Thank you to all who attended this event today! It was packed with information about topics that can be tough to discuss - but they are IMPORTANT! Especially as we are preparing to launch students into college, we want to ensure they feel supported to succeed and that parents have the tools to do so!

Topics discussed:

👍 Hanna Stotland and her background in Crisis Management

👍 Her #1 piece of advice for parents preparing to launch students

👍 "The Gray" area in various misconduct cases in college

👍 Empowerment in students to make decisions that are best for them

👍 Book Mentioned: "Sexual Citizens."

👍 How to best find information about colleges and their safety

👍 Resource: Clery Law and Statistics

👍 Summary!

My name is Laura Barr.

I am the owner and founder of emerging educational consulting.

Our company provides one to one mentorship for parents and students

from the beginning to end of the college application process.

When I talk about what I do, I talk about I wake up every day to.

Raise good humans.

And the way I think we raise good humans best is with education and information.

So I could not be more delighted today to introduce Anna Hannah Stotland,

who is this unbelievable educational consultant who works primarily with

students who are in crisis management.

I have stalked her at every professional conference that I have attended,

so I am going to let her talk.

I'm going to have her introduce herself, and then I'm going to start just pounding

some questions so that we can be informed.

So let's just go.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

I'm Hannah Scotland and I've been doing this crisis management work for 24

years and I got into this field because I flunked out of high school, got a

GED, had a lot of problems, both with mental illness and with some misplaced,

poorly thought through rebellion.

I thought I was like a conscientious objector to high school.

I thought it was like civil disobedience to refuse to do my homework.

So I got a GED.

I worked for a couple of years, eventually decided to try to go to

college and found a small college that was willing to give me a chance.

After two years making A's there, I got in as a transfer to Harvard,

Stanford and Penn and transferred to Harvard for the fall of my junior year.

And having gone through the admissions process three times in a row, I had

become very interested in admissions.

So I went and became a student worker at the admissions office that summer.

And when you're giving tours, there's a spot in the script where you say,

and this is what brought me to Harvard.

And I would give a short version of, of that story.

And people were very surprised, not expecting to hear this

from their Harvard tour guide.

And so, after every tour, some family would take me aside and

say, you have to talk to my nephew.

He just got out of rehab and he wants to apply to college.

Can you help us?

So I stayed at Harvard for law school and had a six year legal career, but I

was always, had a side hustle helping these families that came to me, um,

dropped out, kicked out, flunked out.

I see mental illness.

I see substance abuse, lots of academic misconduct, especially

in the last few years.

Seeing more and more, Kids in trouble with misuse of social media.

I see kids who've gotten in trouble in, in high school, in

college and even in grad school.

So my work is helping them figure out, , how to recover academically, right?

There's usually folks, above my level of expertise.

I'm working on the education side to try and get, get them back on track

and, and especially teach them how to talk about whatever has gone wrong.

And what I love about some of the work you do is that one of your core beliefs

really is like, even when we screw up, even when we struggle with mental

health, even when we make really bad mistakes, everybody has a right to an

education and a right to due process.

I think one of the things that I am most interested in bringing

to light is , issues around title nine on college campuses.

And really thinking about this cohort of students that I'm getting ready to send.

It's like one of the things I always say to parents is listen, your

students are going to go to college.

I'm not really worried about that.

I don't work with in crisis management as much, right?

So my, my cohort is like, we're going to go to college, but I want

you to do well when you get there.

And I think there is such.

stigma around these kinds of conversations about consent, sex

education, drugs and alcohol.

I think innately as parents, we're kind of wired to be

like, our kids are pretty good.

They're not going to screw up.

But as you and I know, cause we have worked together in some

otter.

ai

What do you want these parents who are here today with us and this

video will eventually go viral?

Sure.

What do you want them to know?

Like, what do you want them to know right away?

