to many campus personnel.

Thomas-Card and Eichele (2016) describe the importance of myriad victim services that campuses provide, including several types of advocacy, but to date there has been limited published research (for an exception, see Moylan, 2017) on campus sexual assault victim advocates in the wake of the DCL. In the absence of a larger body of literature specific to campus advocates, we next review literature focused on victim advocacy in general.

Advocacy

There are many types of advocacy that occur in a wide range of settings and at multiple levels (Hippensteele, 1997). In the community, victim advocates might have specific roles, for example, legal/court advocacy (Buzawa, Buzawa, & Stark, 2012) or medical advocacy (Macy, Johns, Rizo, Martin, & Giattina, 2011). In addition, some campuses have legal advocacy programs that employ law student volunteers, and others offer more comprehensive advocacy services (Allen, Larsen, & Walden, 2011; Hippensteele, 1997).

On campuses, advocates assist survivors, including students, faculty, and staff, by providing emotional support and information regarding on-campus and community-based resources such as counseling or crisis intervention, by ensuring that survivors are aware of their options for accessing medical care, and, if the survivor wishes to file a report, by helping them navigate the reporting process (Association of Title IX Administrators [ATIXA], 2015). Advocates may also accompany survivors to appointments, meetings, or hearings as needed. Historically, they have been exempt from having to report instances of sexual misconduct to the university and/or law enforcement, thus providing a confidential resource for those seeking help (ATIXA, 2015). Many are also engaged in education and prevention.

There is general agreement regarding the importance of victim advocates on campuses. For example, a study of campus administrators’ perceptions of “ideal environments” in terms of prevention of and response to sexual assault found that respondents identified the participation of advocates as critical (Amar et al., 2014). One of the most important campus sexual assault policies and practices that make victims more likely to report and follow through with charges is the presence of a trained advocate (Strout, Amar, & Astwood, 2014).

A consistent finding regarding advocacy work is that it can create stress and emotional fatigue (Hippensteele, 1997). According to Martin (2005) and Ullman (2010), there is a strong emotional element to rape work that requires emotion management to cope with the distress, discomfort, and anger of the role and responsibilities. Ullman (2010) equates such stressors with “secondary victimization,” which advocates can encounter when working with medical providers and others in the health care system, as well as in the criminal justice and legal systems, where providers might respond to survivors with stereotypes, disbelief, and judgmental attitudes. An additional dimension of stress comes from the constant conflict faced by advocates between supporting and defending the needs of survivors and complying with the organization’s policies that may not prioritize those needs. For example, Hippensteele (1997) suggests that “[v]ictims’ advocates are, by their very nature whistle blowers, and large bureaucratic entities will generally serve to undermine the effectiveness of employees whose role or job duties bring them in conflict with the employer” (p. 294). Suarez (2017) also describes the emotional toll of working with survivors, but points out that this can be experienced by those in many campus roles beyond advocates, who may not be well trained in how to address the trauma experienced by victims.

This study was designed to help fill voids in the campus sexual assault and advocacy literatures by examining the experiences of campus-based sexual assault advocates. In addition to themes of specific challenges that Title IX has brought to campus advocacy, the theme of professionalization as a potential solution to challenges emerged frequently from the interviews as an important finding. To contextualize our analysis of that theme, in the next section we provide a discussion of major concepts related to professionalization that may also be applied to advocacy work.

Professionalization

Training, Professional Standards, and Expertise

Early scholars Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb (1917) described a profession as “a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested objective counsel service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain” (p. 26). Although some aspects of Webbs’s definition, such as the need for specialized training, are still seen as crucial elements of professionalization, the need for “disinterested” service provision is no longer frequently mentioned in the literature. Many modern scholars advocate, in fact, for professionals to have an intrinsic desire to work in the public service realm and to aim to make a positive contribution to society (Larson, 1978). Scholars have also noted the importance of professionals meeting a clear-cut societal need (Ammons & King, 1984; Mosher, 1968; Wilensky, 1964), which may in turn increase their perceived value.

