From Prosecution to Campus Policy: Following the Investigative Thread

Katya Valasek:

We're joined today by Katie King, the Associate Vice President for the Office of Institutional Equity and Title IX at Cornell University. I want to start by diving a bit into your history because you didn't always have your eyes set on Title IX work, let alone the legal field at all. How did you find your way here?

Katie King:

So I got my undergraduate degree in anthropology, and then I went right away and got my Master's in teaching. And I thought I was going to be a high school social studies teacher. And after I did an internship and taught some high school students, I really realized that that was not for me. And I kind of bounced around from job to job. I did some bartending. I worked at an ice cream store.

I finally got a job at an art college doing academic advising. And we had a new manager come in, and they were not the best. And a bunch of workplace incidents came up, and I decided that I would take it upon myself to argue for myself and my co-workers for what we thought was the right thing to do with this supervisor.

And after doing that, many of my co-workers came to me on several different occasions and just said, have you ever thought about going to law school? Have you ever thought about being a lawyer? Like you argued our case so well. And I had not ever thought about that before. And then I kind of looked at where I was in my life and thought, you know, it's not a bad idea to maybe go back to school, get a terminal degree, and have some stability, financial stability, career stability for myself, and kind of set myself up for my future. And so I ultimately did decide and went to law school when I was 27. So I was a later in life law school student.

Katya Valasek:

And when you started in law school, was it obvious to you pretty quickly that you were on the right track?

Katie King:

I loved it. It was amazing. It was so hard. I lived in Brooklyn. And I just remember getting up on Saturday morning and taking the train into Manhattan and sitting in the library all day until it was dark outside and not even minding that I was doing that because I loved it so much. It was interesting. Our professors at NYU are amazing. And I knew that it was the right place for me.

Katya Valasek:

Katya Valasek: Part of the work you do today is investigation and you did some investigatory work as a junior associate in your first job. Looking back, do you see a lot of commonalities between discovery and investigating claims on campus

Katie King:  That's interesting. I mean, the answer is yes. But I think if you had asked me that question when I was, um, you know, sitting in my office at one in the morning as a first year associate, I don't think I would have seen the, the through line, butI did have to do a lot of document review. But the purpose of the document review was because we had a client who was facing a several month trial in the Southern District of New York in federal court. And as a young associate, I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to actually go to court, observe the trial, help prepare the witness interview outlines, make sure that we had all of the evidence together, and help our partners be really prepared for the trial.

I think it, what it is, is, you're looking for the evidence, right? You're not looking for a right or a wrong answer. You're looking for what is true. So the work that we do here, we, we are not looking for any certain outcome. The work that I was doing as a junior associate, we were looking to defend our client. We're But still we wanted to know what evidence was out there. What evidence does the prosecution have? What evidence do we have as the defense? And here we do the same thing. We are looking for the evidence that is available to us so that a decision maker can determine if there is responsibility or not. It looks different, but like the actual purpose of what you're doing, I think is similar.

Katya Valasek: And you followed that investigative thread then in your time as a federal prosecutor and in the New York offices of the inspector general

Katie King: Absolutely. As a prosecutor, the same thing you are looking for what is true. You're not trying to create a truth. You're looking for what evidence is out there and is there evidence of a crime? And same at the inspector general's office.

What I didn't know going into the job was how much investigation work an AUSA actually does. And I've never been an ADA. I've never worked in a state court or a city court. But what being an AUSA is not is being handed a file of cases and told you are going to trial today.

What it is, is, an agent may come to you and say, I have a tip. I have a confidential informant. I have some information that could lead to, and in my case, I primarily worked on large scale drug trafficking cases. So that may lead to the discovery of multiple kilograms of whatever kind of drug we're looking at or whatever the crime is. And so I would work jointly with my investigators from whatever agency I was working with to propose and work together on next steps of the investigation.

So drafting search warrants, looking at the evidence to see what additional evidence we might want to obtain and how we can obtain that. Obviously, the agents are doing the on the ground investigative work, but really from behind the scenes, looking at on paper, everything that we have and making decisions in the case based on that. I loved that. I really loved that.

Katya Valasek:

Despite loving the work, you ended up leaving the federal service in 2019. How did you decide what to do next?