Well, at first I want to make a statement about that I, I think I need to

approach this with a lot of humility.

if I knew how to speak to teenagers in a way that caused them to obey the advice I

gave them, I'd be a gazillionaire, right?

They're, they're just telling them don't do X.

Remember to do Y or scared straight.

If you do Z, this terrible thing is going to happen to you.

I do want them to have that information.

But I, I don't want to come across as though I think I have discovered

the secret to get the kids to listen.

And if you just Talk to them my way, then I'm going to fix all the problems.

That being said, there is a lot of, information out there that,

parents should know and that they should talk to their kids about.

And one of those is, it may be incredibly obvious to you, the parent, that if

the, If your student called you and said, I've been accused of cheating.

I've been sexually assaulted when I was completely drunk.

I've been accused of sexual misconduct.

I've been arrested, any of those things.

You the parent, you know, it's so obvious to you that you would still love and

stand by your student and that even if you felt some disappointment or sadness

about bad choices they had made, that would be enormously outweighed by your

instinct to help and protect them.

And tell them that experience.

If you are arrested, if you are accused of some terrible misconduct, if you've done

something that you're ashamed to tell me about because you fear my disappointment,

please tell me I want to help you.

And I promise that whatever feelings I have about it are going to be.

My 50th priority because one through 49 is gonna be helping you with this crisis.

So I see many, many students who are, who are accused of, of academic or

behavioral misconduct, who are trying to go through a discipline process

themselves thinking, I don't wanna tell mom and dad, I'm just gonna tell the

truth and everything is gonna work out.

Then they get suspended or expelled.

Now you have to tell mom and dad and frequently they say, or if you get

some help from me or from a lawyer, this, this was a winnable case.

If we had been able to advise you.

And yes, in some senses at 18, 19, 20, in some senses, you're an adult,

but these college disciplinary proceedings are very serious, um, can

really affect the rest of your life.

And it, it makes a lot of sense unless you fear.

You know, if you have a reasonable fear of that, your parents are

going to beat you up, right?

Of course, students need to use their judgment about that.

But if you just, I want parents who know that they would never let anything get

in the way of supporting their student.

Tell your student explicitly and you may get a lot of eye

rolls, but behind the eye rolls.

There's a good chance they're hearing you.

So that is the number one thing I would, I would tell parents to tell their kids.

That's amazing.

And actually, I haven't heard you say that before.

So I love that.

So it's like the advice that I would say on my launch checklist would

be, before you go to college, almost just say that, say, there are some

sticky situations that could come up.

Please know if they do, please.

Communicate with me because things mitigated before kind of it gets

worse so that you talk to the police.

Yes, please tell a trusted adult before you talk to the police

and that includes campus cops.

Okay, that's really helpful.

, one of the things I love and all the, my stalking of you that you talk about

is your courage around talking about the gray, like there is no black and

white, there's gray and especially around sexual misconduct, sexual misconduct with

drugs and alcohol on college campuses.

, I've never heard anybody have the courage to speak about it the way that you do.

So I'm not exactly sure what I'm asking, but I'm wondering if you have a moment to

just kind of do your thing around these things can happen, there's not black and

white, there's gray, alcohol involved, like however you say that so beautifully.

Sure.

And there are black and white cases.

It's just that I don't usually see them.

Right.

So the famous case with the Stanford swimmer, we have sober eyewitnesses

and an unconscious victim.

Easy case.

That's black and white.

And notice there was no discussion at all about whether he's kicked out of Stanford.

Of course he's kicked out of Stanford.

The, the debate and, and there wasn't even debate about whether he gets a felony.

The only debate was about how long he stayed in jail.

Right?

So that is from a title nine perspective, an extremely easy case and they do

exist, but that's not mostly what I see.

I mostly see, Interactions that everyone agrees began consensually, sometimes

concluded, apparently consensually.

But one party either says after the fact, actually, even though I was

walking, talking, texting, signing you into the dorm, climbing to the

upper bunk, however I appeared, I was in fact too drunk to consent.