Within a given field, the question of “who are the experts?” may also arise. In most instances, individuals with the highest level of education or training are seen as the experts. Like Webb and Webb (1917), modern scholars, including Wilensky (1964), Ammons and King (1984), and Mosher (1968), have noted the importance of training and have expanded on this requirement to include the implementation of professional standards and licensing requirements for professionals. In other cases, and often a major criticism of professionalization (especially with female-dominated fields such as advocacy), high levels of formalized education and training do not necessarily lead to expertise, and “experts” may sometimes claim to have authority in fields about which they have little to no knowledge (Fry & Raadschelders, 2014).

We can also look to professionalization in other female-dominated fields, such as social work, to better understand how professionalization may affect campus victim advocates. Iarskaia-Smirnova and Romanov (2002) found that a lack of professional standards among social workers, for example, led to a decrease in public recognition of the field. They also found that many social workers wished for more training and networking opportunities, and information sharing to help build capacity. Thus, professional standards, training, and collaboration may be helpful to social workers, advocates, and other care workers.

Ethics, Trust, and Confidentiality

Some scholars have discussed creating a code of ethics to guide professionals in their role (Ammons & King, 1984; Evetts, 2006; Mosher, 1968; Wilensky, 1964), and Evetts (2006) argues for a definition of professionalization that is based on confidentiality and trust. Because advocates are confidential resources and because trust will play a role in a survivor’s decision to report (ATIXA, 2015), these three concepts of professionalization—ethics, confidentiality, and trust—are relevant to the field of advocacy.

Another example of professionalization in social work suggests implications for advocacy. Blyth (2009) suggests that social workers, like advocates, place a high value on trust, reliability, nonjudgment, and being open with those they support. When social workers exemplified these traits and built open and trusting relationships, clients indicated that they valued the work done by the social workers and that they were satisfied with their care (Blewett, Lewis, & Tunstill, 2007).

These literatures contextualize our exploratory study, the goal of which was to better understand how the framing of sexual assault through Title IX is affecting the advocate role. The primary research questions were, first, how do campus victim advocates currently perceive and experience their role on college campuses? And second, how have developments around Title IX shaped those perceptions? The theme of potential prospects for professionalizing the field of advocacy that emerged from the data prompted an additional research question that we explore in this article: How might efforts to professionalize the field of advocacy address some of the challenges they are facing and change how they perceive and fulfill their role of serving and supporting survivors on college campuses in positive and negative ways?

Method

Recruitment

This exploratory study is based on analysis of in-depth open-ended interviews with 15 campus-based victim advocates from across the United States. We employed two purposive sampling techniques, convenience and snowball, to recruit participants. One strategy was to ask participants in an earlier survey of campuses’ enforcement of new state laws (Brubaker & Mancini, 2017) to agree to be interviewed. A second strategy was to share an announcement about the study via a campus advocacy list-serve and at the 2016 NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) Strategies conference (https://goo.gl/ZafbB3). Some participants recruited other advocates. The small sample size reflects primary findings that advocates are overburdened with rising reports of sexual assault and understaffed offices, and the tense political climate around campus sexual assault has prompted some administrators to discourage personnel from discussing the issue. Several advocates shared that although they wanted to participate in the study, they were explicitly forbidden from doing so by their supervisors.

Data Collection

The interview guide was developed to focus on advocates’ training, background and approaches, their work environments, and their experiences doing advocacy on campus before and since the DCL went into effect. Questions also focused on changes to their role, what they liked and disliked about advocacy, what they thought campuses should be doing to address sexual assault, and their thoughts on the future of advocacy. The questions were reviewed by advocates who provided suggestions for both content and wording. Semi-structured, one-on-one interviews lasted between 30-80 min and were conducted by the first author in person, via telephone, or via teleconference between January and May 2016. They were audio recorded and transcribed.

Participants

A total of 15 advocates participated in the study. Most campuses are experiencing higher numbers of reports and are implementing new processes, making it difficult for advocates to find time to be interviewed. In addition, the nature of their work requires advocates to be available to respond to survivors immediately; a number of advocates scheduled interviews that they had to cancel to serve a client. Those who were able to participate, though fewer than ideal, provided detailed and thoughtful accounts of their experiences. While we cannot claim that the data fully reached saturation, we did see largely similar themes emerge from the data regarding challenges that Title IX had brought to campus advocates and their ability to serve survivors.

