It wasn’t hard to see the symbolism in the torrential rains that preceded Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to Indianapolis, IN, on July 25. One month and a day after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with folks feeling the severe effects of abortion bans across the country, the mood among Indiana Democrats and abortion activists felt stormy and unsettled, as the state became the first to convene a special session of lawmakers to consider a proposal that would ban nearly all abortions, which activists and experts say could have devastating consequences. 

Harris addressed a roundtable of lawmakers at the Indiana State Library to talk about the proposed ban and the fight to protect reproductive rights, and to show the administration’s support for lawmakers advocating against bans; before she even wrapped up her visit, abortion rights activists gathered outside, chanting “my body, my choice,” and “vote them out.” All this came two weeks after an executive order from the Biden Administration, which supports protecting access to medication abortion and contraception and guarantees the right to emergency medical interventions and services — although many have said it doesn’t do enough to tangibly help people on the ground in states with abortion bans.

This is a growing list of states and Indiana could be on it as soon as September 1 if the proposed legislation, Senate Bill 1, passes. S.B. 1 bans all abortions with few exceptions and is one of a growing number of bans that are limiting nearly all abortions (though self-managed abortion is still an option, even where bans are in place).

“Maybe some people need to actually learn how a woman’s body works,” Harris said pointedly to a high-ceiling room full of lawmakers and media. “But when you understand how a woman’s body works, you’ll understand that the parameters that are being proposed mean that for the vast majority of women, by the time she realizes she is pregnant, she will effectively be prohibited from having access to reproductive healthcare that would allow her to choose what happens to her body.” 

Indiana had already been receiving national attention after a report that a 10-year-old rape survivor was forced to travel to Indiana for care due to Ohio’s strict abortion laws; abortion in the state is banned after about six weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest. This case was brought up during Harris’ roundtable. “She is a baby,” said Rep. Cherrish Pryor, the Indiana House Democratic Floor Leader. “Why should we force babies to have babies?”

Harris touched on this too, and said it went to show what the Supreme Court decision meant “to real people, including children.” She also reiterated what many have been saying for months: that the decision could have implications on future access to birth control, and the ability of people to marry whomever they love. 

Meanwhile, inside the library after the roundtable, Refinery29 was able to catch up with Vice President Harris to chat about abortion, the healthcare crisis it’s leading to, maternal mortality rates, and, well, what we all should do if we’re feeling extremely frustrating about the way things are going right now. 

Refinery29: It’s been just over one month since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade. How has it felt seeing how all these abortion bans are impacting the American people from your vantage point?  

Vice President Kamala Harris: “I’ll tell you, I’m here in Indiana today, where their state house is about to be the first state in the country to convene a special session to further restrict access to abortion care. And while I’ve been here, I’ve met with state legislators who are prompted to defend a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, but also young leaders. And when I meet the young leaders who are in their 20s, who are fighting on this issue, and they’re out there marching right now… It gives me a lot of hope and optimism — but only because I know that they’re prepared to do the hard work, which we should all be prepared to do. And that’s about speaking up. It’s about organizing folks and understanding… that people should have the freedom and the liberty to make decisions about their own body and their own life, and the government should not be making that decision for them. 

“And we need to do what we know we can do in the next 160 days to get people to vote, because your local prosecutor might be a prosecutor who’s in a state that is criminalizing healthcare providers. You want to make sure that that local prosecutor reflects your values. It should not be a crime for a healthcare provider to provide healthcare. Who is your governor? [It] matters when a state legislature is passing laws that restrict rights — you want a governor like there are in some states who’ll say: ‘I’m not going to stand for that. I’ll veto it.’

“Who your state legislators are matters because they’re the ones sending those bills up. Who is in Congress matters. Our President Joe Biden is prepared to sign off on legislation to codify — which means to put in law — the protections that Roe used to offer, but we need two more senators in the United States Senate. So those elections matter. 

“So, this is part of the work that we know we have in front of us. But I feel optimistic because I think everyone understands that each of us as individuals has a power to weigh in on this, to participate in this, and to let our neighbors and our family and our friends understand what this means to us and what we have at stake.” 

And for those young people that you just mentioned, some of them might be feeling frustrated about what’s happening in the country right now — what would you want them to know? 

“You know, I have a 17-year-old goddaughter, who is now entering her senior year in high school, and she’s starting to apply and look at colleges. And she and her friends are now assessing — not only what school they’d like to go to based on the academics or the sports program — but what state it’s in, and whether or not [there’s] going to be a restriction on her ability to make decisions about her own life and body.

“We have a 23-year-old daughter whose friends are making decisions about where they’re going to work. Whereas before it might have been determined by where the company [they want to work at is located] they’re looking at literally, what state is it? And what laws are being passed in that state? So it’s a very real issue.

“And I just want to encourage everybody to stay active, stay involved, because this is a very specific moment where rights have been taken from people, and we need to reclaim those rights.”

When I meet the young leaders who are in their 20s, who are fighting on this issue, and they’re out there marching right now… It gives me a lot of hope and optimism.

Vice PResdient Kamala Harris

You’ve done a lot of work on maternal mortality. In Indiana where we are today, the rates of maternal mortality are the third highest in the nation. Abortion access folds into this issue because some people will have no option but to give birth in a system that often fails them. How do you plan to continue working on this issue so that rates don’t spike in the face of lessened abortion access? 

“Maternal mortality is something I’ve worked on for years. In the United States, we have one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among so-called developed countries in the world. How can that be? When you look at how it affects specific groups of women —Black women are three times more likely to die. Native American women twice as likely to die. Women who live in rural America? One-and-a-half more times likely to die.

And so, part of the work that I’ve been doing is to elevate this to an issue that we talked about at the White House. And the president has been a great leader on this. And we are talking about what we need to do… to extend care for women, before, during, and after childbirth. We need to do what is necessary to, for example, deal with racial bias in the system, which is very real. And to train healthcare providers on that issue. And then we need to do things like what we’ve been doing, which is to say that Medicaid coverage postpartum should not just be two months, but should be [extended to cover a person for] 12 months [after giving birth], and we have a lot of states that are doing what we’re asking them to do, which is to extend Medicaid coverage for postpartum care.”

I’m glad you brought up Medicaid. Will the Biden-Harris Administration take additional steps to help those in states where abortion’s banned, beyond the recent executive order, like using Medicaid resources to fund travel for people who need to go across state lines?

“So we’re taking a look at what kind of federal funding assistance we can give in particular to women and folks who are impacted in these states that are passing these extreme laws. One of the issues and the challenge is there’s this thing called the Hyde Amendment. And the Hyde Amendment basically says that you can’t use federal funds to pay for an abortion. And so what we are looking at is whether we can support… the sanctuary states, right, which are in the middle of states that are passing restrictions… We’re taking a look at what options there are, what we can do [that’s] legally feasible. Because we don’t want to do something and raise expectations, and then the courts throw it out in a couple of days. And that’ll just deflate everybody in terms of how they’re feeling, to your point about this whole issue and what it means. So we’re taking a look at that. But the Hyde Amendment, we need to get rid of the Hyde Amendment. And we’ve been clear about that. But until we do, it’s a restriction that we have to get around.” 

