UPDATE (11/28/2022): The student organizers have released the rationale behind their demands. You can read them here.

Student organizers at Hesston College recently reached out to Into Account for support in publicizing their demands of the Hesston College administration. Their outreach is the latest in a series of disclosures that Hesston College students and employees have brought to us, describing conditions on campus that are unsafe, inequitable, and hostile to women students and to survivors in general. These students are brave, resilient, and fed up. They came to Hesston College to get an education, not to endure abuse and be forced into perilous conditions by adults who should know better. They need better conditions in order to learn. The following is their list of demands.

1. Hire a second campus counselor who is a woman.
2. Create a permanent nonmandated-reporting faculty advocate position.
3. Contract with Into Account as an outside advocacy organization where students can report.
4. Take down school founder/predator Daniel Bender’s portrait.
5. Immediately hire a second full time Resident Director to fill the vacant role, and meet with students about creating a third full time Resident Director.
6. Remove the Vice President of Student Life as an alternative to Title IX Coordinator for making reports of sexual misconduct in the Title IX policy.
7. Make Campus Pastor Micah Hurst a mandated reporter and require he goes through additional training on the Title IX process and trauma informed ways of interacting with students. Additionally, release the job description of campus pastor.
8. First Year Experience (FYE) must include a standardized (the same across all professors) intensive/comprehensive curriculum unit to educate all students on Title IX policies, sexual violence, and bystander training.
9. Conduct a rigorous student climate survey every two years, starting in the spring semester of 2023.
10. Expand supportive measures to include: no contact orders enforced for both parties, leaves of absence granted for survivors, and option of attending classes online for survivors.
11. Never have a survivor be in a room with their perpetrator during the Title IX process or for an informal process.
12. Release the complete findings of the Cozen O’Connor review to the Hesston College community.
13. Fire Vice President of Student Life Deb Roth.