Here, we provide a general overview of the demographic characteristics of the participants and campuses, but we do not connect quotes to participants in an effort to protect their identities and ensure confidentiality. Fourteen participants self-identified as female, woman or cisgender woman. One identified as a man. Twelve identified as White, one as Black, one as Latina, and one as biracial (Hispanic and White). Participants ranged in age from 26-50. Eleven identified as straight or heterosexual, and four as queer or bisexual.

Almost all of the advocates had at least a master’s degree. One had a PhD, another a JD, two were working on PhDs, and one was completing an MSW. Most of the degrees were in social science fields, education, or public administration. Years of experience across participants varied, ranging from 2-16 years on a campus and from 2-24 years working in the community, in domestic violence or sexual assault organizations. All but one advocate had worked in a community setting before working on a campus, and most had substantial experience as interns or volunteers in crisis intervention, responding to hotlines, and so on.

Advocates identified a number of ideological and philosophical approaches that they bring to their positions, most describing some version of a survivor-/victim-centered or trauma-informed approach. Several embraced a “social justice” or “feminist” model, and a few described an “empowerment” model, where the focus is on empowering victims to make their own decisions regarding services and response. Those with stronger community backgrounds tended to embrace the most “progressive” ideals of empowerment and social justice.

Most (73%) of the advocates worked on large campuses (defined as greater than 11,000 students); three worked on campuses with between 5,000-10,000 students, and one worked on a campus with fewer than 5,000 students. Ten described their campuses as urban, one as rural, two as suburban, and two as some combination of these types. Ten institutions were public and five were private. Advocates were located across eight states, from every geographic region of the continental United States.

Analysis

Employing a basic inductive and iterative thematic coding approach, we coded the transcribed interviews through a constant comparison process incorporating open and axial coding and clustering methods, and memoing to identify and explore themes. We looked for patterns across themes and identified quotes that helped to support major claims. We also used a priori concepts from the professionalization and advocacy literature to analyze relevant themes. To enhance the validity of the analysis, both authors participated in the coding process independently, and we met to discuss and come to agreement around the themes. We discussed the emergent themes with advocates who participated in the study, as well as with others working in the field. The analysis yielded thick descriptions of how advocates perceive Title IX’s framing of campus sexual assault and changes to their roles.

Findings

Similar to those in Moylan’s (2017) study, the advocates who participated in this study agreed that Title IX has increased awareness of and attention to sexual assault, and many also felt that their visibility and participation in campus processes had been enhanced through this attention. One advocate offered, “. . . it’s easier to advocate for certain things now that there’s attention to [sexual assault].” Another explained, “I think [sexual assault’s] part of the discourse a lot more than it used to be. It was a topic people avoided.” Yet another offered that he believed that Title IX had brought more credibility to everyone doing anti-violence work.

According to the participants, prior to the DCL, much of the work of campus responses to sexual assault was done by advocates, with some formally reported cases handled by campus police and/or campus judicial boards. Since the issuing of the DCL, the requirement to staff Title IX offices and adhere to Title IX processes has shifted the focus and provided a counterpoint to, and shined a light on, advocacy. This has had positive and negative impacts on the field. While campuses have always had individuals serving in a Title IX capacity, they have historically been housed in human resources departments and focused on employee relations. The DCL brought Title IX to campus sexual assault in a new and comprehensive way and communicated guidelines requiring that many more individuals were trained in responding to sexual misconduct. The specific changes advocates discussed were (a) the hiring of new staff, typically attorneys, into Title IX officer and coordinator positions and (b) the requirement that all campus employees, including faculty, become mandated reporters of sexual misconduct experienced by students. While these changes increased awareness of and attention to campus sexual assault, typically viewed positively by advocates, they also created problems in terms of confusion for students about confidential sources and where to turn for help, different and sometimes conflicting goals and expertise across roles, and the involvement of individuals in campus processes who were not always sufficiently trained. Several advocates also shared that the changes had diverted resources from prevention and advocacy to the compliance-focused Title IX processes.

Below we discuss these themes in terms of how the advocate role is being (re)defined on campuses through their relationships with other responders and how changes brought through the DCL create challenges to advocates’ ability to provide services to survivors.