Katie King:

Well, I knew that I really loved the investigations part of my job. And I was also looking for something that might have a little bit more reliable hours where I might not be receiving calls at 3:00 a.m. to go to a judge's house and get a search warrant signed. I had small children and was really looking for something where I could have maybe a little bit better of a work-life balance, but I still wanted to do the things that I was really interested in.

And so in thinking about my options and thinking, do I want to go back to big law? Do I want to try to go in-house somewhere? What do I want to do? An opportunity came up to work for the state of New York as an investigative attorney. And so I thought, you know what? I'm going to try this because it's still doing investigations, but the hours are more maintained.

And I think it'll still be interesting. And so I was looking for a way to maintain that investigative component of what I was doing and then try to have a little bit better of a work-life balance.

Katya Valasek:

What sort of issues were you investigating?

Katie King:

As an investigative attorney for the Inspector General's office, which is where I worked, the role of that attorney is to investigate fraud, waste, and abuse that are alleged to be occurring where New York state is the victim of fraud, waste, and abuse. So looking into allegations of fraud in welfare, the workers compensation system, state contracting, things like that.

Katya Valasek:

So you get this job, better work-life balance, hopefully more investigating. What made you decide to leave?

Katie King:

Well, I wasn't looking to leave, but someone reached out to me and said, hey, our local university is looking to hire an inaugural institutional equity officer and Title IX officer. And I thought of you and thought you might be interested based on your experience. Would you be interested in talking to someone at the university about the job? And I was like, what even is that? What does that mean? What would I be doing?

And so I was able to connect with someone at the university, talk through what they were looking for. And then when the job was posted, I looked at the job, I made connections with folks through people that I had met through law school who were working as Title IX coordinators at different universities, someone in Florida, someone in California, and talk to them about what does this look like for you? What is your job like? What is your day like? They gave me really good ideas about questions to ask in the interview. And so I really valued those conversations. And I thought, I am interested in this. It still has a large investigative component. It is civil rights compliance. I mean, that's what it is, right? So what they were looking for at this university was for someone to do all of the Title IX work as well as any complaints that would fall under Title VII, Title VI, the New York State Human Rights Law, all of which are civil rights laws. And so I thought, this is actually really great.

I was really wanting to, when I went to the US Attorney's Office, I was very interested in the work because of the work itself and because it is public service. And I thought, this is a really great way to keep that thread going in the work that I do. And that's what really interested me in that job and why I ultimately ended up applying for that job.

Katya Valasek:

So since we're going to be talking about Title IX a bit moving forward, can you give a quick explanation of what Title IX covers?

Katie King:

So Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 essentially says that no person shall be discriminated against on the basis of sex in programs and activities that receive federal funding. I don't believe I'm quoting it verbatim, but the long and the short of it is, is Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in programs and activities that receive federal funding. And so almost every university in the country, I think maybe there's one that does not receive federal funding, but the rest of them, Title IX would apply as well as any other organization that would receive federal funding.

Katya Valasek:

Can you walk me through what the process looks like when someone comes to you to file a complaint? What steps do you take to ensure fairness and confidentiality in an investigation?

Katie King:

I think it's really important to just say that the work that we do in the Title IX space specifically is really driven by our requirement to follow the federal regulations, the Title IX federal regulations. And so currently every university must follow the Title IX regulations that were implemented in August of 2020. And these regulations have requirements related to the process itself and related to privacy and confidentiality.

And so the work that we do comports with the 2020 Title IX regulations. What it looks like here where I work now is we really try to get out into the community in advance of anyone filing a report so that they know that our office is here. They know that this is the office that they can come to if they wish to file a formal complaint because they have been the subject of sex-based harassment or sexual assault, domestic violence, or stalking. They know where to go. They don't have a question about that.

Our office is an impartial office. And so we say that to everyone. Our investigators and our Title IX coordinator are tasked with being unbiased and impartial. And the decisions are ultimately made at my current university by a hearing panel. And the hearing panelists are not members of our office. They are volunteers from the campus community who come together to hear the cases that come before them and render a decision as to whether someone is responsible or not. But when someone comes to our office because they have questions or concerns relating to something that may have happened to them and they are interested in knowing more about filing a report, our investigators will have an intake meeting with that person. They will sit down with the person and let them know all of the rights that they have and the resources that are available to them. They are always offered what is called supportive measures. And so these are supports that can be put into place that are not punitive, that don't cost the person anything, and don't require that a formal complaint be filed for these things to happen.