What do you see as your role specifically when it comes to making change on the abortion issue going forward in the next month, and then the next two years? And do you think the people who got you elected — women, young people, Black women, many others — will see that you’re doing this work? What do you want them to know?

“Well, I want us to be doing this work together. All of us. Because this is really critical work. And there are so many lives that are being directly impacted. So I see myself as being a leader among many leaders who are doing extraordinary work to make sure that we stand for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and her healthcare.”

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

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Last month, at the recommendation of a gratitude journal prompt that suggested I “listen to music you loved when you were younger but haven’t heard in a long time,” I found my way to a “Top Hits of 2012” playlist on Spotify. And, oh my God. I felt transported.

As I listened to “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepson, I was suddenly back at a Homecoming dance in my high school’s cafeteria. I was jumping around obnoxiously with my friends, making the little telephone sign with my hand and putting it up to my ear, before grabbing one of my best friends’ arms and swinging around in a circle, do-si-do-style, as Carly sang, “Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad.” When “We Are Young” by fun. and Janelle Monáe came on, I remembered belting out the words while driving around my small Iowa town with one too many people packed into my cramped, blue Volkswagen Bug. During “Little Things” by One Direction, I viscerally remembered playing the song over and over through my corded headphones (back when they were the only option we had, versus a retro fashion statement) while fantasizing about my crush.

The playlist was a trip, and it made me temporarily forget where I actually was: quarantining in my tiny New York City apartment after testing positive for COVID-19 at the height of the Omicron wave, in the dead of winter, while processing a tumultuous breakup. The hit of nostalgia I got from the songs was just what I needed to feel better; it helped me forget, temporarily at least, that I had a stuffy nose and broken heart. 

This is the power of nostalgia, says Andrew Abeyta, PhD, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-Camden, who’s been studying nostalgia scientifically since… 2012 (!!). “We tend to find nostalgia pleasurable and comforting because it connects us to who we were in the past — to simpler times,” he says. Some folks have more of a tendency towards nostalgia than others (“sentimental types,” Dr. Abeyta calls them), but many people recruit nostalgic memories “when they’re facing stressful experiences in their lives, and particularly when they’re feeling lonely or facing a big life transition.” 

Times of upheaval can draw us towards the past, Dr. Abeyta says. We reach for things that bring us to another time: songs we used to love, old greeting cards, or a perfume or tchotchke that reminds us of being a kid. 

And it’s not just that people are getting escapism out of this, which was how I initially saw my brief journey back to 2012. Nostalgia helps us make meaning of the past, and better understand how we became who we are today — what we’ve overcome and experienced already to get to this point, Dr. Abeyta says. It can help us cope and even improve our moods. One study found that engaging in nostalgia helped people feel less lonely during COVID-19 lockdowns, and happier.

That said, nostalgia is a complicated emotion. “We experience happiness and joy [when we feel nostalgic], but also loss and sadness,” Dr. Abeyta says. It’s taking us to a time we may have shared with people we can’t or don’t see anymore. But thinking about those times may allow us to process the emotions they bring up, consciously or not. And that can help us grow.

Music, specifically, can facilitate personal growth in another way, separate from nostalgia, adds Alan Turry, DA, the managing director of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at NYU Steinhardt. Listening to songs from their past can help people with dementia “access and express repressed feelings,” he says. Music can also encourage those with a terminal illness to review significant moments and “move towards more acceptance as they come to the end of their life,” he says. And most anyone could get those benefits. “It’s more than nostalgia,” Dr. Turry says. “It’s about accessing feelings that one may be repressing. It’s about self-reflection and developing a deeper awareness of oneself.”

Dr. Abeyta notes that nostalgia can make us more likely to connect with others, and I found this to be true. My trip down memory lane prompted me to reach out socially, which went a long way toward boosting my spirits. After listening to “Call Me Maybe,” I was feeling so nostalgic that I ended up texting one of my old friends/Homecoming dance partners — someone I hadn’t spoken to in ages — to suggest a catch-up call. 

I also started a conversation with my coworkers about 2012, which prompted us all to reminisce. Of course, we remembered learning Gossip Girl’s true identity and freaking out about the rumors that Nick Jonas had taken off his purity ring. But we also reflected on our personal growth over the past 10 years, and how much our worlds had changed. I felt compelled to ask other friends what they were doing in 2012 too, which started some conversations that ended up being surprisingly deep. 

A random journal prompt and a 2012 playlist made me feel significantly less lonely, even though I was in quarantine and couldn’t actually talk to anyone face-to-face. 

It also gave me a glimmer of hope. In 2012, we thought (to varying degrees of seriousness) that the world was going to end. Hurricane Sandy hit. Whitney Houston died. Although 2022 feels bleak, so had 2012 — and yet, while listening to 2012 music, I’d felt warm and reflective of the good times I’d had. Was there a chance someday I’d look back at 2022 fondly, too? It seemed impossible, and a little terrifying.

Dr. Turry encouraged me to look a little deeper at 2012, and to analyze why I might have chosen a playlist from that year in response to my gratitude journal’s prompt. “Perhaps 2012 is a particularly important year for you or those around you,” he suggested. “I suspect it may be connected to a time before the political and social divides became really explicit in everyday social discourse.”

“Also,” he added, “going back 10 years for anyone, at any time period, can provide relief from current concerns. As we move through different life stages, certain options become less possible and more commitment is made to a particular path.” That means 10 years ago is always “a more naive time, a more hopeful time, with more options and choices,” regardless of if you’re 20-something and looking back at your teens or 70-something and looking back at your 60s. 

I was generally happy with the way my life had gone since 2012, but the cool thing about that year was that I didn’t know what I would be doing in 10 years, so I could imagine anything. I would sit on my back porch and dream about being a nurse, a journalist, a penguin researcher, a teacher, a PR coordinator, and a stay-at-home parent. I pictured myself marrying both my schoolgirl crushes and Gerard Butler. I thought about living in Manhattan high rises and country homes in Montana and maybe even in Antarctica with the Emperor penguins. There was so much possibility, and I wasn’t yet on any particular trajectory. My future decisions about where to go to school, where to live, and who to associate myself with would shape where I went eventually — but, then, I was doodling on a blank dry-erase board, coming up with different future life scenarios, each more different than the next but just as full of wonder and excitement. 

Dr. Abeyta pointed out that, while nostalgia can be healthy and helpful, it can sometimes have negative socio-political consequences. Think: “Make America Great Again.” “Politicians use historical nostalgia as a way to unite a base, and depending on the scenario, that could be problematic,” he says. This is often called “collective nostalgia.”