(Re)Defining the Advocate Role and Relationships With Others

Several participants noted challenges to role clarity since the DCL went into effect. For example, one advocate described their role as being “cobbled together” with overlapping roles. Because of new regulations, some advocates began to take on additional roles and responsibilities. Multiple roles related to campus sexual assault response have also been added or expanded in light of Title IX guidance. One advocate lamented,

. . . a lot more people are in the decision-making process so there are a lot more difficult parts, right? Suddenly everyone’s an expert in our field in a way that maybe people didn’t care before, so they weren’t voicing their opinions . . .

Below we discuss advocates’ experiences with these new and changed roles and how they have required them to continue to clarify and define the advocate role.

Title IX officers

Advocates reported that their relationships with Title IX officers were generally positive. One participant described how they felt that their Title IX officers understood and were invested in the work carried out by advocates; others described how Title IX officers were supportive of advocates and would serve as advisors when needed. Although not something experienced by participants of this study, some advocates did note that they had heard of other advocates who did not have positive experiences with their Title IX officers. Two participants, for example, indicated that their campus Title IX officers had previously served as advocates, so they were particularly sensitive to and supportive of advocacy:

Our Title IX coordinator is a former colleague of mine . . . so I think we are incredibly blessed to have someone who comes from victim advocacy perspective. . . . I know a lot of my colleagues are struggling within their Title IX offices . . . it makes a difference who that Title IX person is and whether they have training.

Campus and community police

Advocates shared that new mandated reporting requirements have increased the involvement in campus sexual assault cases of both on-campus and off-campus police officers, and their experiences with police officers were mixed. One advocate described an experience in which a police officer entered the room when they were meeting with a survivor “like they were the Terminator,” which the advocate felt had retraumatized the survivor and prevented them from providing sufficient support. In general, advocates experienced more negative experiences with community police, who were less likely to receive training specific to Title IX or trauma-informed responses, than with campus police. One advocate reflected, “The campus law enforcement people that I have worked with are light years ahead of the local ones in terms of understanding sexual violence.”

Community-based advocates

Smaller campuses that cannot afford to hire their own advocates often contract with community-based organizations for advocacy, and even larger campuses have been creating memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with community organizations to provide additional advocacy services (Brubaker & Mancini, 2017). While these arrangements were sometimes experienced positively by participants, others described conflicts in these relationships and shared that they were aware of perceptions among community-based advocates that campus-based advocates were not able to truly support survivors because they are employed by the university. Community advocates felt that campus advocates were beholden to the universities’ processes and goals, regulated by Title IX, and that their loyalty to their employer was stronger than their loyalty to survivors. For example, one advocate shared, “[Community providers] have been going around campus telling administrators that we’re a liability to the university, that they should be contracting out, that I’m not a real advocate because I’m not working under the rape crisis center.” Another shared an ongoing source of conflict that challenged her work: “Community advocates saying ‘oh you shouldn’t trust your campus advocates because at the end of the day the school pays them and they’re only loyal to the school’.”

Some participants shared that community advocates tend to think their training is better than that provided on campus in terms of commitment to the survivor, and one community agency even refused to train campus-based advocates because they viewed them as more beholden to the university than to the survivors. On the contrary, some advocates shared that community advocates and mental health counselors who meet with survivors typically lack sufficient understanding of Title IX policies and procedures to serve and support students.

The conflicts with community advocates represent an ongoing problem encountered by advocates and others doing anti-violence work from a social justice and feminist perspective who also must work within larger systems (Brubaker, 2019). For example, one advocate explained, “We put forth the best interest of the survivor even if it’s against the best interest of the university.” This tension was a constant source of stress for many advocates as one lamented, “It’s unfortunate as a profession we have to go to work everyday and decide if we are going to do what’s best for the student, or are we going to keep our jobs.” Advocates in Moylan’s (2017) study reported similar tensions and struggles, which Moylan described as “victim-insensitive decisions.”

Devaluation of Advocacy

One consequence of the increased involvement of Title IX officers and other campus responders to campus sexual assault was creating comparisons between Title IX compliance and advocacy work. Some advocates felt that their work was now more visible, and some equated visibility with value and respect, while others were less convinced about this effect. For example, one advocate shared, “We’re a lot more visible on campus in the past few years but . . . I don’t think our opinions are necessarily being asked for, so much as ‘oh we have that, it’s good, checkbox’.” Moylan (2017) similarly reported that victim advocates “do not carry the institutional prestige or decision-making capability . . . [and many] felt their voices were overshadowed by that of the lawyers . . .” (p. 1134).

