​​Content warning: This article contains references to suicide and sexual assault. If you or someone you know are in need of help, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

On Monday, Stanford announced “a resolution in the lawsuit that was filed against the university following Katie Meyer’s ’22 tragic death in 2022.” The joint statement from Stanford and Meyer’s family announced a new mental health initiative and the Katie Meyer Leadership Award.

“To honor Katie, Stanford will collaborate with Katie’s family to launch an initiative focused on the mental health and well-being of student-athletes at the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance,” the University said in a statement. 

Stanford Athletics will also establish the Katie Meyer Leadership Award, which will be given each year to “an exceptional Stanford student-athlete.”

Officials said that “more information on both the initiative at Wu Tsai and the Leadership Award will be provided later this year.”

The University also said it would adopt the principles of Katie Meyer’s Law to provide additional support to students navigating Stanford’s Office of Community Standards (OCS) disciplinary process. 

As reported by The Daily last year, “Julia Brownley (D-CA), representative of California’s 26th Congressional District, introduced ‘Katie Meyer’s Law’ in the House of Representatives … [which]  requires universities to allow students facing disciplinary action to have an advisor of their choosing.”

The University did not provide comment on how both parties reached the resolution or on how the resolution would be implemented by OCS.

As a further tribute, the University announced that it would retire Meyer’s jersey number, 19, “in honor of the impact Katie had on Stanford women’s soccer.”

“While Katie’s passing remains devastating and tragic, the memory of her accomplishments and the uplifting influence she had on those who knew her lives on,” the statement said.

Katie, in addition to being a captain and member of the women’s soccer team, was a Residential Advisor, a Mayfield Fellow, a Defense Innovative Scholar and was on track to attend Stanford Law.

The Meyer family initially filed their wrongful death lawsuit against the University on November 28, 2022.

On the eve of her death on February 28, 2022, Katie was “sitting alone in her dorm room, when it was dark outside” when she received an email from Stanford University’s Office of Community Standards (OCS), according to the lawsuit.

The email, sent by then-Assistant Dean Tiffany Gabrielson, cited Katie with a “formal disciplinary charge” following an occurrence on August 28, 2021, where Katie “was riding her bike and was alleged to have spilled coffee on a football player who allegedly sexually assaulted a minor female soccer player on the team in which Katie served as Captain,” the lawsuit alleged. 

Despite “the football player [indicating] throughout the disciplinary process that he would like to ‘make amends’” and “did not want any punishment that impacts her life,” OCS issued a letter “[containing] threatening language regarding sanctions and potential ‘removal from the university,'” according to the lawsuit.

Upon receiving this letter, according to the plaintiffs, Katie “immediately responded to the email expressing how ‘shocked and distraught’ she was over being charged and threatened with removal from the university” and suffered an “acute stress reaction that impulsively led to her suicide.” 

What followed was a long legal battle that finally came to an end with these concessions from the University.

Stanford and the Meyer family said they believed that “working together on these initiatives will both honor Katie’s indelible legacy and help current and future students in meaningful ways.”