University administrators are considering sanctions against those who do not complete Title IX online training by the revised deadline of March 28. The training intends to educate students on sexual harassment, discrimination and violence prevention.

Tom Hill, senior vice president for student affairs, said that specific sanctions haven’t been decided.

“We haven’t really determined [the sanctions]. We are optimistic about it,” Hill said. “If we can get the vast majority to complete it, we are not having to deal with any kind of sanctions.”

The training opened January 28 and had an initial deadline of February 28. It was then reopened March 10 with a revised deadline of March 28.

“We realized that more time would be needed, So we decided to extend [the deadline],” Hill said. “Some of the notices may have gone in the spam; some of them may have gotten deleted.”

He added that there has been significant progress in the completion rate since the first deadline. Hill said he is hopeful there will be about a 100 percent completion rate for the training.

Title IX of the Educational Amendment of 1972 prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded programs. It covers sexual harassment, equal opportunity in athletics and discrimination based on pregnancy.

The training consists of two courses. All students need to complete Title IX and Violence Prevention, while university employees also need to complete Unlawful Harassment Prevention. Each course is approximately 40 minutes long and includes various questions and examples.

“Most of it I had heard before. I just had to do it to make sure I can register,” said Anna Torgerson, freshman in chemical engineering. “Whenever I think of Title IX, I always think of sports. I didn’t realize how much it covered.”

Torgerson added that most of the content seemed to be common sense.

“Some of the statistics were interesting,” Torgerson said. “Like one in four women who go to college get assaulted. I didn’t realize that.” 

Hill said the email sent out to all the students has been the biggest effort so far to reach out to students. He said there could be additional efforts to promote the training.

“I felt like maybe if they had been more interactive, like on-campus, then it would have worked better,” said Matthew Sanders, junior in biology. “People could go on the Internet and learn the exact things.”

Face-to-face interaction could be more efficient, even though it would be difficult to do it on a large campus, Sanders said.

Hill said the training is required for everyone enrolled at Iowa State and would be beneficial for students in the long run.

Students can access the training through the link in the email from the Office of Equal Opportunity until March 28.