Although it’s fine to think back fondly on who you were in the past, it’s also important to reflect on why we shouldn’t go backward. For example, 2012 was a year before the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, deciding that legally married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits. Although we might be nostalgic about what we were doing in 2012, it can tread into troubling territory to be wistful for a time when fewer people had rights. 

In many ways, nostalgia is a double edge sword, one we should wield carefully, cutting through Pollyanna-ish ideals that it was a “better” time, and questioning who it was really better for, while also acknowledging our individual experiences and trajectories since. 

2012 was wild. Kesha was still using a $ sign in her name. Joe Biden was Vice President, and then-President Barack Obama did an AMA on Reddit. A lot has changed. Looking back was a fun way to, for the moment, forget my pandemic blues. But, now that I’m out of quarantine, I’m excited to look forward too. Though, no matter how old I get, I’ll always make a little telephone hand signal when listening to “Call Me Maybe.”

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Lately, as Erica White, RN, drives to the hospital in Buffalo, NY where she’s a nurse, she’s met with a wave of anxiety as soon as the facility comes into view. 

Anyone would understand. White has spent the last 23 months working as a nurse in a dedicated COVID-19 ICU. She’s stood with the sickest patients during their most terrifying hours. “We hold their hand and try to make them comfortable as they’re getting ready to be intubated.,” White says. “We try to get them to calm down enough so they can say goodbye and call their families.” 

But the punch of anxiety White began feeling as she drove into work every day didn’t start until sometime within the last year.

In early 2020, when COVID-19 was new to the U.S., White was often running on adrenaline. It was a worse point in the pandemic in some ways. At times, more than a thousand people were dying per day. There were no vaccines, and medical experts knew less than they do now about treatment. But while in 2022, effective vaccines and therapeutics are more available, and we know more about the virus and how it’s spread, to many on the front lines, each passing month of the COVID-19 crisis has only added to their strain.

“As [the pandemic] wore on, it was like there was no more gas in the tank anymore,” White tells Refinery29. “With the surge of patients we’re seeing due to Omicron, I feel numb to the sense of dread that I had with previous waves. I’m too tired, too disheartened, to be scared anymore.” 

Workers at healthcare facilities all over the country are reporting similar emotions. Sixty-one percent of physicians said they often experienced feelings of burnout, a significant increase from 40% in 2018; more than half of physicians reported feeling “inappropriate feelings of anger, tearfulness, or anxiety because of COVID-19,” according to a Physician’s Foundation Survey of 2,504 healthcare workers conducted from May to June 2021. 

Since that survey was taken, another surge in COVID-19 cases in the U.S., caused by the Omicron variant, has made the situation for healthcare workers even more difficult. “I care so much about my patients and I want them to get better, but the amount of emotional energy I have to give patients just keeps depleting a little more with each passing wave,” White says. 

While she’s been doing similar work throughout the past two years, it “takes a bigger toll than it used to,” White says. “All of the COVID deaths I’ve witnessed, I’m just kind of putting in a little box and I can’t even really think about it too much,” she adds. “I still think about the first patients I had who passed from COVID back in March 2020, and all the countless patients who I have lost since then. But I haven’t been able to mourn, to reflect, to heal, because, for those of us working in dedicated COVID units, the weight of this pandemic hasn’t yet lifted.” 

Some healthcare workers are likely dealing with what is known as “secondary trauma” or secondary traumatic stress disorder, says Charles Figley, PhD, a professor at Tulane University who developed an early measure of PTSD and whose research has focused on compassion fatigue and secondary trauma. Synonymous with “compassion fatigue” and similar to burnout, secondary trauma occurs when you are helping or attempting to help someone going through first-hand trauma, according to Dr. Figley’s research. Secondary trauma can cause people to feel tense, emotional, angry, worn down, dissociative, or stressed, he says. 

For those of us working in dedicated COVID units, the weight of this pandemic hasn’t yet lifted.”

Erica White, Rn

Not all frontline workers identify with the “secondary trauma” label. But it’s clear that, at this point in the pandemic, many are struggling with their mental health in some way. “The real challenge right now, I think, with medical practitioners is the days are often the same, and there’s nothing for them to look forward to, only death and illness and trying to help. It feels like you’re trying to plug up the dam with your thumb when it’s breaking,” Dr. Figley says.

“There’s a certain distancing that anyone in healthcare does, when you deal with awful things on a daily basis,” says Gary Price, MD, president of the Physicians Foundation. “But when things get really overwhelming, like they have, you begin to feel powerless and like there is nothing you can do to change things. That leads to what’s been described as burnout. You feel like you’re not able to make a difference, you’re withdrawing, and you’re being socially isolated.” Dr. Price says that this can lead to poor mental health outcomes, including suicide, and to worse care for patients. 

The amount of misinformation around COVID-19 has become an additional source of stress for healthcare workers. “It makes the job that much more challenging,” says Bayo Curry-Winchell, MD, the regional clinical and medical director of Carbon Health and Saint Mary’s Hospital, who also serves on Nevada’s Governor’s COVID Medical Advisory Team. “When you think of other diagnoses, like cancer, for example, you don’t have patients telling you, ‘No, cancer doesn’t really exist.’” 

While many people in the healthcare industry have taken it upon themselves to advocate against misinformation in the pandemic, by now, many are too worn down by their work and the abuse they’ve received from online trolls to continue to do so. “I think in the beginning, I engaged more with those types of attacks and tried to explain things because I thought there was a way to get through to people,” says Shikha Jain, MD, FACP, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, oncologist, and the president of Women In Medicine. “Now between patients and work and family, I don’t have the time or energy to engage with people who are attacking me. I’m just tired.” The other day, she posted a factually accurate tweet about vaccines, but got such negative feedback online that she deleted it, she says. 

The enormous and unique demands that the pandemic has placed on healthcare institutions are partially responsible for the industry’s burnout problem. But many workers are also saying that COVID-19 has exacerbated issues that had already been at a simmer for years. Burnout was rampant even before the virus, Dr. Price says. These workers often hear a collective urging to “take care of their mental health” and “practice self-care.” This puts the onus on the workers, not their bosses, institutions, and government. It implies people who are unable to buck up and deal with the pandemic are simply not resilient enough for their field. But as Dr. Price says, “It’s like saying, ‘If the canaries are dying in the coal mine, you should send out for tougher canaries.’ It’s systemic.” 

“The saddest thing I’ve heard from colleagues is that we need help and no help is coming,” Dr. Jain says. “We need better public health messaging, we need more hazard pay, better safety procedures, childcare subsidies, loan repayment or repayment for the amount of money people paid to go to school, and to show healthcare workers that we actually care about the sacrifices they make,” including the mental health tolls, as well as the increased risk to their own and their families’ health they’ve taken on.

This problem may seem large and complex, but it deserves an urgent solution. More and more frontline workers are leaving medicine altogether — nearly one in five healthcare workers have quit their jobs since the pandemic began, according to a Morning Consult survey from October 2021. More still have been laid off. And yet, we need healthcare workers now more than ever. 