The sense of being undervalued was shared by many, such as this advocate:

My lens is always about what we’re doing is helping students and helping the university, and so I want that same view from everyone—for them to look at our work and say “you know what? They are doing phenomenal work for us. We value what they do. We trust what they do.” There’s none of that.

In general, it seems that advocates did not feel that other campus providers/responders saw advocates as meeting the clear-cut societal need described by Wilensky (1964), Mosher (1968), and Ammons and King (1984). As one advocate described,

I think being taken seriously both as a person and as a profession is an ongoing challenge and we’ve been getting a lot of . . . pats on the head from the administration. . . . I feel like we’re valued on a really topical level but we aren’t really known. It’s not really understood, the work we’re doing, they just know that they need us and that we’re quote/unquote important.

One possible reason their work was not being valued or understood may be a result of formal notions of expertise, as suggested by one advocate: “There’s people all around and they don’t trust us even though we’re experts in this area and we’ve been there for years, and there’s a lack of trust because they just want to control every bit of the process.”

In fact, participants described how some of those entering the field of campus sexual assault response are selected based on their experience and credentials in nonadvocacy fields (e.g., attorneys and/or Title IX officers without experience in sexual assault or domestic violence), and that those who have these qualifications are in some cases favored over advocates who have been working in the advocacy field for many years. Not only do attorneys and Title IX officers often enjoy higher salaries and more prestige than advocates, they may not always adhere to the feminist ideologies upon which the field of advocacy was founded, leading to more negative outcomes for survivors, according to advocates:

Title IX has brought this air of quote/unquote experts, right? The law has involved itself into this field now on campuses so all these new Title IX positions and all the attorneys that are filling them and then all the attorneys that are now coming to hearings because they’re allowed on campus, it’s really changed the environment, I’d say, around it.

Overall, although the quality of relationships between advocates and others varied, positive relationships allowed advocates to feel more supported in their role and to feel their work was valued. In cases in which relationships with others were negative, advocates cited insufficient training and/or conflicting and competing goals, and devaluation related to questions of loyalty to social justice/activism and notions of expertise, as primary obstacles to better collaboration. Below we discuss the potential for professionalization to enhance campus advocates’ relationships and collaborations.

Challenges to Serving Survivors—Mandated Reporting

The second major change discussed by advocates was the requirement for mandatory reporting by all campus employees, which many viewed as a threat to confidentiality and safe space for survivors and as ultimately having a “chilling effect” on reporting. The early implementation of this requirement created confusion for many advocates and students.

One of the “effective responses” to campus sexual assault encouraged by the White House Task Force (White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, 2014), confidential reporting options have been found to encourage survivors to report (Brubaker, 2009; W. A. Walsh et al., 2010). Although the OCR guidelines (U.S. Department of Education, OCR, 2014) clearly identify professionally licensed therapists and counselors, health care providers, and clergy as responders who can assure confidentiality, the expectations regarding victim advocates have been less clear, and on some campuses, at the time of the interviews there was no provision for confidential reporting.

Some of the advocates worked in Women’s Centers, traditionally a major site for advocacy work on many campuses, and in some cases, advocate positions were moved out of Women’s Centers after the DCL went into effect. Sometimes this meant that they could no longer protect victims’ confidentiality, and the change was not always clearly communicated to students, as one advocate lamented: “So not only has this kind of privilege been ripped away from us, it’s not been done in a very transparent way so the students know.”

Further complicating matters are positions that include more than one role, where one might be confidential and another a mandated reporter. For example, some advocate positions also include prevention/education responsibilities. In these situations, the reporting status of the individuals in those positions changes depending on which role they are performing at any given time, which can be confusing to students and stressful to advocates.

Overall, as these findings attest, advocates shared many similar concerns about their role and challenges to serving survivors. This advocate provided a clear and succinct summary:

If I had a magic wand I would want what we had before, I would want confidentiality, I would want trust from the Title IX office and some of the leaders who look to our office with suspicion. I would want them to see us as the subject matter experts that we are and trust that we serve students in the best way we feel possible.

These themes relate to many aspects of professionalization. In the next section, we discuss the potential for professionalization to address some of the challenges advocates are facing.

