EAST LANSING — Michigan State University’s Office for Civil Rights and Title IX Education and Compliance recently unveiled a new online dashboard that allows the public gain insight into how the university responds to reports of discrimination and harassment.
The new dashboards make information that was once only accessible through public records requests readily available online.
In addition, the university released a new biennial report that highlights the strategic planning efforts from the office and its different internal departments.
Laura Rugless, OCR vice president and Title IX and Title VI coordinator at MSU, said the dashboard is a culmination of years of ideas and work.
“We really set out to create a new standard for transparency, an opportunity for us to show our work, and explain about our work, and be accountable for our work — and MSU really deserves that,” she said. “It’s also a result of MSU’s investment in this area. It’s been really significant and exceptional by civil rights office standards.”
She said the project came to be after the community asked for more transparency from the office, which also aligned with the department’s strategic framework.
The launch of the dashboard comes just months after universities, including the University of Michigan and MSU, lost federal grants on projects relating to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including those that included mentions of race or gender in the scope of the work, as a part of President Donald Trump’s push to restrict DEI programming.
Rugless said the information within the dashboard can help with “empowering our community with tools to understand this work, and to understand anti-discrimination laws and how those are operationalized at the university.”
In addition to the new dashboard, which will be updated each semester, Scott Jones, chief of staff for the Office for Civil Rights, said, the office also released biennial report, highlighting the work the department has done from 2023-25.
Among the accomplishments were policy updates, a completed strategic planning process and successful training initiatives.
MSU dashboards put key information on civil rights in one place
The Office for Civil rights published three different dashboards in October, encompassing different departments’ work, including: Investigation, Support and Resolution; the Office of the ADA and Section 504 coordinator; and for the Prevention, Outreach and Education team.
The dashboards cover a wide array of information, from how many reports were filed each month, to how many students have completed mandatory prevention training.
The Investigation, Support and Resolution dashboard, for example, shows the various forms of prohibited conduct reported to the branch, including the most-reported, sexual harassment, with a total of 320 incidents. That can be broken down further, showing that 162 reports were made in the fall 2024, 122 were made in spring of 2025, and 36 were made in the short summer semester.
In addition to providing data to the public, the information will be used internally as well, Rugless said, allowing the department to target specific prevention training opportunities. She said if the group saw more reports of a specific type of discrimination or misconduct, future trainings could highlight prevention efforts about those specific areas of concern.
The team plans to incorporate more information about support services offered through the office into the dashboard. As the website gets up and running, the office is also accepting feedback on the initiative through the feedback form.
Scott Jones, chief of staff for the Office for Civil Rights, said the office worked very closely with the data security team at the university, so the data stored within the dashboard cannot be traced back to individuals who have filed reports.
He said the data within the dashboard is not directly communicating with the case management system, meaning everything included on the dashboard is anonymous data.
Biennial report provides update on office’s work
The biennial report, covering 2023-25, gives the office the chance to share the work it has completed over the course of the two years, Rugless said, from the strategic planning process to completing investigations.
Between 2023-2025, the office worked with the university administration to integrate feedback from various stakeholder groups into setting policy, including creating a new mandatory reporting policy, updating relationship and violence policies to comply with federal definition changes, and updating the anti-discrimination policy user manual multiple times. Additionally, new policies were implemented for pregnancy and childbirth conditions, and updates were made to both the digital accessibility and disability and reasonable accommodation policies at the university.
The Investigation, Support and Resolution branch shared improvements that were made to the case management system, which has enhanced the workflow and improved the experience for people using the system. The department has also started expanding proactive responses as well.
Major projects the ADA Coordinator’s office completed over the last two years included planning the university’s first and second Disability Summits, reviving accommodation policies and revitalizing the Digital Accessibility Liaisons program.
The Prevention, Outreach and Education program’s report highlighted the 46,997 completed programs, as well as the completion of 10,057 voluntary, non-mandatory trainings.
“Civil rights work isn’t just about addressing incidents; it’s about making sure people can access the programs and activities at the university,” Rugless said.
— Contact Karly Graham at kgraham@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @KarlyGrahamJrn.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU publicly releases data on sexual harassment, training on new website
Reporting by Karly Graham, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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