Chancellor Thorp,

Last week, UNC students who are survivors of sexual violence bravely came forward with stories of mistreatment by UNC administrators. It was revealed that administrators are silencing survivors of sexual assault and relationship violence, limiting their support, criticizing their accounts, and keeping the greater community unaware of the reality of sexual violence at the University.

Landen Gambill and another female student both endured abuse under the Interim Procedure for Sexual Misconduct, which allegedly updated the University’s response to sexual assault to comply with Title IX last semester. But this policy was passed without meaningful input from students or administrators with experience in interpersonal violence prevention.

This summer, the same administrators directly and indirectly responsible for the mistreatment of survivors through the University’s response to sexual violence wrote a new sexual assault policy, again without meaningful input from students or administrators with experience in interpersonal violence prevention. Those students and administrators who have since voiced concerns about this policy have been sidelined by these administrators.

This Monday, a committee is expected to select the University’s Deputy Title IX Coordinator. This person who holds this position will be responsible for coordinating response to sexual assault on campus and overseeing the grievance process for cases of sexual misconduct. The Deputy Title IX Coordinator will be responsible for making the University, its policies, and the grievance process affirming, fair and safe for survivors of sexual assault.

But the Deputy Title IX Coordinator hiring committee has received almost no public input around these issues. The administrators responsible for the current mistreatment of survivors are on this committee. Meanwhile certain individuals have been deliberately excluded from the process and there has been no attempt to receive feedback from the greater Carolina community. Given the horrific treatment of survivors under the current administration, we have no confidence that administrators on this committee understand the needs or experiences of survivors of sexual assault on this campus. Furthermore, the lack of transparency in the way in which the administration has conducted itself on issues of sexual violence in the past must stop.

Therefore, we call on you to halt the hiring decision of the Deputy Title IX Coordinator until public feedback can be received by the committee. This issue matters to every student, faculty and staff member at Carolina who is or knows a survivor of sexual violence or who cares about having an affirming, fair and safe campus response for survivors. The injustices survivors have already suffered from the University administration are too great to allow such an important decision to meet the same fate.

We call on you to do the right thing to begin the long process of transparently reforming the University’s response to sexual assault by delaying this decision in order to solicit public feedback in light of these recent, disturbing revelations.