White says that despite all her work-related anxieties, she still loves helping people and believes that healthcare is her calling. But with everything she’s seen in the past two years, she may someday reconsider whether she can work in this field — especially if things continue the way they are. 

For now, she thinks she has another “pandemic year” in her, and then she says she may have to reassess. As she puts it: “It’s difficult to grapple with the fact that the job has always given me so much satisfaction, but it’s probably not the best thing for my mental health.”

If you are thinking about suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or the Suicide Crisis Line at 1-800-784-2433.

Editor’s note: White is a relative of a Refinery29 staff member. 

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The course of the pandemic has changed so often over the past almost-two years that many of us are experiencing a kind of whiplash. The most recent upheaval came with the Omicron variant, which quickly drove case counts up yet again. Although the symptoms caused by this variant seem to be less severe than in past iterations such as Delta, particularly among vaccinated people, hospitals and other health care facilities are still being overwhelmed again, to the point of postponing elective surgeries and calling in the National Guard. As World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, put it in a recent press conference: “Make no mistake, Omicron is causing hospitalizations and deaths, and even the less severe cases are inundating health facilities. The virus is circulating far too intensely with many still vulnerable.” 

While we’re still in the midst of this wave, its seemingly sudden arrival and distinctly contagious nature has naturally brought up questions about what might be coming next. When will we know more about the true impact of Omicron? Is there the risk of another variant rising up and taking its place? And could that new variant cause more severe symptoms than Omicron?

In some states, Omicron seems to have already peaked. COVID-19 case counts have dropped by more than 30% in Maryland, New Jersey, and New York have since early last week, according to The New York Times COVID Tracker.  “The peak [in the U.S.] was predicted to be the third week of January,” says Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS, an infectious disease epidemiologist and science communicator. There are variables: Case counts may spike again in states where they’re currently declining, and while predictive models indicate cases will drop in other states too, it’s hard to say exactly when. “The expectation is that probably by February, the peak will die down,” Malaty Rivera says. That said, there tends to be a lag between positive cases and hospitalizations, and hospitalizations and deaths, she notes. All in all, while the surge won’t last forever, “it’s going to be a rough two months,” says Malaty Rivera. 

What’s more, once the Omicron spike does pass, another variant is likely to follow, says Paul Pottinger, MD, a professor specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “I think this surge will pass, and we’ll then have another and another,” he says. “The hope is that they’ll get less and less bad each time, but the reality is we may have ups and downs. People should prepare for the fact that this isn’t the end of the show, although I wish it were.”

It’s impossible to know for sure whether subsequent variants will cause less or more severe symptoms, but what we know about natural selection offers some hope.

Every time a virus — or any living organism, for that matter — divides, there will be genetic alterations, sometimes called mutations, which may benefit or harm the organism, Dr. Pottinger says. The mutations that benefit the SARS-CoV-2 virus are the ones that make it more contagious but less severe, like Omicron. “From the virus’ perspective, being able to spread more is good,” Dr. Pottinger says. “But hurting the host is bad — if the patient dies, the virus won’t spread as much. That’s why we figure natural selection favors attenuation,” the process of something becoming less severe and less dangerous over subsequent generations. “At the moment, that attenuation process is headed in the right direction, but I don’t think we’re there yet,” he adds.

To be clear: There’s no guarantee that the COVID-19 virus will continue to attenuate. “It’s not necessarily accurate to assume that as the virus evolves, it will automatically become weaker and weaker,” stresses Malaty Rivera. “That’s not how that evolution always goes… It’s not linear.” The next major variant of the virus could be more contagious and cause more severe illness than Omicron. In a worst-case scenario, the current vaccines wouldn’t work effectively to prevent hospitalization and death the way they do now, says Glen Nowak, PhD, co-director of the University of Georgia’s College of Journalism’s Center for Health and Risk Communication, who spent six years as the communications director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Immunization Program. 

Until we have more information, it’s essential to keep wearing masks (especially KN95s and N95), avoiding large gatherings, getting vaccinated and, when you’re eligible, boosted, and staying home when you’re feeling sick or if you’ve been exposed. “Now is not the time to slack off [on pandemic safety measures], it’s the opposite,” Dr. Pottinger says. “It’s time to step up and do what’s right, even if it feels like a drag.” 

Regarding the best prevention and safety practices, some experts are advising more caution than others: Dr. Pottinger suggests reinstating your COVID pod, and avoiding seeing people outside of it, for instance. But others are saying that fully vaccinated people with no comorbidities that make them vulnerable to severe COVID symptoms who feel safe doing so can continue to take part in low-risk activities like dining outside or in well-ventilated restaurants that require proof of vaccination. 

Whatever your own personal risk tolerance, experts agree that with the Omicron variant raging, we must be more prudent regarding what we do and who we see than we were this past summer and even this fall. 

It’s especially critical to be considerate of the people in your community who are at higher risk of developing severe symptoms as a result of COVID. If you’re going to visit your elderly parents, for instance, quarantine and get tested beforehand, and consider wearing a mask when you do see them, suggests Preeti N. Malani, MD, chief health officer at the University of Michigan and an infectious disease physician. Getting out of this pandemic is a group effort — we have to protect ourselves, but we also have to take steps to protect the people around us. 

You probably heard the pandemic compared to a global group project at some point, and the analogy stands. We’re in this together. And now isn’t the time to let the doctors and health care workers bear all the burden. We’ve all got to show up, educate ourselves, and do the work to help us get out of this pandemic. 

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By the second half of December, I was starting to have a bad feeling about 2020 too 2022. It wasn’t just the rise of the Omicron variant and the fact that, suddenly, it seemed like everybody and their mother was testing positive for COVID-19 (though, luckily, many weren’t getting severely sick, due to being vaccinated). It also seemed like people were collectively at their worst, or that we were “slowly unraveling” — which is, not-so-coincidentally, the name one of my friends gave to our group chat sometime before Christmas. 

After making the massive mistake of watching the film Don’t Look Up, which felt like a cruel, albeit lightly comedic reminder that the world is full of corrupt people, I joked to a friend that 2022 could be the year I finally had an existential crisis. “JK!” I said. “Kind of.” 

My worries, of course, could have been much worse. I was safe, employed, sheltered. But I still felt a kind of mounting dread, and a sense that everything could disappear in an instant. And if it did, what would I have then? My thoughts circled my work and my relationships: Had I accomplished enough? Should I be using my platform as a writer to do more? Was I spending enough of my life with the people I cared about? Was my purpose to shine a light on injustice, as I thought it was? Was I even capable of doing that? Or was I wasting away hunched over my laptop? Should I use my time on this unstable planet to cultivate my friendships, memorize my parents’ laughs, and find the best cupcake shop in New York City? What if I wake up one day 10 years from now and I’m totally unhappy?