Some things that we can do and have done are assist students if they need help maybe moving their dorm room or they're looking to be excused from a class or classes because of something that might have happened to them, we can help with that. And we can also do things like issue no contact orders. And so we always go over all of those options with anyone that comes to our office. And then we talk them through what the formal complaint process actually looks like so that they are fully informed to make the decision about whether they want to move forward.

Katya Valasek:

I know in your current role, you are not necessarily the investigator, though your office is the one that handles these Title IX complaints. Tell me what you do day-to-day now in your current position.

Katie King:

In my role as the AVP for Institutional Equity and Title IX, I always like to say that our office does four buckets of things and so I'm responsible for oversight of those four buckets. So one is Title IX, all the Title IX work.

The second is our office currently handles all of the discrimination and harassment complaints lodged against employees at my university. So anything that would violate our policy on harassment and discrimination, so race-based discrimination, religious discrimination, disability discrimination, etc., any of the protected statuses that our policy covers that are not sexual harassment, our office also investigates those.

We also do all of the employee accommodations at the university. So if an employee would need an accommodation for a disability or under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act or because they have a sincerely held religious belief that they need an accommodation for, our office facilitates that and facilitates the interactive process for that.

And then the last thing that our office does is work in the equal opportunity space. And so historically, our office authored all of the affirmative action plans for our colleges and also engaged in other work related to affirmative action and equal employment. And so I have oversight over all of those areas and each of those areas have policies and procedures that align with each of the areas.

And so I am consistently working with my team to make sure that our policies and procedures are up to date. I am out in the community giving presentations on the work that our office does to make sure that all of our campus community members know that our office exists, what our purpose is, and how we can assist them. I work with senior leadership on various initiatives that are happening on campus.

Currently, I am sitting as a member of our campus task force on sexual assault that was just pulled together. And so I work with different areas of our campus community to ensure that we are always engaged in ongoing civil rights compliance. And that's the broad umbrella, not just the Title IX side.

Katya Valasek:

This oversight and maintaining compliance means that you are constantly referring to rules and regs and statutes.

Katie King:

Yes, I have a Westlaw subscription. I use it every day. I am always reading up on cases.

It is critical that I am staying up to date on what is happening in the world of Title IX, Title VII, ADA, Title VI, New York State Human Rights Law. And being a lawyer and having the legal training in terms of how to actually go and find the information that I'm looking for has played such a huge role in, I think, my success in this role. Being able to digest the regulations, be able to look for and find sub-regulatory guidance and understand what that means and how that applies in the work that we do. Looking at case law versus looking at what the Department of Education is putting out, trying to align these things or understand the differences in what courts think versus maybe what federal agencies might think is really important. It is something that I'm doing every day.

Katya Valasek:

So to be clear, you don't need a law degree to do what you do.

Katie King:

You do not need a law degree. And I think it would be very challenging to do the work without a law degree. I think if you had come up doing this work from the very beginning and worked your way up from perhaps being an investigator up into something like my role without having a law degree, I do think that someone could absolutely do it. Having a legal degree gives me a set of skills that are directly impactful to the work that I do that I would not have developed elsewhere, I don't think. Learning how to read and digest case law regulations and then implement that information and guidance into the work that we do and incorporate it in a fast way without having to go to counsel's office constantly is, I think, critical and makes my job a lot easier, actually, because I can make decisions about things because I have the information and background to be able to do that.

Katya Valasek:

In the work that you do day to day, do you connect with the general counsel's office regularly or do you only pull them in when there's a particularly thorny question at hand?

Katie King:

So I have a wonderful working relationship with our general counsel's office, and I do interact with them, I would say almost on a daily basis, if not daily. I think you keep issues from becoming thorny by having a good relationship with your general counsel and keeping them updated and apprised as to things that are going on. The last thing I would want to do is have to take something to my general counsel that they had never heard of before. And so we do have ongoing discussions on nearly a daily basis.

Katya Valasek:

How long did it take for you to develop trust with that office to allow you to take action without taking everything to them?

Katie King:

I think it was really more of developing trust in myself to do the role. And so I always say it takes me at least, and this is what I tell folks that work with me, is it takes you at least a year in a new job, especially a new job at this kind of a level to really feel comfortable and confident, at least a year. And so I really think that once I developed that confidence in myself and really knowing when you need to have a consult, when you need to go to whoever your supervisor is, or when you need to go to the general counsel's office.

