Office for Civil Rights opens investigation into UNF’s handling of Tanisha Crisp case

Zach Yearwood, Managing Editor

Spinnaker reported in June that Tanisha Crisp, a UNF Army ROTC student claimed the university failed to respond to a complaint of sexual misconduct by the unit’s Assistant Military Science Professor. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has since opened an investigation into the claims of discrimination on the basis of sex.

In a letter sent to Crisp on Sept. 4, OCR said they would be investigating the first of the following two allegations Crisp made against the University:

  1. The University failed to respond to the internal complaint of sex discrimination involving the University’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, which you made to the University’s Title IX Office in October 2019
  2. Following your return to classes in September 2019, after childbirth, the University’s public policy program provided you no accommodations.

“Accordingly, OCR will investigate whether the University responded to a complaint of sex discrimination consistent with the requirements of Title IX and its implementing regulation,” the letter said.

OCR told Crisp that it would not investigate the second claim because she acknowledged that she did not “make or provide documentation in support of a request for accommodations due to pregnancy/childbirth.

In the time since Crisp’s case was made public, there have been demonstrations on campus in support of Crisp and other survivors of military sexual trauma.

UNF has no comment on the matter at this moment in time.

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