When I shared my spiraling thoughts with my friends, many related. We all seemed to be in a similar funk, questioning our existences, careers, and relationships.

2022’s rocky start wasn’t solely to blame for the way we were feeling. Plenty of events over the past few years — the pandemic, repeated instances of racially motivated police violence, the insurrection, natural disasters related to climate change — have prompted people to think about their mortality, their worldview, and if they’re really happy with the monotony of their day-to-day life, says Steven Meyers, PhD, a clinical psychologist and professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago. The sense of unease you might wrestle with while asking yourself those “big” questions (“What’s the meaning of my life?” “How did I end up here?”) is the hallmark of an existential crisis.

That’s a big phrase, and frankly, existential anxiety is not a great feeling. It can preoccupy you with insecurities about the future. You might feel hopeless about the “point” of life, almost to the point of nihilism. Existential dilemmas are different from clinical anxiety or depression, but they can still make you feel anxious, unhappy, and lonely.

People often face these crises after a major life event, such as a death in the family, a scary health diagnosis, divorce, or the loss of a job, Dr. Meyers says. And these are things that millions of people have been through as a direct result of the “layers” of trauma we’ve experienced, collectively and individually, during the pandemic, says Alfiee Breland-Noble, PhD, a psychologist and founder of the AAKOMA Project, a mental health nonprofit. “It’s not just that all these bad things have happened, it’s the fact that they’ve happened continuously, plus the length of time they’ve been happening,” she explains. “We were anticipating all of this would be over and it’s not.”

Since 2020, the constant threat of getting sick and/or losing our livelihoods has clung to us like a shadow. The gaps and harmful inequities in our social support systems have never been more glaring. Now, 2022 has kicked off with more than a million new COVID-19 cases being reported in the U.S. in the first week of January alone. It’s no surprise that people, including myself, are focusing on the bleaker questions in life. If Hot Vax Summer turned into Sad Girl Autumn, maybe this is Existential Dread Winter.

While it was comforting to know that I’m not alone, I was also hoping there might be some way to put my spiraling fears to rest. To that end, Dr. Breland-Noble suggested using intervention techniques, which focus on finding ways to head off the thoughts circling in your mind before they snowball. A snowball gets bigger the longer you let it roll downhill, she explains. “If you can catch it at the top of the hill, or run and get in front of it when it’s toward the top third of the hill, you have a better opportunity to manage it, to hold onto it, and to even shrink it,” she says.

Although your instinct may be to push away these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, Dr. Breland-Noble suggests setting aside time to let yourself really feel them; you can even use a daily calendar alert or an app like Breethe (which Dr. Breland-Noble has worked with before) to remind yourself to check in. “The more you give yourself an opportunity to take stock of what you’re feeling each day, the more you can attend to your feelings and the better you can manage them,” Dr. Breland-Noble explains. “I always tell people that feelings are our guide, so we want to use the feelings we have within an existential crisis to move us forward.” (Prevention is more effective at managing your mental health than intervention, she adds, so keep up with these strategies even when you’re feeling more balanced.)

Journaling can help you make sense of your emotions, says Dr. Meyers.  “Troubling thoughts can be like a tennis ball in a dryer. They keep bouncing against the walls of the machine,” he says. In other words, we don’t typically think in linear terms, but writing things can help us clarify what we want, who we are, and, well, what life might mean to us. 

Dr. Meyers adds that existential crises aren’t always completely negative. While they’re difficult and draining, they also tend to precede growth, by forcing people to assess where their lives are going and to ask themselves whether they want to make a change.

No one’s required to turn an existential crisis into a productive moment. But if you find it helpful, Dr. Meyers suggests asking yourself if there are any small, purposeful actions that might help you feel more motivated and in control. If you’re spending a lot of time dwelling on your job, for instance, consider beginning to build a “fuck you fund” that would allow you to take some time off if need be, signing up for a class that would let you build new skills, setting up a networking date with someone whose career path you admire, or just turning on the “actively seeking” setting on LinkedIn. 

Professional help like therapy can be useful too — for everyone, all the time, but especially when you’re wrestling with the bigger question in life, and especially if you feel like your day-to-day routine is being disrupted by what you’re going through, or if you’ve made positive life changes and still don’t feel better.

“Mental health services come in many shapes and sizes, and typically there’s some level of professional intervention that will be a good fit,” Dr. Meyers says. “Some therapists focus on actions, some focus on feelings, some focus on present-day struggles, some past, some are passive, some are active — the important thing is to find someone you feel in sync with who understands you. If the match isn’t there, the person should feel free to find a different option.” 

The bottom line is, it’s understandable to feel stuck and confused right now, especially because many of the factors contributing to our existential dread feel largely out of control. So, as we move into 2022, Dr. Breland-Noble suggests focusing on what you can control. Consider restricting how much news you consume, try to spend any free time you might on nourishing activities like going on walks, and talk to your friends or family. Heck, go find a great cupcake! And regardless of how you do choose to work your way through Existential Dilemma Winter, remember: There may be something better and more meaningful on the other side.

If you are experiencing anxiety and are in need of crisis support, please call the Crisis Call Center’s 24-hour hotline at 1-775-784-8090.

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Molly Longman, DMT.NEWS, DMT BeautySpot,

Editor’s note: This story contains information about sexual assault and suicide. Please proceed thoughtfully.

On August 27, Hannah Johnson stood on the stone steps of the student union at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, her blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail and a microphone in her right hand. “Alright, guys, I’m about to do something that’s terrifying,” the 20-year-old said to the dozens of people assembled before her. She took a deep breath, then began to detail her experience being sexually assaulted by a fellow student. “According to him, I was the main actor that night — a night I still don’t remember,” she told the crowd, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “After, I felt despair, depression, I suffered physical ailments from distress, and for a period of time I became suicidal.” 

Johnson, a third-year psychology and business major, says another student assaulted her in March 2020, and she reported the incident to the UNL Police Department and UNL’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance, which handles Title IX investigations, that August. A Zoom hearing between her and her alleged assailant took place in March 2021, but the case was closed with the Title IX committee deeming the other party “not responsible.”

Johnson’s experience left her feeling angry and incredulous. Those emotions bubbled up again six months later, when she heard that someone else had been raped on campus, at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house, known best by its nickname, Fiji. The assault had been reported to the UNL Police Department just before 4 a.m. on Tuesday, August 24. 

Refinery29’s request for public records containing more information about the reported assault from the UNLPD was denied by a university lawyer who stated the records were part of an investigation, and a spokesperson for UNL declined to comment on the incident. The Lancaster County, NE, Sheriff’s Office told Refinery29 they hadn’t received a report related to the assault, and the County Attorney’s Office did not return Refinery29’s multiple requests for comment. 

While Johnson herself hadn’t been assaulted at the Fiji house, it already had a reputation among the student body for being unsafe. In fact, it had only recently emerged from a three-year suspension that began soon after members made headlines for reportedly chanting “no means yes” to protesters at the 2017 Women’s March in Lincoln, NE. 

