Morgan (9:05)
It lasted a while. She was very nice. I felt very believed by her. I felt like she was very professional. She was very comforting. And she made it a point to make sure that I felt safe in telling my story. I know now that that is not what Title IX coordinators jobs are, but she very much made it seem like it was her job to hear my story. And to help me go through that process of reporting and getting a safe resolution. Anything that I thought was relevant, I told her. But at the time, I still didn't really connect what all this situation was. I'm not even sure if I knew what grooming was at the time. I didn't talk about all the closed door office visits. I didn't tell her about the weird whipping, blocking that he had me do. I talked about what happened in Casey ACTF in 2015, about him groping me, assaulting me, grabbing me, whatever you wanna call it, and then about him inviting me to his room. And I talked a lot about Miranda, and I talked a lot about Lindsay. And she let me talk as long as I wanted. She didn't ask me a whole lot of questions guiding back to the incident in 2015. She asked me if alcohol was involved. I told her I wasn't trying to get anyone in trouble, but that, yes, he supplied alcohol to us, that he knew some of us were underage, that he drank with us. But I told her that I don't think that that had an impact or an effect on what happened. Now I'm not sure if I still believe that, but at the time, that's what I thought. So that's what I said. She thanked me for bringing this information to her. And then she told me that there were two different avenues that we could go down. We could either do an informal or formal resolution. And she talked a little bit about what both of those things meant. She gave me a piece of paper that had a bunch of graphics and arrows that pointed to different places. That was confusing and I don't really remember much about it, but she told me that we could do an informal process which would be talking to both parties and coming up with some sort of collaborative resolution, or that we could do a formal investigation, which would probably take longer and would involve getting more official statements and documents, and that I need to decide which path I thought we should go down. I didn't want Cato to even get in trouble. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to be on the up and up and fair. And I remember even saying I want Cato to have a fair shake in representation at this, so I want to go through the formal investigation. I remember Adrian asking me if I was sure and kind of what that meant. And I was very adamant for the wrong reasons at the time, I think because I was still trying to protect Cato for some reason. But I was very clear that I wanted a formal investigation. She told me the Standard of evidence was a preponderance, which she described as 50 and a feather, meaning that if I proved any more than 50% that the incident happened, that Cada would be found responsible. She explained to me the process of how I could review statements that he had said. And she told me that I was gonna be able to see the final draft of the report before she submitted it to the dean. She had me draw a sketch of the room where he slapped my ass, asked me to provide names of possible witnesses. She told me that I would need to come in and tell my story again, that I would need to write up a statement. I remember going back and meeting with her a couple of more times over that next week. She told me that there was going to be a period of time where she would be gathering initial facts before she notified Cato that the complaint had come in. She didn't give me a specific timeline, but she very much made it seem like this case would be pretty simple and so that it wouldn't take very long. Now, what very long meant, I had no idea. She also made it a point to let me know that she really wanted to get things submitted and the initial report or the complaint sent to Cato before we had left for winter break. Since I had initially reported December 5, there was not a lot of time to make that happen. But I trusted her in that process. Anytime she wanted me to come in, I did. Anytime she called me, I answered, or I immediately called her back, and I had all of the things that she had asked for. I remember at one point, I told her that I thought that Kaedo was maybe onto something, and she asked me why I thought that. I told her that it was because he had reached out to me about solving some problem or a minor dispute I had with an instructor way back in April of that year. And it had never been addressed. But now, all of a sudden, he was emailing me, asking me about this situation and seeing what he could do to help, and that just kind of flagged for me. But she said that there wouldn't be a reason that he knew anything. There was really nothing to be done. She told me that I would be notified when he was notified of the complaint right around that time. I was vice president of Central Improv at the time, and we were about to travel again with Cato to Kansas City for some competition, and I expressed to Adrian that I was concerned about going on this trip with him. She told me that she understood my concern, however, because the trip was coming up so soon, and she Wasn't even sure she was going to be able to notify him yet about the investigation because of how that process went. She didn't know if there was anything she could do for me regarding traveling. And I understood that. So I made the decision to tell my troop that I was not going to go on that trip. I couldn't really give him a reason why, because she did tell me that I shouldn't be talking about the investigation or this process really with anybody, that it could jeopardize the investigation. And so I kind of just left them hanging. Then a couple days later, another one of the Improv members tells me that Kato advised them to invite Miranda to come on the trip, despite the fact that Miranda was not at all in Central Improv. And that's when I lost my shit. Something just kind of flipped in me. And I knew at that point, oh, no, this man knows what he's doing and he doesn't care. I was so angry that day, and I had to go to work. And I worked at the mall. I'm in the mall at some department store, walking around, and I run into another person in the department. He asked me how I was doing, or maybe I looked upset. And he asked me what was wrong, and I just let it all out. I told him how I was upset because I couldn't go on this trip because I was filing this case against Kato for Title nine. That I wasn't sure if anything was going to happen about it, and that he was just going to keep getting away with doing these things to us. And that he was sleeping with Miranda. He was like, wow, yeah, that's a lot. And then I left, and I went to work letting it out. Immediately, I felt a little bit better. But then the guilt started to set in. I realized that I had put Miranda's story out there, and that was not my place to do that. That was not my business to be telling to some random theater student in the middle of Dillard's. And I still feel bad about that because that was fucked up of me. Foreign.