Or, there were of the ten different sexual acts that we did, this one I didn't

consent to among the nine that I did.

And there may be a dispute about, for example, at the

moment that I withdrew consent.

for this particular act.

How rapidly did you respond?

You the accused student respond.

And I see a lot of cases where the dispute between the two parties

about how rapidly there was a change.

The dispute is measured in seconds.

Not minutes.

But that's it.

That's a heartfelt disagreement about, whether an assault took

place during those seconds.

, I also see many, many cases where, the accused student, it is beyond

question that they were a jerk.

That they did not treat their partner with sufficient respect or kindness.

And whether or not there was also an assault in addition to the unkindness, a

student who is really kind to everyone who they're having any kind of sexual

contact with is in a lot less danger.

of being accused of any kind of sexual wrongdoing.

So for example, he dumped her by text and I'm going to use male and female

pronouns, although I, about 10% of my cases involve same sex couples.

He dumped her by text.

He slept with her roommate.

He let her think.

that he was actually interested in her when actually he just wanted to hook up.

, all of those behaviors are not against Title IX.

I would consider them both not what even my own students who are accused

of this, , not, not what the behavior that my students aspire to in terms

of kindness, but also taking big, big risks in terms of contributing to,, The

interpretation of a gray situation, like, yeah, okay, we, we had some kind of,

you know, we had oral sex, we were both drinking, what was four beers too many

for me that night, that is not really a question with an absolute answer,

even if we were breathalyzing everyone.

There are many.

You know, 1.

1 is too much to drive.

Is it?

But right.

But the person might be perfectly capable of making reasonable decisions.

Someone who is an experienced drinker, may be functioning well with a much

higher blood alcohol content than someone who's a novice drinker.

So I would say number one, kindness, kindness, kindness,

is a best practice all the time.

And if you are treating people with respect and care, you are much, much

less likely to get accused of misconduct.

, also I will say this with the awareness that it will sound hypocritical

coming from almost any adult safety in college requires students to separate

sex from alcohol as much as possible.

About.

95% of my cases involve intoxication.

90% of my cases, intoxication is the only theory.

In other words, there's no accusation that the complainant said no, there's no

accusation that they were unconscious.

There's no accusation that they were obviously , incoherent.

The accusation is I acted like I was just buzzed but actually

I was, I was too too drunk.

And that leads to , both an entire spectrum from bad sex to assault and I

would say, well I would even go a wider spectrum from unwise sex to assault.

Sex that is not going to make you feel happy the next day, , in addition

to, , sex that unfortunately changes your life either because, , you've

experienced assault or because you're accused of assault, and all the people

who are punishing kids for doing this.

Most of those adults are mixing sex and alcohol in their own private lives.

Hopefully wisely, but I think there isn't really a safe way to do it.

in college environments today.

And so, , if you are excited about somebody you just met and you're hoping

to get laid or to find a new partner, see if they're still interested tomorrow.

I love how bold you are.

In that I just think it's so important.

I have four kids and two boys and two girls.

And I often, I say this in my practice, I say, I am a feminist and

I believe in the rights of all women.

And I love title nine.

And I actually, when I was in, my boys were in college, I felt more anxious in

some way for them than I did for my girls.

Is that a fair feeling on my part?

Or is it just Made up.

I mean, I think that it's, it, this is very painful because, uh,

blaming, victim blaming is a real thing that really happens.

Right?

And the fact that someone made unwise decisions about how much to drink does not

mean other people were entitled to rape them and doesn't make their experience

of being assaulted any less valid.

And at the same time, I can say that even in a world where we eradicate

sexual assault, drinking yourself into a stupor is never going to be safe.

And we have to live in the tension of those two things

being true at the same time.

That it's it's never your fault that someone took advantage of

your drunkenness, and if you're less drunk, you will be safer.

Those things are both true.

