Practicum Series: Restitution

On Thursday, November 5th, 2020, I spoke at the third Practicum Series for the McBride Honors Program. The theme was restitution. I shared a bit about my practicum experience and my thoughts on the importance of restitution.

Before we get started, I will be talking about Title IX and sexual assault a bit. I will be sharing a friend’s experience with sexual assault with his permission. As the speaker, I will be taking care of myself, and I hope y’all do the same. If you get uncomfortable, I will not be offended if you leave the Zoom.

Alright, let’s get started.

I want you to take a moment to think of a time when you’ve been deeply wronged by someone. What happened? Did it get resolved? Did you want them to pay for what they did? How did you want them to pay?

Now I want you to hold on to those thoughts as I talk to you about restitution and my practicum experience.

How do you think we can start to focus more on the needs of those who were harmed when exacting justice to build a more productive mentality around punishment?

Restitution is the restoration of something lost or stolen, and it's an important concept to consider when it comes to justice. Our society and criminal justice system focus on punishing wrongdoers. However, while we’re doling out punishments, we focus on the perpetrator rather than those harmed. Why do we not focus on repairing the harm and improving how wrongdoers participate in society?

So, what's my connection to restitution?

Well, my main goal in life, for as long as I can remember, has always been to be happy. During those goal setting lessons or career talks, “Where do you wanna be in 10 years?,” “What do you wanna be when you grow up?,” my answer was always, “I want to be happy.” Of course this wasn’t the answer they were looking for. They wanted to hear “teacher, astronaut, engineer, etc.” But I didn’t have one of those answers. I’ve always struggled with finding a career path for me, but I have always known that I just want to be happy.

As I got older, that goal morphed into having a positive impact on as many people as possible because making other people happy makes me happy. I got into community service. I tried to be the best friend possible to the few friends I had. I wasn’t a very happy person, but I wanted other people to be happy the way I wanted to be.

Early in highschool, I was a wannabe emo pessimist. I listened to My Chemical Romance and dyed my hair with Kool Aid and wrote on myself with Sharpies because I wasn’t like other girls. I even got my nose pierced way before a lot of other girls. (My mom actually paid for the majority of my piercings because I was a goody two shoes nerd at the same as trying to be edgy.) I had like two and a half friends and hated the world.

When I came to college, I was hellbent on changing myself into a more outgoing and positive person. I wanted more people to like me and I wanted to have a positive reputation instead of just being known as the quiet girl with resting bitch face, so I thought that meant being heavily involved on campus.

Among other things, I became very involved with Title IX. I have always been passionate about gender based discrimination and violence because I know so many people that have experienced some form of it, but I had never really found ways to do anything about it, so I tried to get involved with Title IX as much as possible. In the US, about 1 in 5 campus women and 1 in 17 campus men experience sexual violence, and those numbers are expected to be higher due to underreporting. These are very pervasive issues in our society, so I found it really easy to be passionate and get involved. I joined the student organization SAAVE and became a peer educator in the healthy relationships group. I became a loud and proud advocate of safe and consensual sex and an educator on red flags in relationships.

Last year, I realized I was a junior and needed to figure out my practicum. I knew I wanted to do something impactful, but I didn’t know how to do that. It was stressing me out a lot. I had seen so many people do these amazing and impressive and super intelligent practicums, and it made me feel even more inferior in McBride than my inability for eloquence in our seminars did.

During one of my almost-daily talks with Karin in the Honors House about my stress, my practicum search came up. She asked, “What about Title IX?” Why didn't I think of that? My anxiety over my topic turned to excitement, so I immediately emailed Katie and Sareen with Title IX, asking if I could work with them for my practicum. They were really excited about the offer and we scheduled a time to discuss. During our meeting, I shared with them more about the practicum’s purpose in McBride and examples of what others have done. We talked about projects that would be suitable. While Title IX is very passionate and ambitious, they simply don’t have the manpower to do everything they want, so there were many options. One of the options was restorative justice, and I had no idea what that meant, but they were really excited about it and hopeful that it would be good for the campus, especially with the new Title IX federal regulations that were to be enacted in August. I went home to research the different options they gave me and became intrigued by restorative justice.

Restorative justice practices originated in First Nations peoples and is still practiced in some tribes throughout the Americas today. It has also gained popularity at schools and in workplaces in recent years. Restorative justice is an alternative resolution process that focuses on repairing the harmed relationships through restorative actions rather than just punishment. It involves the harmed and harming parties meeting in a conference to collaborate and choose actions for the harmed party to take that could repair the harm. Restorative actions could be things like an apology, required training, community service, monetary reparations, and other things along those lines. A big part of what can make restorative justice successful is the acknowledgment from both parties that harm was caused and must be repaired.

