About
Deliberately Indifferent follows the stories of sexual assault survivors at Columbia University who secretly recorded their interactions with campus first responders, administrators, and Title IX investigators. Through interviews interwoven with audio recordings, Deliberately Indifferent exposes the conflicts of interest that riddled the Title IX process at one Ivy League university, and how those conflicts now threaten to play out on a national stage.
In 2014, Columbia University hired a civil rights lawyer (Suzanne Goldberg) to lead Columbia’s efforts to reduce campus sexual violence. Despite student protests, Columbia then banned students from recording meetings with administrators, which silenced survivors whose assault investigations were mishandled. However, when the Biden administration chose Columbia administrators to help run the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in 2021, survivors were forced to make a difficult decision: should they try to move on, or risk expulsion to expose corruption now threatening the safety of students across the country?
About the Creators
Brandee Blocker Anderson received her B.A. from Yale University in 2012, her M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, and her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2017. Shortly before the end of her 1L year, Brandee was sexually assaulted by a classmate. From her first interactions with campus first responders, Brandee heard racist commentary pressuring her not to report. Despite persevering through Columbia’s Title IX investigative process and her assailant admitting she said “no” in an interview with Title IX investigators, Brandee’s assailant was found “not responsible.” Brandee subsequently joined No Red Tape, an anti-sexual violence group on campus, and began advocating for other survivors of violence.
Amelia Roskin-Frazee received her B.A. from Columbia University in 2020 and is a Sociology Ph.D. student at the University of California-Irvine. At the beginning of her freshman year, Amelia woke up to a stranger sexually assaulting her in her dorm room. After Columbia first responders said she could not move dorms free of charge, Amelia stayed in her dorm only to be assaulted a second time, this time with her attacker making it clear he targeted her due to her sexual orientation. Columbia ultimately conducted zero interviews into either assault. Already a member of No Red Tape, Amelia joined Brandee in demanding accountability from Columbia. In 2017, she sued Columbia University for violating Title IX.
Vindication Films is a women and LGBTQ-run documentary film production company based in California.