The Promise of Professionalization

Historically, the field of advocacy has resisted the movement toward becoming more professionalized (Rodriguez, 1988). As campus victim advocates work to bring value and recognition to their work, however, their collective identity may be shifting to an identity that is more professionalized. This type of shift tends to happen intentionally, as members choose to make changes based on their own experiences and on the political climate within and external to their organization/profession (Gamson, 1996; Reger, 2002; Robnett, 1997; Whittier, 1995, 1997). Collective identities are also dynamic and can change as new goals and discourses arise (Reger, 2002). In light of the challenges, several advocates in this study believed that professionalization through licensure and certification would be beneficial.

Many advocates discussed how professionalization might generally help address conflicts with other campus and community providers by enhancing the value, authority, and status of the role. For example, one explained, “now there is a Title IX certification for advocates and so the work is becoming more professionalized, there’s more credibility.” One participant specifically related challenges advocates have been experiencing in terms of recognition and respect for their role to the current lack of professionalization among advocates:

The professional trajectory of advocates is almost nil—you basically have to push back on your colleagues on behalf of the survivors and I don’t know how many times I was told “you can’t tell me how to do my job.”

Some advocates described the need for common policies, guidelines, and standards of practice among advocates on different campuses–aspects of professionalization discussed by several scholars (Ammons & King, 1984; Frednreis & Vertz, 1988; Wilensky, 1964). Similarly, one advocate felt that professionalization efforts could help clarify the advocate role and discussed how implementing professional standards such as certifications could help achieve this goal:

I think what would help, honestly, is more clarity in the role of the advocate. . . . Maybe using a standard of practice, like when you’re using the word, would be really helpful too. . . . I always think of licensed clinicians where they have a standard of practice and . . . we don’t really have that.

In this way, establishing standards can also help to clarify the advocate role and emphasize that it fulfills a societal need.

Some advocates also discussed the idea of creating a code of ethics that could promote confidentiality and guide them as they carried out their role. As one advocate described,

I think there’s been a lot of conversations about the professionalization of advocacy, you know, I think that we’re kind of in this limbo right now. I think it’s a job and a career and we’re professionals, but in terms of, like, social work, and standards and codes of ethics and things like that . . . we don’t have and I think we might be moving in that way. . . . I hope that that means we’re getting some more protections around confidentiality. I think that would be the benefit of moving in that direction, so regardless of what that looks like and how we get there, I hope that’s what comes next.

This advocate identifies another potential benefit of professionalizing advocacy, that is, that it could address the major challenge of protecting advocates’ confidentiality. Many advocates hoped that professionalization would provide additional legal protections of privilege and confidentiality, a feature advocated by Evetts (2006). Another advocate explained this potential benefit:

I think [the formalization of the advocate role] would be a good thing for the protection of confidentiality. Like the biggest issue is that if it’s not formalized then there isn’t a uniform way in which campus advocates, in particular, can be recognized as confidential. And so you then get in the tricky space of the university may designate you that way, but if the winds blow the other direction, universities often won’t go the other direction, so having a legal stance to be able to say, to have that confidential and other kind of role would be great.

Although many advocates looked to professionalization as a potential solution to the major problems they identified with Title IX–that is, loss of protections for confidentiality and diminished value of advocacy–others were skeptical that this move would solve these problems without further undermining the goals and ideals of advocacy. For example, one reflected, “Right, like what are the unintended sides of doing that? So . . . yeah, I kind of sit on the fence on that one. What’s next for advocates?” Further questioning the move toward professionalization, another advocate offered, “If it becomes more professionalized and incomes increase demand, then maybe you have people attracted to the positions that have other interests in mind. That is the only concern I have.” In fact, research has indicated that increased professionalization within traditionally female-dominated fields and feminist organizations can lead to a decrease in survivor-centered practices and on promoting social change, as we discuss further below (Lehrner & Allen, 2009; Macy, Giattina, Parish, & Crosby, 2010; Moe, 2000; Nichols, 2013; Schechter, 1982).