The March 2017 university investigation that led to Fiji being suspended and placed on a “Chapter Rehabilitation Plan” found Fiji in violation of student conduct codes. “The behavior included reckless alcohol use, hazing, and inappropriate sexually based behavior, including a pattern of sexually harassing conduct,” a press release announcing the suspension stated, adding that while the Women’s March comments were “not the focal point of the suspension,” they were “consistent with the pattern of sexually harassing conduct evident in multiple other incidents.” 

The fraternity has publicly stated that none of its members chanted “no means yes,” and John Osterholm, the president of the house corporation board at UNL’s Fiji chapter, denied in a statement to Refinery29 that “the Rehabilitation Plan was designed to address any ‘pattern of sexually harassing conduct,’ nor was that allegation even mentioned in Chapter Rehabilitation Plan.”

Fiji’s suspension was lifted in May 2020, but its reputation persisted among the student body. And now, in August 2021, news of the assault reported at the house spread quickly. By that evening, students and activists had begun to gather at the student union, located directly across the street from the house, speaking out against what they called a long-standing pattern of sexual harassment, violence, and bad behavior at the Fiji fraternity, and more widely on UNL’s campus. Over the next several days, hundreds of protesters descended on the campus chanting and holding signs reading: “Abolish Fiji!” and  “Even My Dog Understands When I Say No!”

When Johnson first saw that people were gathering in protest, she felt a chill. “There were so many people down there,” she tells Refinery29. “I thought, They’re not just letting this go. Thank God. We’ve had enough.”

More than one in four women, and about 7% of men, experience rape or sexual assault as undergraduate students, according to data from the Rape, Abuse & Incest Network. At UNL, where Johnson goes to school, there were 26 reported rapes on campus and 24 reported rapes in on-campus housing in 2020, according to UNL’s 2021 Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety report. A November 2019 survey of 3,117 UNL students showed that nearly 19% reported experiencing intimate partner violence, sexual assault, or sexual harassment within the previous 12 months. But just 48 cases of sexual assault have been investigated by the UNLPD since 2015, a university spokesperson confirmed to Refinery29. Compared to similar institutions, UNL’s reported sexual assault incident numbers are comparable or “relatively low,” a spokesperson emphasized.

A confluence of factors is to blame for the “rape culture” students say exists at UNL, and at colleges and universities across the U.S., including a startling lack of education around consent in America’s schools and a society that reinforces violence, homophobia, victim-blaming, and oppressive gender dynamics, says Tanya Bass, PhD, a sex educator in North Carolina. (A university spokesperson told Refinery29 that, “any statement that UNL has a ‘rape culture’ isn’t factually based.”) 

But what is happening at UNL, and on campuses all around the country, also underscores systemic problems with how colleges and universities implement Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex at federally funded schools, including sexual harassment, rape, sexual assault, and other forms of sexual violence, says Laura Dunn, a national expert on Title IX and founding partner at L. L. Dunn Law Firm. Under Title IX, schools are responsible for taking immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence. 

Recently, guidelines regarding how Title IX complaints must be investigated have been subject to several changes: In 2017, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded Obama-era Title IX guidance about how schools must handle sexual assault, which had been hailed by some activists for providing much-needed protections for survivors, but which others had criticized, saying it unfairly pushed schools to find alleged assailants responsible. Then, in August 2020, the U.S. Department of Education implemented DeVos’ new, amended regulations that expanded the rights of the alleged perpetrators, narrowed the definition of sexual harassment, and made the reporting process more arduous for survivors. 

A federal district court struck down one particularly controversial DeVos guideline that stated that Title IX officials couldn’t consider a “statement” from a person who didn’t submit to cross-examination at a live hearing. Under that guideline, if a perpetrator admitted to committing rape, but then refused to subject themselves to cross-examination, the school would have to throw out the confession. 

But other problematic guidelines are still in place. For instance, when schools receive a complaint, DeVos’s regulations mandate that they give notice to the respondent (how Title IX offices typically refer to the alleged perpetrator) before they’re questioned. “Can you imagine in the criminal system where a victim comes in and reports someone for rape and before the police bring that person in for questioning, they get a formal notice saying, ‘You are being accused of rape, you can bring an attorney, you can take a week before you visit us?’ That is not how a criminal system works,” Dunn says. “As much as people wanted to herald the regulations for protecting due process, they weren’t. They were protecting offenders.”

In April 2021, President Joe Biden’s new regime in the Department of Education announced they’re doing a comprehensive review of the DeVos-era regulations. Their proposed amendments are scheduled to be released in April of this year. Until then, the current system will remain in place.

How Title IX is implemented matters, because the law is supposed to hold schools accountable in how they address sexual assault. This accountability is sorely needed, given that many educational institutions have shown time and again that they care more about protecting their reputation, and the reputations of certain influential students or professors, than they do about protecting survivors, says Kathy Redmond, the founder of the WeLead Project, formerly known as the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes. This is demonstrated by how many schools don’t do anything more than the baseline that Title IX requires to support students who report harassment, assault, or rape, she adds. Many — including, survivors allege, UNL — do far less.  

“As much as people wanted to herald the regulations for protecting due process, they weren’t. They were protecting offenders.”

Laura Dunn

On March 4, 2021, seven months after Hannah Johnson reported her rape to UNL, her Title IX hearing took place. She says hers was the first hearing following a significant reform of UNL’s Title IX procedures. Johnson felt like a “guinea pig,” she told the crowd during her speech at the August 2021 protest. In a later conversation with Refinery29, she said that an employee in the UNL Center for Advocacy, Response & Education (CARE) office, which is set up to support survivors, told her, “I can’t tell you what this is going to be like, because it’s the first time they’re doing it.” 

While describing the events of the hearing, Johnson illuminates what appears to be a stark double standard in how the school handled her case. According to Johnson, her CARE advocate told her to meticulously follow every instruction she was given, or her case might be thrown out. So when she was told by a Title IX official to show up to every pre-hearing meeting and to submit the name of her advisors, her witness list, and a list of questions she intended to ask ahead of time for review by everyone, including her respondent, she complied. During the pre-hearing conferences, some of the questions she planned to ask were thrown out on the grounds that they weren’t directly related to the specific assault, Johnson says, so she didn’t ask them during the hearing. “It was very clear to me that there was no leeway,” she tells Refinery29 of the rules. 

But according to Johnson, her respondent skipped his two pre-hearing meetings, and surprised her by showing up to the hearing with a lawyer — Justin Kalemkiarian of Berry Law Firm, known for helping students who are alleged perpetrators in Title IX cases. 

When Refinery29 asked UNL about their hearing guidelines, a spokesperson pointed to UNL’s procedures executive memorandum. It does not explicitly state that all students are required to attend pre-hearing meetings, which contradicts the guidance Johnson says she was given. It does say that all parties “shall have an opportunity to inspect documents and a list of witnesses prior to the hearing.” But according to Johnson, her respondent brought witnesses she didn’t know about ahead of time, and a Title IX employee fought her request to take a five-minute break to prepare questions for these witnesses.