So, in other words, I think there is a lot we can do as, Well, I shouldn't

I shouldn't include myself in the in the category of young women anymore.

But there are things we can do to be safer.

And that's true.

Both of this true for young women are pardon me for young people of all genders.

Thinking in advance about not only what kind of sex life we want, but what role we

want drugs and alcohol to play in our own lives, is enormously helpful to students.

And I think this is something particularly that young women are

not socialized to, that you have a right to think in advance about what

you want your sex slash romantic life to look like, and be empowered

to seek the things that you want.

And.

If you feel permission to do that, and you know what you want, and perhaps what

you want is experimentation, what you want is discovery, but if you If you

know going in, what you do and do not want, and you have thought about it,

you may feel much more empowered , in decision making situations to have sex

or lack of sex that you feel good about.

And that you can look back on and say, I learned, I, I had a positive

experience, I learned something from this.

I, I chose to do X and discovered that I don't like it, but putting yourself

in the position of I deserve to be in the driver's seat for my own sex life.

And maybe that means I maybe, maybe that means there's a ton

of experimentation going on.

Maybe it means I'm going to be very celibate.

Or I'm going to wait for true love, but the more that I think particularly young

women feel permission to do that because I, I don't think that message is, is

getting to them in the culture in, in sexual sex ed in high school for those

lucky enough to get it because there are a lot of American students who don't

have any or who have only a judgmental kind of abstinence only sex education.

So that's, that is a huge, area that is missing, I think, particularly

from our young women's lives.

And it, it hurts, it hurts us in all kinds of ways.

Do you have, Resources for like, I'm thinking about my own parents

that, will be watching this and then also, , IECs, you know, educational

consultants who have these relationships with kids that are really unique.

We have an incredible opportunity as IECs to kind of.

front load boys and young men and women and, you know, all genders

of like what, how to make some of those thoughtful decisions.

Do you have resources or is it just something you've created

like in your own practice?

, I think there's, there's a, there's a book out that I think is extremely

enlightening for parents in terms of what the culture is like on campuses,

as well as some public health experts, ideas of how to, address it.

It's a book called sexual citizens.

, I can't recall the, the names of the authors right now, but they

are on, faculty at Columbia.

And did a, really interesting, , set of research or multiple, Experiments

and interventions and interviews, with undergraduates at Columbia and Barnard.

And, I don't, I don't agree with them on absolutely everything, but I think

it's, it's an extremely enlightening book.

And I think the concept of being a sexual citizen where it comes with rights and

responsibilities is a, is an extremely helpful frame , for putting students,, in

the driver's seat to make smart decisions.

I love that.

I can't wait.

My apologies to the authors whose names I don't recall, but the

book is called sexual citizens.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Um, I'm trying to think of, um, you know, one of the other things is IECs

is we build college lists, right.

And thinking about.

Colleges, is there a way to research either as an IEC or parent on

what colleges do this really well?

And are there colleges that like, if we know we have a student, let's just say

who , maybe is already experimenting with drugs and alcohol and we have a little

bit of concern, like are there colleges that we should like, Stay away from and

I'm not actually asking you to name them.

Maybe I'm asking you, how do we find that out?

So they're not all this.

So first, I want to just acknowledge that you're right.

The colleges are not all the same.

I mean, if you are visiting colleges and you ask tour guides or admissions

officers about this, they're going to say something that is true, but not helpful.

They'll say, well, of course, it's a college campus.

And if you're looking for a party, you're going to be able to find one.

You want drugs, you're going to be able to find them.

That's true at BYU, and it's true that at the University of Alabama.

It is not equally true at those schools, right?

, and so, I think, Student to student communication is often the best way to get

the scoop for the most part, the students who are living this are not going to tell

any adults, you know, you're lucky if they tell their parents, they're certainly

not going to tell, you know, people visiting a college campus much about that.

It is.

not worthless, , to look at Cleary access statistics.

This is C L E R Y.

