EEO-TIX announces new leader
Second-in-command Linda Hoos will replace Catherine Spear, who oversaw the office’s restructuring after the George Tyndall scandal, effective April 5.
By CHRISTINA CHKARBOUL
The Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX will transition to a new leader beginning April 5, Senior Vice President of Human Resources Felicia Washington wrote in a Universitywide statement Thursday morning.
Catherine Spear, who joined EEO-TIX in 2020 to become its first vice president, will leave to head the newly created Systemwide Office of Civil Rights for the University of California. Associate Vice President of EEO-TIX Linda Hoos will step into Spear’s shoes.
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Hoos is a Gould School of Law alum who has worked in governmental roles — for the California Office of the Attorney General and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority — and in Title IX at Cal Poly Pomona and the California State University Office of the Chancellor.
Hoos has been at USC since 2021, when she joined EEO-TIX at its one-year anniversary following a merger of the Office of Equity and Diversity and the Office of Title IX.
“Being able to work with [Spear] for the last three years under the leadership of [Washington] and President [Carol] Folt has absolutely been one of the greatest achievements in my career,” Hoos said in a press briefing with the Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media Wednesday. “I just am committed to ensuring that the care, the responsiveness that has been set up during the time that I’ve been here by [Spear] will continue on.”
As she prepares to enter her new role as the head of EEO-TIX at USC, Hoos said she will continue to work on improving community trust in the office. Amid student complaints about long resolution times and a lack of communication throughout Title IX proceedings, Hoos said she’ll also look to boost transparency about the office’s processes.
“Of course, we’re operating within a highly regulated and prescriptive system,” Hoos said. “However, to the extent that we can get feedback that allows us to really think about areas where we do have that flexibility and can make those improvements, we absolutely will do that … [Timeliness] is an area that we have been talking about and we’ll continue to discuss and continue to try to improve on.”
Though she spared details, Washington said EEO-TIX plans to publish a report to the USC community in the near future to provide a glance into its work and promote transparency.
“We are looking forward to providing the community with information and there’s a part of me that wants to say, ‘Stay tuned,’ because I think it will be exciting,” Washington said.
The University hired Spear — a civil rights attorney who worked as Stanford University’s first full-time Title IX coordinator and the University of Virginia’s associate vice president of the Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights — to oversee a newly established EEO-TIX that would comply with federal requirements.
Catherine Spear, the current vice president of the Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX, helped develop the office’s Intake, Outreach, and Support team, which serves as the front line for community members who have experienced discrimination, retaliation or harassment. (Michael Spear, Ltd.)
Following the revelation of the George Tyndall scandal — in which the former USC gynecologist allegedly sexually abused hundreds of patients at Engemann Student Health Center for almost 30 years — the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into Title IX practices at USC in 2018.
In 2020, OCR released its findings that the University did not comply with federal requirements under Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding. USC agreed to implement a set of recommendations, including the restructuring of its Title IX office and a new Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation, and reported to OCR for three years on its progress.
Spear oversaw EEO-TIX’s expansion to comply with federal regulations and establish practices that would serve as a “model for offices like ours across the country,” she said.
Under Spear’s leadership, the office developed its Intake, Outreach, and Support team, which serves as the front line for community members who have experienced discrimination, retaliation or harassment. It also created an Initial Assessment Triage Team, a “cross-campus” effort, she said, that coordinates responses to complaints with a focus on sexual misconduct.
Spear said she’s excited to move out to Oakland to work in the UC Office of the President and is confident in the foundation past work has laid.
“It’s bittersweet because I’m so proud of the team that we’ve built at the University of Southern California and have so enjoyed my time not only working with my team but with all of the partners across campus,” Spear said.
The office may see further development and restructuring come this summer, when President Joe Biden’s planned Title IX regulations are expected to come out, Hoos said, after several missed deadlines. The regulations will likely outline new protections for survivors of sexual assault and LGBTQIA+ students.
“We are going to hopefully get some regulations this summer, new regulations in the Title IX space that will effectively mean that we’ll have to be revamping our policy and our processes that will necessarily require some input and feedback from the community,” Hoos said.