Kalemkiarian, who says he’s represented respondents in several Title IX cases at UNL, told Refinery29 that he couldn’t recall if the respondent in this case went to pre-trial hearings or if witnesses were called, but added that if they were, “those witnesses would have been known to the complainant [Johnson] as far as I remember.” In a later email, he clarified that “there cannot be surprise information and/or witnesses provided for the first time during the hearing and that did not happen in this case.”

Johnson also tells Refinery29 that Kalemkiarian asked her about her past sexual behavior during the trial, which was allowed by a Title IX hearing officer. A Title IX official asked Johnson how often she drank and partied. She says she’d been told by her CARE advocate that if she chose not to respond to questions, her case could also be thrown out.

Johnson felt dismayed by these inquiries, which she says were irrelevant to the details of the assault. UNL’s executive memorandum states that most questions of “past sexual history” aren’t permitted. It does, however, grant a few exceptions, one being: “If the questions and evidence concern specific incidents or the Complainant’s prior sexual behavior with respect to the Respondent and are offered to prove consent.” Kalemkiarian pointed specifically to this memo language when asked for comment on this matter.

But as Shari Stenberg, PhD, a professor of English and women’s and gender studies at UNL, told Refinery29 via email, ​​”Consent to one activity does not mean consent to others, and consent can be revoked at any time.” Ultimately, the kind of language found in the memo — which, unfortunately, is not uncommon in current Title IX procedure guidelines, according to Sandra Hodgin, PhD, a national Title IX compliance expert and founder of Title IX Consulting Group — reinforces the type of systemic survivor-blaming that makes it harder for people who have experienced sexual assault to report their abuse.

The trial went on for almost six grueling hours, with Johnson’s witnesses sitting in a Zoom “waiting room” the entire time. One witness Johnson considered essential — her friend and fellow UNL student Kim Luis — ultimately had to leave before she could testify. 

When the verdict came back that her respondent was not being held responsible, Johnson was devastated. She didn’t appeal the decision because she couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer on her own, and she didn’t want her family to know what had happened to her and worry, she tells Refinery29. 

Meanwhile, Kalemkiarian believes the recent changes made to UNL’s Title IX process were for the best. “All parties get a chance to ask questions and cross-examine people and bring in their own witnesses,” he told Refinery29. “I understand why complainants don’t like that… but from the respondents’ perspective, they get a chance to put out their side of the story, they get a chance to ask questions, and the complainant gets to do the same.” However, some experts argue that the cross-examination taking place under the DeVos guidance can, as former Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan and John King put it in a May 2020 statement, “unnecessarily burden victims and deepen trauma for students by increasing the chance of victims being exposed to their accused assailants.”

When the verdict came back that her respondent was not being held responsible, Hannah Johnson was devastated.

Johnson, for her part, says she fears the double standards she experienced might dissuade students from reporting their assaults; already, only about 23% of sexual assaults are reported to police, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2020 criminal victimization survey. 

Citing their requirement to protect students’ privacy under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, UNL’s Office of Communication and UNL’s President’s Office denied Refinery29’s public records request for: transcripts from the hearing and pre-hearing meetings; the materials Johnson and her respondent submitted for review ahead of the hearing; and emails, text messages, and calendar entries regarding Johnson’s case sent by Title IX Coordinator Meagan Counley and Deputy Title IX Coordinator Leslie Shaver. The UNL CARE office didn’t respond ​directly to multiple requests for comment. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights did not complete Refinery29’s public records requests asking for copies of Title IX complaints pertaining to sexual assault at UNL before press time.

Johnson’s experience with her campus Title IX offices is just one example of injustices happening on college campuses all over the country, says Karen Truszkowski, a lawyer who tries Title IX cases against educational institutions. Kendall Ware, a swimmer and graduate student at the University of Vermont, also felt confused and betrayed by her school’s Title IX process.

Ware told Title IX officials that a member of the school’s basketball team had sexually assaulted her in October 2019, about a month after the incident had occurred. Ware was told she could either undergo a “formal” or “informal” investigation, but received conflicting information about what that meant. At first, she was told that an informal investigation wouldn’t result in disciplinary action, so she asked for a formal investigation. Two days later, and hours after giving her formal statement to UVM’s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, she received a call from an administrator, who said something along the lines of, “It sounds like you don’t know what you want,” according to Ware. 

The next day, Ware told Refinery29, the Title IX intake and outreach coordinator and Krista Balogh, UVM’s associate athletic director for external relations and communications, told Ware that if she asked for an informal investigation, her respondent could be suspended from playing basketball and be required to go to mandatory counseling, which Ware felt “was really important… so that he could work on things and hopefully not do this to another person ever again.” She also was told she’d be able to read a “victim impact statement,” which she saw as “a chance to take back my power.” 

Ware agreed to an informal investigation, but later, an outside Title IX facilitator told her that the informal investigation actually couldn’t lead to game suspensions or mandatory counseling; she also wouldn’t be able to read a victim impact statement in person. 

Looking for clarity, Ware said her mother Marcie called Balogh, who said that a game suspension “wouldn’t be fair” to her respondent’s teammates or to “the community that comes out and watches him play,” according to Marcie and Ware. 

Now, Ware says if she had received clearer information earlier on, she may have opted for a formal investigation instead. In the end, she was still able to give her victim’s impact statement via Zoom, but wishes UVM had made her feel more heard. “I want them to acknowledge that the culture of our athletic department impacted my case,” she said. “I can’t say for sure what would have happened if the case didn’t involve a… basketball player, but I know that had an influence. And I want them to acknowledge that mistakes were made.” 

“I want [UVM] to acknowledge that the culture of our athletic department impacted my case… And I want them to acknowledge that mistakes were made.” 

Kendall Ware

In response to Refinery29’s request for comments, a spokesperson from UVM said, “We are confident in the integrity of UVM’s handling of reports of sexual misconduct… An independent, external review of the reporting, investigation, and adjudication processes found them to be in compliance with state and federal laws and regulations.” 

In a statement sent through a spokesperson, Jeff Schulman, UVM’s athletic director, declined to comment on Ware specifically, but said, “I can share that Athletic Department staff members treat every allegation of sexual misconduct with the utmost seriousness… Sexual misconduct in any form is not tolerated at UVM, including within the athletic department.” 

Balogh didn’t respond directly to Refinery29’s requests for comment, and Refinery29’s public records requests for access to records of meetings in which officials explained Ware’s investigatory rights, and for access to Title IX-related communications sent from the email addresses of Balogh, UVM Title IX coordinators, and UVM Title IX investigator Kate Spence, went unanswered. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights did not complete Refinery29’s public records requests asking for copies of Title IX complaints pertaining to sexual assault at UVM before press time.