Discussion

This study begins to fill a void in the literatures on campus sexual assault and advocacy by examining an under-researched group, campus sexual assault advocates, providing additional insight into the reframing of campus sexual assault under Title IX. The DCL has led to broad and dramatic changes in how universities approach this issue, and advocates are in a unique position to assess those changes vis-à-vis their own role and perspective as well as those of survivors. The enhanced regulation through Title IX has resulted in additional campus personnel, particularly those with formal training and expertise in Title IX, and changes to confidentiality through mandated reporting. Major challenges to advocates’ ability to serve and support survivors are the limits to confidential outlets for reporting and competition with Title IX officers for authority and respect as experts in the field, as well as conflicts between advocates’ and organizations’ goals. The findings suggest that the stressors and conflicts addressed in the literature as typically experienced by advocates have increased since the DCL letter went into effect. The findings also contribute to the literature on professionalization by exploring the meanings of expertise, ethical standards, and role clarification within a particular field, as well as perceptions regarding how the evaluation of work might be enhanced through professionalization. We further explore implications of the findings for policy and practice, a summary of limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research below.

Policy and Practice

Research suggests that there are positive outcomes of advocacy for survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence (Nichols, 2013). Specifically, survivors experience less violence over time, report a higher quality of life and social support, and have greater access to community resources when they work with advocates (Allen et al., 2011). Among sexual assault survivors, those who had the assistance of rape victim advocates reported more positive experiences with the legal and medical systems in terms of use of services, positive outcomes, and better treatment by providers (Campbell, 2006). To ensure that advocates can support survivors in these ways, they need solutions to the current challenges; professionalization may provide some solutions, with some costs.

While advocates consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of professionalization, they may find themselves torn between the overall values of the advocacy field and its feminist influences, the desire to implement survivor-based advocacy, a past tendency to avoid professionalization, and their own personal views regarding the benefits of professionalization. As anti-violence programs have become increasingly reliant on state funding, the professionalization of many anti-violence movements and fields has increased (Incite!–Critical Resistance Statement, 2005). With this reliance, however, has come a separation from a social justice and community-based focus (Cohen, 1985; Incite!–Critical Resistance Statement, 2005; Kim, 2013). Within the field of social work, for example, and consistent with concerns expressed by some advocates in this study, professionalization has been found to lead to the undermining of social movement goals (Kim, 2013); that is, promoting social justice or reducing inequalities may no longer be a primary focus.

Research has also indicated that the professionalization of feminist and social service organizations can lead to a decline in the survivor-centered approaches as standardized service provision is favored (Haaken & Yragui, 2003; Moe, 2007; Srinivasan & Davis, 1991). This conflict between feminist activist goals and organizational priorities is at the heart of the community-based versus campus-based advocate conflict, and it is unclear whether it could be resolved through professionalization.

On the contrary, while professionalization may entail standardization, this standardization could still be considerate of, and even protect, the ideological priorities of advocacy as ethical standards. If the practice of survivor-based advocacy becomes a part of a standardized/professional code of ethics, advocates can demonstrate that, to be seen as a professional in their field, one must commit to a focus on the needs of survivors. Because individuals are often challenged to reexamine their own ethical standards by their peers and colleagues (Plant, 2015), a code of ethics adopted by advocates could also help to promote these ethical standards and the idea of survivor-based advocacy to other service providers. For example, in her study of midwives, MacLellan (2014) found that there were often challenges balancing the demands of their institution and the needs of their clients. By implementing ethical standards similar to those of hospitals, midwives were able to increase trust with other service providers and their clients. We suggest that in the case of advocacy, the reverse might be a better way forward. That is, the ethical standard invoked by advocates to prioritize survivors’ needs and decision-making autonomy should be adopted by all those responding to sexual assault on and off campus as a strategy for increasing trust and improving the response. As one study participant noted, this type of certification or training may be especially helpful at smaller institutions in which there may be less training and support available for advocates, for it could allow for networking and resource-sharing opportunities.

Professionalization may also help guard against those without sufficient experience working as advocates or supervising advocates. As Wilensky (1964) discussed, a licensing requirement can help to protect job territory; in the case of advocates, this would mean that only those who have proven that they are themselves qualified to work as an advocate would be able to do so. This way of valuing experience as expertise could allow advocates to have more freedom over how they carry out their role, as they would be seen as experts, and who could be trusted to make appropriate decisions, and for campus policies to become more survivor-centered. This could also allow those who had worked as an advocate for many years to be recognized for their past work and be favored over those who come from different backgrounds.