So this is a rule that applies to basically all schools in the

U S where they have to report what kinds of crimes have been

reported or discovered on campus.

And, , this is more insightful, I think when it comes to, Alcohol transports

and and drug arrests than it is to sexual assault because, , sexual assault

reports, , are often highest per capita in schools that have made enormous efforts

to, , Both to create safe spaces to make it easy and , safe to report, and many

of those schools in my personal judgment have also participated in, in broadening

the idea of what's a sexual assault.

So, for example, I had, , a student who was accused of an unwelcome hug.

or others who have been accused of, , a makeout session on the

dance floor freshman year when their partner was too drunk.

And , the, the more inclusive definitions of sexual assault are gonna

get you very high reporting numbers.

So you see very high numbers at places like Wesleyan and Oberlin and

Brown, which I do not believe are the sexual assault capitals of America.

, but it is, but it is a good way to begin the analysis, especially when it comes

to, drug and alcohol related crimes.

Great answer.

, how do you how to parent?

Well, I can ask you this, but I think you'll be able to answer really.

But how do you or parents or I.

E.

C.

State updated on the latest developments around Title nine and Crisis management.

I know, , in D.

C.

We're speaking about like the changes from, , let's see.

Obama Trump Biden.

And I know we only have four minutes left, so maybe we can end with this.

But how do we stay up to date?

Well, counselors going to conferences and talking to your colleagues who

specialize in these areas is probably the best way because, , you know, most

most of us don't have the bandwidth to be following Thank , additional press

outlets that are carefully covering this, , for schools that are near you

or that you have a relationship with.

I read, , campus newspapers pretty frequently.

I think that is, you know, it's not it is.

It's not a perfect measure of any kind of statistical pattern, but

it can tell you something about What topics are on students minds?

What are they talking about?

What are the controversies and, , can tell you a lot about the culture of

schools, which is very important when we're advising students, , either

are either our own Children or our, , students as counselors.

I love that that.

So let me summarize.

Today, some of the advice that you gave us in, , What I heard

is, is that read Sexual Citizens.

Amazing book.

Maybe some things you might agree or not, but at least it starts the conversation.

It fits perfectly with our practice because we're in the, I feel like we're

in the business of raising citizens.

So I love that.

Sexual Citizens.

, reading campus newspapers.

That's one of the ways we and our practice encourage students to do

that zoom out, zoom in research, like get to know by reading the newspaper.

So I love that.

And then what is the name again of the website where you can research?

I use more data set for that research.

But what is the one that you just mentioned?

I had mentioned the Cleary Act Cleary Act.

Which which isn't a website.

It's it's a law mandating that universities and colleges report,

annual statistics of what crimes were reported on their campus and

of and of the the inherent flaw.

There is.

That unreported crimes will not be on a Cleary Act report, but I still

think it's it's a useful to use all of these different sources to make

your best guess about what a student's experience might be if they actually

were accepted and enrolled there.

That's great.

And then finally, that just lovely piece of advice you started with is have a

relationship with your student where you can say, trust me, I love you.

I stand by you.

It doesn't, I wouldn't be maybe disappointed, but I still have your back

because I'm your parent and love you.

Is there anything in the last minute that you didn't get to say?

, I think encouraging our students to think of themselves as the drivers

of their own experience, and that they have the right to do that, they

have the responsibility to do that.

And that the more ownership that they take and telling your parents that you

need help can be a very mature adult thing to do, realizing when you're

in over, , over your head, , is, is, , totally a mature adult thing to do.

Acting as someone who wants to be responsible for your own decisions is

empowering for the students and increases the odds a little bit that they will

make more good choices than bad ones.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

Hannah, so much for your time and your words of wisdom and I will continue

to stalk you at either or Tampa.

Are you going to be there?

I did either of those.

Probably not NACAC, but probably Tampa, probably IECA in Tampa.

And you'll see me there.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you so much.

All right.