A day after the University of Vermont men’s basketball team won its sixth straight conference crown, the school celebrated the victory with a message posted on the official Instagram accounts for UVM and the team.
“The University of Vermont congratulates its men’s basketball team on their sixth straight America East Regular Season Title,” read the statement, posted Thursday.
Then the message’s tone shifted.
“UVM does not tolerate sexual misconduct and take such accusations seriously,” the post went on. “Incidents are reported through the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity where support and follow-up is provided promptly. Anonymous accusations on social media are not helpful to victims or to anyone impacted by sexual violence.”
By midday Friday, both posts had disappeared — but not before they had renewed a furor over the university’s handling of sexual assault allegations on campus.
Hundreds of students rallied on campus Friday, according to a WCAX news report, and scores, if not hundreds, of people appeared to have commented on the posts before they were deleted, according to screenshots.
Many appeared to express confusion or shock, while others accused the college of failing to protect survivors of sexual assault and misconduct.
“Perfect example of how much uvm ‘cares’ about victims of sexual violence on our campus – this makes negative sense,” one commenter wrote.
“Survivors reading this: there is support for you in our community. You are not alone,” another wrote.
The comments were not the first time that UVM has faced similar accusations. Last spring, several thousand students held a walkout to call on the university to strengthen its procedures for investigating allegations of sexual assault.
The protest, one of the largest on the university’s Burlington campus in recent years, was sparked by viral social media posts in which students shared stories of their alleged experiences of sexual violence.
Amid those protests, an Instagram account called @ShareYourStoryUVM sprang up, publishing anonymous accounts detailing allegations of sexual misconduct on campus. As of Friday, that account has published 399 such accounts — some of which accuse members of the basketball team of misconduct.
In response to emailed questions from VTDigger, UVM spokesperson Enrique Corredera forwarded a message that was sent to faculty, staff and students on Friday.
“Following a University post yesterday about the Men’s Basketball team, there were numerous harmful comments accusing the entire team of sexual misconduct,” said the email, which was signed by Patricia Prelock, the college’s provost and senior vice president, and Erica Caloiero, the vice provost for student affairs.
“We are aware that UVM’s post in response to these comments was not received in the way it was intended,” Prelock and Caloiero went on. “We sincerely regret that we did not communicate the context for the University’s response more clearly. The response has been removed.”
It was not clear exactly which comments the officials were referring to.
But through an email address associated with @ShareYourStoryUVM, the account’s administrators — a group called UVM Empowering Survivors — said they believed the university’s now-deleted post was aimed at them.
“We believe it is in response to comments that were being left on the Instagram account (UVM Men’s Basketball) which prompted the statement to be released,” the account’s administrators wrote in the email to VTDigger. “We think that it is pathetic that an institution like UVM is targeting a small team of almost entirely survivors from their own community on such a public scale.”
As of Friday afternoon, it was not possible to leave comments on recent posts by the official men’s basketball account, though it’s unclear if that had changed recently.
UVM Empowering Survivors administrators declined to be identified, citing threats to their safety, and VTDigger was not able to confirm their identity. They operate their account anonymously because sexual assault “is highly stigmatized in our nation,” they said.
“By allowing for folks to share their experiences anonymously we hope to empower them to share what our world tells them they cannot and find healing and community through that,” they said.
UVM officials have said publicly that they are committed to supporting survivors and investigating sexual misconduct on campus.
After an October report by an outside consultant found that the university acted properly in examining such allegations, UVM spokesperson Corredera said the findings showed “UVM’s unwavering commitment to continually review and improve our efforts to prevent and to appropriately address allegations of sexual misconduct.”
In their email Friday, school officials said UVM “does not tolerate sexual violence and has put significant energy and resources into making our procedures, support, and prevention efforts more robust and accessible.”
“We are reaching out to engage students in meaningful dialogue on these important issues,” they wrote.
But UVM Empowering Survivors said that the university never contacted them.
“We have been adamant in communicating that we do not want to be doing this work,” the account administrators said. “However, until UVM takes the necessary steps to change their approach to sexual assault, abuse and harassment on a massive scale, spaces like ours are necessary for survivors to receive support and community since UVM refuses to.”