Protections of privilege and confidentiality are of primary concern to advocates, and professionalization may be one route to securing such protection. As one advocate suggested,

. . . until there’s some kind of official certification for victim advocates, an official law that states that we victim advocates should have the same privileges or very similar privilege of confidentiality as a counselor, I think there’s going to continue to be a fight back and forth as to what our role is, what our rights are, what we can do, what we can’t do.

The Department of Education provides some guidance suggesting that advocates can be designated as confidential sources, but there is variation across states regarding which specific roles have legal protections of privilege (Campus Technical Assistance and Resource Project, n.d.; U.S. Department of Education, OCR, 2014; A. Walsh, 2014). A. Walsh’s (2014) indication that “any other person with a professional license requiring confidentiality, or who is supervised by such a person” has privilege suggests that if advocates were to professionalize, this could help formalize and protect their confidential status (p. 19).

Overall, based on advocates’ perceptions and the literature, there seem to be more potential benefits than costs with professionalization, but the greatest risk seems to be the potential loss of social activism and systematic change that have historically been at the foundation of advocacy. Whether or not professionalizing advocacy will guarantee privilege or increase the perceived value of advocates or the respect they are afforded remains to be seen.

Limitations

This study was exploratory and based on a small nonrepresentative sample; as such, the findings are not generalizable to the larger population of advocates. Although the participants represented a variety of individual training and experience, campus types, sizes, and locations, they did not represent all variations across these dimensions. The findings also suggest that the leadership, climate, and culture of individual campuses can have major impacts on advocates’ work, and these details, and the relative influence of each, should be explored further in larger, representative studies.

An additional and important limitation is that the advocates who participated in this study were largely White, cisgender, and heterosexual. Their perspectives on both advocacy and sexual assault likely reflect their relatively privileged positions and potentially neglect the experiences of marginalized groups. As suggested by Hippensteele (1997),

Most white, presumedly straight, women supporters and advocates lack the experience to fully comprehend the complexity of sexual harassment commingled with race and/or sexual orientation oppression, thus few women of color or lesbians expect influential people within the institution to be sensitive or responsive to their sexual victimization. (p. 301)

Enhancing the diversity and inclusion of advocates in both research and practice is critical to representing the experiences and meeting the needs of all survivors.

Future Research

As practitioners and researchers continue to assess the impact of Title IX on how we respond to campus sexual assault, it is important to address the myriad roles of campus and community personnel and how they are experiencing these changes. We need to identify challenges and barriers to supporting survivors as well as ways to increase and enhance coordinated responses and shared goals. As efforts to professionalize the field of advocacy continue, it will be important to assess their impact and the extent to which professionalization can solve some of the problems advocates currently confront and the extent to which professionalization changes the field and its value. For example, would professionalization help or hinder the challenges faced by advocates working on campuses and conflicts with community-based advocates? Would professionalization of both roles enhance or further undermine collaboration? Future research could also expand upon this study by conducting studies with a larger sample of advocates to identify and better understand variations across type, size, and location of campuses among other potential factors.

As we continue to find better ways to investigate these issues, university administrations should support and respect the work and expertise of advocates. In addition to complying with Title IX and other federal laws and mandates, if universities are committed to serving the needs of survivors of sexual assault, it is critical that they commit to finding ways to support and value the work of advocates and to involve them in decision making and policies and practices to respond to sexual assault on their campuses.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Sarah Jane Brubaker is an associate professor of criminal justice and public policy in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. She directs the Certificate in Gender Violence Intervention and teaches courses on theorizing gender violence, criminal justice, public policy theory, and qualitative and community-based research methods. Her research has focused on gender violence, sexual and reproductive health, and juvenile justice, with a focus on intersectionality, marginalized groups, and social justice.

Brittany Keegan is a PhD candidate in public policy and administration and a graduate teaching assistant at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. She holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing, graduate certificates in nonprofit management and gender violence intervention, and a master’s degree in public administration. Her research aims to identify ways that nonprofits can effectively serve those affected by violence or conflict, with a current focus on refugee populations and those affected by gender-based violence. She is also involved in her local nonprofit community as a board member and volunteer and has taught VCU’s Fund Development for the Nonprofit Sector course.

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