What used to be Stanford’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education (SHARE) Title IX & Title VI Office is now the Title IX & Title VI Office. This is one of multiple unannounced changes the office has made, allegedly without student feedback over the summer and earlier this school year.

According to a former SHARE student staff member, Pelagia Martin ’27, the office made plans to modify their language for victims of sexual violence from “survivor” to “impacted student.” The former staff member said the office would also no longer be involved in several awareness months and associated events like Take Back the Night. While the University confirmed that it was incorporating a “civil rights model,” representatives denied that the office would be reducing programming and said they would only be using the term “impacted student” in some cases.

Title IX of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs, and Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race. The Title IX & Title VI Office addresses issues of harassment or discrimination involving members of the Stanford community. 

This year’s changes to the office follow the removal of the sexual assault prevention program Flip the Script and the cutting of Beyond Sex-Ed (BSE) to New Student Orientation (NSO) programming — both implemented without student input. Flip the Script has since been reinstated as of Oct. 17 following community backlash and a meeting between Provost Jenny Martinez and Michele Dauber, a nationally recognized campus sexual assault reform advocate and emerita professor at Stanford Law School.

Martin ’27 says she can now speak publicly after resigning from her position at SHARE on Oct. 16, citing the institutional changes. Other students with knowledge of the office’s changes have refused to speak to The Daily for fear of retaliation due to their staff confidentiality agreements.

The University disputed some of Martin’s descriptions of the office changes. Patrick Dunkley, vice provost for Institutional Equity, Access and Community, wrote to The Daily that the term “survivor” will be used in “educational programming” but that investigations will use “neutral language like ‘impacted student’” to prevent biases from affecting cases. Additionally, he wrote that awareness programming will continue but that “decisions about where these programs will be housed long term will be made by the end of the academic year.”

Dunkley did not respond to requests for comment on this year’s recognition of Stalking Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which the office had previously supported. 

The University also did not address whether there was ever a plan to stop organizing for Sexual Assault Awareness Month as Martin alleged. Adrienne Lyles, Title IX & Title VI Coordinator, wrote in an email to The Daily, “We had planned to refresh our awareness month programming to include broader Title IX & VI Office participation and to partner with other offices engaging in Sexual Assault Awareness Month programming.”

Sexual violence awareness and prevention programs are required by federal law under the Clery Act. Stanford is exempt from a recent California Assembly Bill enacted last month to require postsecondary schools to strengthen training and policy against sexual violence. When Stanford stopped receiving state funding in order to continue legacy admissions in July 2025, it became exempt from compliance with similar state-level laws and their requirements.

According to Lyles, the changes at the Title IX & Title VI Office are emblematic of a shift to include a “civil rights model.” Dunkley attributed the removal of SHARE from the office’s name to the merging of the office’s Title IX responsibilities with Title IV in 2024. The new Title IX & Title VI office is now responsible for addressing discrimination based on race, color or national origin in addition to sex-based discrimination. 

Dunkley added that the name change reflects how “both compliance responsibilities are on equal footing,” he wrote. 

“The Title IX & VI Office continues to refine its focus on supporting and educating our community on a range of harassment and discrimination experiences, and responding fairly and with care to reported violations,” Dunkley added.

But Martin disagrees with the University’s characterization of the changes. 

“This is a blatant walking back of changes in response to media and student pressure,” Martin wrote. “This is a direct attack on my credibility, and therefore a blatant dismissal of a survivor’s voice by Patrick Dunkley and the Title IX Office.” Martin came to Stanford as a survivor of sexual violence.

Dauber, who led the successful recall campaign against the judge who sentenced Brock Turner in the Chanel Miller sexual assault case, wrote that a language change to “impacted students” would be “needlessly hurtful and serves no valid end.”

The Daily reached out to two student workers at the Title IX & Title VI Office who requested anonymity and declined to comment due to fear of retaliation. The students specifically cited a university-wide confidentiality agreement for student workers which restricts sharing “university information” as defined as “various types of confidential, regulated, proprietary, private or otherwise sensitive information.” The Daily reviewed the agreement to confirm its authenticity. 

The confidentiality agreement that student staff sign during onboarding was expanded in March 2025 to include the section on “university information.” Lyles did not respond to comment referencing the reasoning for the addition of “university information” or what “university information” pertains to.

Martin disagrees. She told The Daily that Lyles and Dunkley explicitly told her not to talk about office changes publicly. Another staff member said she “may face legal consequences if [she] were to speak,” Martin said. 

Lyles denied this claim, writing that “neither I nor, to my knowledge, any office staff has asked student employees to withhold information about any office changes.”

Some members of the community are worried about the changes going unannounced. “The student body and those who are supporting survivors should be entitled to know of the [Office’s] changes,” wrote Ahmed Mostafa, director of the Survivors Pro Bono Clinic at Stanford Law School. The clinic provides free legal representation to student sexual assault survivors in the Title IX process.

“To me, my whole life Stanford University has stood for its commitment to excellence,” Mostafa wrote. “Seeing Stanford become what many would at best describe as mediocre or minimally competent in protecting their students, disgusts me.”

Before the shift towards “neutrality,” Martin said, the office tried to “provide resources equally to survivors and accused, but of course there was still an emphasis that the University wanted to reduce cases of sexual violence.” Now, she said, “we don’t want to show that we’re picking a side at all, and that somehow looking like we support survivors is picking a side, which does not make sense.”

To supplement their shifts in programming this year, the Title IX & Title VI office has introduced optional “Upstander Trainings” for frosh and student groups. The trainings consist of workshops led by office staff to educate students and staff on how to respond to sexual assault or discrimination.

The Office’s past programs have been invaluable to some students’ college experiences. “I’m a different person now because of SHARE,” said Dash Beavers ’26 M.S. ’27, a previous participant in BSE and Take Back the Night. 

Beavers first attended Take Back the Night as part of his fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon (SigEp). He described the event in his freshman year as overflowing with attendees. He returned for the remainder of his time as an undergraduate. 

For Beavers, Take Back the Night was “the first time where I was able to understand that there were other students at this school who have had atypical journeys when it comes to consent and sex and domestic violence,” he said, referring to hearing students’ personal experiences.

In response to the office’s changes, Kirsten Lees ’27, a former facilitator of Flip the Script, formed Resisting Rape Culture at Stanford (RRCUS) together with Martin and other students this past month. They organized the group to hold the campus sexual violence education programs that Martin said she was told would no longer be supported by the Title IX & Title VI office. 

Lees called Dunkley’s statement regarding advocacy months “performative.” 

“Pelagia quit because they took away the fundamental piece of her job, which is the advocacy piece…These decisions were not thought through,” Lees said. “I’m disappointed but not surprised.”

RRCUS is hosting programming for sexual assault awareness this week, including a vigil held Monday for Cornell’s Jane Doe and a National Take Back the Night rally at White Plaza at 5 p.m. on Sunday.

The Title IX & Title VI office has not been involved in organizing the campus events. Neither Lees nor Martin were informed of the office’s intent to help organize Take Back the Night this year.

“The Title IX office has totally lost my trust and the trust of survivors on this campus,” Martin wrote. “This is still an institutional betrayal that they would even consider cutting these programs, and we cannot trust the Title IX administrators to keep this promise until sexual assault awareness month all the way in April.”