So I think it's not so much about trust in counsel's office, it's trust in myself and trust in my ability to understand the broader situation that's at hand. So the impact on the broader campus community and when things may or may not need to be elevated.

Katya Valasek:

So you told us earlier about the work that you do through your Westlaw account to track changes. What do you do when you see a change come through that's going to impact the work that you do in your office? How do you implement those changes?

Katie King:

Well, I mean, I can point to a great example, which is the Title IX regulations were updated again in 2024, and the updated regulations were released in April and we had an implementation date of August. And so thankfully, a lot of times in the work that I do and in the work of civil rights, there is an implementation period that is allowed for you to be able to get up to speed. And so what I did in that situation and what we've done in other similar situations is learn as much as we can in advance of the publication of the law or the regulation, try to get as prepared as we can, and then know that going into it, what our plan is going to be.

So we're going to need to update our procedures, we're going to need to update our policy, we're going to need to message this to the campus community and trying to have as much of a plan in place in advance so that it's less of a scramble as it's going on. Because you're always going to have to, you know, when the 2024 Title IX regulations were released, we thought we would know what was in them and we were right on a lot of things and we were wrong on some things too, right? Some things changed between the original publication of the proposed regulations to the final regulations and so having to pivot and make changes and then also to know what points are going to need additional approval and what points you can make those decisions yourself about what changes you're going to implement.

And I think knowing your employer and knowing your employer's wants and needs are really critical to that regardless of who your employer is, if it's a higher education institution or a law firm or a company.

Katya Valasek:

I imagine that messaging piece is really important because people in your office may need more legalese than the broader university community that just needs to understand the basics of either when they need to share something with your office or what protections they have if they come to you. How do you balance that need to be legally accurate and what you're conveying but also keeping in mind that many of the people that are receiving these messages don't have that law degree?

Katie King:

We will come up with internal drafts in our office and then we will vet them with non-lawyers to make sure that what we are saying makes sense. We will often get feedback. I mean, I'll sometimes ask my husband at home about something who's not a lawyer at all and I'll say, hey, can you just take a look at this and tell me how it strikes you and do you understand what I'm trying to say here? We'll have folks in our office who don't have law degrees who do different work read things and comment on them.

But I think really having a strong relationship with your communications folks to make sure that your message is going to be impactful for the community and that they will be able to understand it is really important. And then also realizing that when we're doing things, so long as we're doing things in a compliant manner, a manner that is legally compliant, we don't necessarily need to be using legal language with the folks that we're interacting with. And that's always just important to remember and something that's easy to forget.

Katya Valasek:

Do you miss the investigation work or do you feel like this compliance oversight and the tracking of the regs gives you the same sort of experience of putting together pieces and building a story, a greater story this time in terms of the way your office on campus functions?

Katie King:

I have to be very honest. I can't help myself and I still do take a case every now and again because I really like the investigations work. And I also really want to make sure that our investigators don't get overburdened and overworked and don't burn out because there is a really high burnout in this work.

And so I usually have one thing that I'm working on and I really enjoy the rest of it as well. I think there's value to everything that we do. And as I grow in my career, I like being able to be a resource for the folks in my office that work with me when they have questions about things. And so even if I don't have an open and active investigation, I'm still pretty involved because they will come to me and ask for feedback on the work that they're doing and I can make investigative suggestions. And so even if I'm not the one that's doing the interviews and collecting the evidence, I am still involved. And I think that will never stop. I really enjoy it.

Katya Valasek:

You enjoy it, but it is heavy work, and it can be overwhelming work. And as you say, it can often lead to burnout. So how do you make sure you don't take the emotional impact of the work that you do home at the end of the day?

Katie King:

So I have a little bit of a commute at my current job and I really use that time to talk on the phone with my friends and family. And if not, I have become enamored with books on tape. I mean, love them. And so I really, really do purposefully disconnect during that time, during my commute. And I make an effort when I get home to really be there and be present for my family because if I continue to let the work of my day kind of run my evenings and the rest of my life, I don't think that that would be a healthy choice. And so I make a conscious choice to use that time while I'm commuting to really disconnect my brain.

And also, and I cannot believe I'm going to admit this, and my husband makes fun of me for it, but I love reality television. And I say to him, the work that I'm doing all day is really intense and heavy. And this is like fun and mindless. And like, I don't want to have to think when I'm watching a television show. And so I'll watch a little bit of trash TV every now and again.