GLENSIDE, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Arcadia University, at the heart of a sexual harassment investigation, has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which determined that the Montgomery County university violated Title IX mandates.
They say that happened when the university failed to investigate thee years’ worth of complaints from students and faculty of sexual harassment by a professor, after getting a number of from both students and faculty, from 2018 to 2021.
The Department of Education says sexually harassing conduct was reported to the university’s then-chief of human resources and a dean, and that students had reported the professor’s alleged misconduct in course evaluations from 2019 onward.
Further, they say, when Arcadia brass finally did initiate an investigation, they stopped it when the professor resigned, a move that violated the university’s Title IX obligations to determine whether sex discrimination occurred and to redress any hostile environment students may have suffered.
Under the terms of the agreement, Arcadia must revise their Title IX policies and procedures and train faculty and staff accordingly. The university must assign a third party to complete an investigation — and conduct a review of all Title IX complaints from student- and staff-involved sexual harassment for a three-year period.
Arcadia has not yet responded to KYW’s request for comment.