California Lutheran Univerity’s Incident Response Team released its annual report for incidents occurring from January through December 2022.

The report released on March 1 said 35 complaints were received over the course of the year. The report distinguished the types of complaints most commonly received, which included discrimination, bias, harassment, vandalism and stalking.  

“The response team now refers incoming complaints to different departments to conduct those investigations,” Walter Johnson, manager of employee relations and a member of the Incident Response team, said. “Before there was a team, they kind of had a central knowledge of all the different types of complaints that might come in.”

Johnson said that the departments that investigate these complaints are based on what type of complaint was reported. Student Conduct, Campus Safety, the Provost Office, Human Resources and Title IX departments are all places that complaints can be sent to if the incident falls under that specific department’s jurisdiction.

“Those processes are still happening now, the real difference is that we have one unit with multiple members who see the complaints when they come in and make sure they get forwarded to the appropriate departments,” Johnson said. 

According to the IRT Annual Report, the team received 18 discrimination complaints, eight biased conduct complaints, seven harassment complaints, one vandalism complaint and one stalking complaint throughout 2022. The report included that of the 35 complaints received during 2022, 15 were found to be no violation and 11 were found to have insufficient information.

“We looked at all of the circumstances and determined that the person who allegedly did something, either didn’t do it or it didn’t violate policy,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, and it doesn’t mean that we didn’t do anything about it, it means that the person didn’t do whatever allegedly happened.”

Ash Januzik, assistant video producer and editor in the Marketing and Communications Office, submitted one of the 35 complaints received last year.

“It was an informal incident report that I ended up going through, I just kind of reached out to HR. I originally talked to my supervisor about how to go about this process then I spoke to HR and they kind of took it from there,” Januzik said.

Januzik said they submitted a complaint about certain systems at Cal Lutheran not using the correct names or pronouns that certain people preferred. Januzik said since the system uses the legal names of the individuals and some of the systems are unable to communicate that change properly when people submit their preferred names, people can be led to being addressed by the wrong name or pronoun.

“From what I understand, they were able to submit a ticket to ITS…I know that my name has been fixed in a lot of the systems, although there are still some areas where it has slipped through the cracks, so I’m just working consistently with HR and ITS to find all of those cracks,” Januzik said.

Johnson said the Incident Response Team is always willing to listen to any complaints that any individual may have, but they are only under the jurisdiction to investigate a complaint if the complaint contains some sort of discrimination or bias. Johnson said if the complaint or incident does not involve discrimination or bias, the Incident Response Team is not under jurisdiction to investigate, they would however refer the person who submitted the complaint to the proper department so that it can be resolved properly. Johnson said if you have any complaints or suspect that someone or something on campus is discriminatory or biased then submitting a complaint to the Incident Response Team can help to clear up that problem and help make Cal Lutheran more inclusive and accepting to all.