Last week, a federal court dismissed a Title IX lawsuit against the university where a sexual assault survivor, Melissa Maher, alleged the university mishandled her case when she was a student at Iowa State. Additionally, Iowa State has already spent more than $120,000 defending itself in that lawsuit and two others that are ongoing, according to an Iowa State Daily investigation. 

After the dismissal of Maher’s case, the response from a university spokesperson was while they are “pleased with the court’s ruling, our thoughts are primarily with Ms. Maher and other survivors of sexual assault.”

“We are deeply saddened that Ms. Maher experienced this traumatic sexual assault and the devastating impact caused by the criminal conduct of a fellow student,” the statement continued.

We are deeply saddened, too. But we need more than that. It’s not enough to just be deeply saddened that a perpetrator would act in this way. We should also be deeply saddened by what the survivor alleged in the lawsuit, that the options offered to her by the university were not enough to meet her needs. 

This isn’t to say university officials have an easy job in providing resources to sexual assault survivors, especially when they also have to conduct a fair investigation. Because that job is in no way easy. But we can do better. 

Since the time of this incident, the university has made strides in how it addresses sexual misconduct. The Green Dot program is a primary example of this and we want more money to be invested in this program. Still, more can be done. 

The ISD Editorial Board would like to see a comprehensive effort to not only provide for survivors, but to better educate our community so what happened to Maher never, ever has to happen again.

That should be our goal: creating a community where sexual assault is not tolerated and a stellar support system for survivors is the norm. We have a long way to go to reach that.

Community members should be educated on consent, intolerance for sexual assault, bystander intervention and what to do if someone confides in you that they’ve been assaulted. That education has to be more than an online system you can click through.

And even though the university does have to maintain due process in investigating, there’s no reason we can’t also make survivors as comfortable as possible while the justice process takes its course. If this takes more resources, then we need to find a way to make this happen. And besides, those additional resources will likely cost less than having to defend the university in a lawsuit later.

It could take just one encounter where a survivor wasn’t supported or believed to change the course of that person’s life and the justice they seek. As a university, we need to ensure those negative experiences don’t happen on top of trying to put an end to sexual misconduct.