The first thought I had while reading about restorative justice was of a friend. A year ago, he went to a party with a lot of friends. Loud music, lot of chatting, copious amounts of alcohol. My friend saw one of his best friends hitting it off with a girl. They were flirting all night, getting a little touchy. As the party died down several hours after midnight, there were still several people too drunk to drive home. The host let some people stay the night. This included my friend, his friend, and the girl his friend was with all night. During the next few hours and while half asleep, my friend unknowingly witnessed a sexual assault perpetrated by his friend. After finding out what actually happened, he was so upset about it: he was mad at his friend for committing such a heinous act, and he was mad at himself for not stopping it. He did his best to get his now-ex-friend punished, but he was unable to do much since he was not the one sexually assaulted. In an effort to get my friend to stop punishing him, the perpetrator scheduled a meeting through a mutual friend. The perpetrator apologized and said he was trying to change. He gave specific examples of what he was doing to change, but my friend did not believe his apology or think these actions were enough for growth (if they were happening at all). My friend left the meeting with no closure and feeling worse if anything. I remember seeing how upset he was by the whole ordeal, and I just wished I could have helped him.

When I was looking into restorative justice on college campuses and for gender based discrimination cases, I found mixed reviews. Some people felt that restorative justice doesn’t have a place with Title IX issues like sexual assault. Others felt that it can actually be very beneficial for those that don’t want to go through with criminal charges. I wanted personal perspectives other than my own, so I reached out to my friend and I told him about restorative justice and sent him a few resources about it. I asked what he thought, and he said he wished he had that opportunity for closure with the perpetrator. He thinks that if he had a say in the restorative actions and how to hold the perpetrator accountable, then he may have felt better about the justice served.

I came to the conclusion that restorative justice would be the most impactful on campus and help the most people. I also thought it would offer a unique learning experience helping create school procedures, so I told Katie and Sareen I’d help them with it.

I spent this past summer working with Title IX and Student Life staff to create procedures and documents to implement restorative justice on campus. While we worked on creating all the written materials, several staff members on campus were trained in facilitating restorative justice practices.

Our procedures for restorative justice at Mines were created based on a lot of research and perspectives, and we came up with the basic process as follows:

First, someone will come to the Title IX office with a complaint. They’ll hear their options for moving forward, one of which will be restorative justice. If the harmed party chooses restorative justice, the harming party will be contacted. For a restorative justice conference to occur, both parties will need to agree to go through the restorative justice process. Both parties will go through individual pre-conference meetings with a trained facilitator. The facilitator will use these pre-conference meetings to judge whether or not restorative justice is the right course of action, keeping an eye out for red flags. If the facilitator deems restorative justice appropriate, a restorative justice conference will be scheduled. Both parties will meet for a conference in some form: this could be face-to-face (or zoom-to-zoom in current circumstances), it could be a shuttle conference where the parties are in different rooms (or breakout rooms) with the facilitator going back and forth, or it could take place with the use of surrogates representing both parties. In the conference, the event and the repercussions of it will be discussed. Both parties will then agree on restorative actions for the harming party to take and agreement forms will be signed. The facilitator will check in at certain times after the conference to hold the harming party accountable for completing their restorative actions. We tried to offer different options to try to make the harmed party as comfortable as possible throughout the process. The process also works if there are more than two parties involved with some minor changes. If the harmed party is not happy with the restorative justice process, they can move forward with a formal investigation through Title IX.

My main contribution was helping create the Facilitation Guide with the new Title IX intern. The Facilitation Guide is a detailed, lengthy guide for the trained facilitators to use during all stages of the process: preparing for the restorative justice conferences, facilitating difficult conversations during the conferences, and post-conference check ins and processes. The guide includes definitions, background information, scripts, tips, and forms.

I know, and so does the staff of Title IX, that restorative justice is not applicable to or appropriate for every case that goes to the Title IX office, but we have hope that it can help some people in their recovery process, and I am proud to say that I was a part of that. It’s a different form of restitution that we hope gives people more options for closure and recovery. Student Life is also looking into how they can implement restorative justice in their department as well.

I recently helped lead a brief restorative justice workshop for the rest of the peer educators. We talked about cancel culture and how canceling members of our community, while it may seem ideal in some situations, isn’t always realistic. We talked about how restorative justice practices don’t have to be confined to the big serious situations they’re often used for; restorative justice practices could be used for smaller scale conflicts as well, and that’s something we can use in our everyday life.

Why aren’t we as a society more open about our negative feelings when friends, family, acquaintances hurt us? Why aren’t we more honest and open about the restitution we want and need? Why aren’t we more responsive when we are told that we upset someone? Why aren’t we in the habit of offering restitution when appropriate?

I want you to think back to the moment you thought of earlier when someone upset you. Did you tell them you were upset? Did they offer restitution? Did you get closure?

People struggle with confrontation. No one likes to be told they did something wrong, which makes people more hesitant to call each other out. I think the world would be a better place if everyone asked for and received the restitution we all crave and need. Less tension, less grudges, more closure, more happiness.

Punishment is shown to often lead to retaliation and continued resentment, and it doesn’t necessarily change behavior. Restorative justice aims to repair the harm done and help the harmed party recover, as well as encouraging the harming party to grow and become a more productive member of society.

There should be more to justice than just punishment. While punishment may seem ideal and satisfying in the moment, it doesn’t always offer the closure one might think. This is why restorative justice can be helpful in some situations. Acknowledging the harm and the impacts on the harmed party is important, as is holding the harming party accountable to complete the restorative actions agreed upon. Repairing harm and growing so the harm is not committed again should be a key part to restitution.