In response to Ware’s case, students and other survivors called for the dismissal of Balogh and Schulman. But they’re still in their posts. In 2020, Ware, along with seven other athletes from other colleges, sued the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for the failure to protect them from sexual assault. The case was voluntarily dismissed this summer, but may be refiled in a different jurisdiction. 

If schools fail to meet their Title IX obligations, they can be tried in court, and multiple lawsuits have been brought against UNL over the years. In fact, in 1995, the very first Title IX lawsuit regarding sexual assault in the country was filed by Redmond, a former UNL student who said that while at school, she had been raped twice by a football recruit named Christian Peter, an allegation he has denied. Police didn’t pursue criminal charges against Peter in this case, but he was convicted of sexual assault after a separate incident in 1993, receiving 18 months probation, according to court records. He has not responded to Refinery29’s request for comment. 

Redmond claimed that UNL had failed to prevent sexual harassment on campus, thereby violating Title IX. The lawsuit stated that she’d been subjected to “a pattern of overt sexual harassment, as well as a pattern of intentional failure to investigate her allegations of sexual assault … thus permitting her attacker to remain a highly visible athlete.” Redmond’s suit against Peter and the school was settled in 1997, with Redmond receiving $50,000 from the school. 

Redmond says that about 25 years later, little has changed about how UNL and campuses across the country approach sexual misconduct cases. Recently, Redmond was involved in helping bring nine women together to file a Title IX suit, Thomas v. Regents, against UNL and other parties in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska in July 2020. The suit claims that “UNL’s investigation and response to each of the Plaintiffs’ sex discrimination complaints was insufficient and did not comply with basic due process requirements” or with “accepted Title IX response requirements as outlined in guidance from the U.S. Department of Education.” 

One plaintiff in the suit, Sydney Brun-Ozuna, told Refinery29 that after she disclosed that a fellow student had assaulted her and UNL’s Title IX office got involved, the school’s current Title IX coordinator, Meagan Counley asked her graphic and inappropriate questions, as detailed in the lawsuit, including what she’d been wearing during the reported assault — even going so far to ask her to stand up to show Counley where on her legs her skirt’s hemline ended. 

Brun-Ozuna eventually received a letter saying the Title IX office had found no evidence of sexual misconduct. She requested a meeting to discuss this decision, during which she said Counley told her, “You’re not going to change my mind.” Brun-Ozuna called the experience “more traumatizing” than the assault itself. Although Counley provided a statement to Refinery29 for this story, she did not respond directly to our request for comment on Brun-Ozuna’s statements. 

About 25 years after filing her own Title IX lawsuit against UNL, Kathy Redmond says little has changed about how the school and campuses across the country approach sexual misconduct cases.

Sheridan Thomas, the lead plaintiff in Thomas v. Regents, told Refinery29 she ultimately left UNL after being raped and harassed by a student-athlete in 2015. She said she had a harrowing experience with UNL’s Title IX office, and that she was academically dismissed when she attempted to withdraw from classes she struggled in after her rape. “It’s hard for me to function in a society, let alone to do college-level work, when my brain isn’t functioning properly because of trauma,” Thomas said. She appealed the dismissal, but soon after decided not to return to the school. “I didn’t want to be on a campus where I didn’t feel safe,” she said. Since the assault and her interactions with the school’s Title IX office, she has dealt with depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.​​ 

In April 2021, UNL officials filed a motion to dismiss the Thomas v. Regents suit, claiming that they acted properly. But in June 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice responded in a rare “Statement of Interest”, stating that “UNL’s arguments largely misapply the Title IX case law,” and that the university has been implementing an unnecessarily restrictive definition of what it means to face harassment and discrimination under Title IX. UNL, for instance, had attempted to argue that the complainants needed to show they’d been harassed a second time by the person they were accusing, which the DOJ statement said ran counter to the goals of Title IX. 

UNL responded: “We remain confident of our legal position and are pleased that the vast majority of claims were dropped by the plaintiffs. Beyond that, we cannot comment on pending litigation.” This November, the plaintiffs filed a supplemental brief clarifying their Title IX claims, and in December the defendants requested again that the case be dismissed. Litigation is still ongoing.

“I didn’t want to be on a campus where I didn’t feel safe.”

Sheridan Thomas

In response to Refinery29’s request for comment on the case, a UNL spokesperson said, “We cannot comment on the specifics of any Title IX investigation or on pending litigation. We emphasize that the health and safety of all of our students is of the utmost importance to us. We have a strong Title IX process and are confident in it. Every case is difficult and investigated based on the information made available.” 

Both Thomas and Brun-Ozuna told Refinery29 that the DOJ’s Statement of Interest felt validating. “Having the Department of Justice come in and say, ‘No, you’re wrong?’ That was really powerful,”  Brun-Ozuna said.” It’s sort of like having one bully and thinking that they run everything, and then there’s a bigger bully. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re not as big and tough as I thought you were.’” 

Truszkowski, who is a lawyer involved in bringing this case against UNL, told Refinery29 that it shouldn’t be so hard for campuses to figure out how to appropriately handle sexual assault. “You need to treat the survivors with respect, follow your own policies, and treat everyone equally,” she says. “It’s not rocket science.” 

Despite the ongoing litigation and a purported commitment to change, many students say that UNL is continuing to fall short in its response to the alleged rape at Fiji this past August. For instance, while UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green pledged in August to close Fiji and stated in October that the frat would be suspended until 2026 for violating the university’s policies on alcohol use, UNL students told Refinery29 that they’d heard parties with alcohol were hosted at the house (which is located on private property, a UNL spokesperson confirms) through the fall. 

But Osterholm takes a different view. He told Refinery29 in an email statement that he believes UNL’s chancellor “exacerbated the charged atmosphere that enveloped the University this prior fall,” with his public statements about closing the house. “​​I think students are misinformed about so-called ‘parties,’” Osterholm added. “There have been two events at the Chapter House, 1) an Alumni event and 2) our annual Parent/Son Christmas party.”

When I visited the Fiji house in early September, the parking lot was full of cars, lights were turned on inside, and I observed multiple people entering the house, although my knocks at the door went unanswered. Later, I spotted a man with long blond hair and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and caught up with him as he was going in a side door; I asked if he’d be willing to speak with me about what had been going on. “I don’t really have the time right now, but all I know is I think someone threw a bottle the other night at our window,” he said. He declined to comment further. 

On Fiji’s front porch, there was a plaque on one of the pillars reading, “More Phi Gam, Less Self.” The house was also adorned with a banner, emblazoned with the words, “kNOw More.” Banners with the same phrase hung from many fraternity and sorority houses. The emblems were part of a project started by students to raise awareness for campus sexual assault, and by mid-September were one of the few tangible signs of the movement that had begun on campus a month earlier. 

The banners had already begun to draw some criticism for being performative at best — especially the one hanging on the Fiji house. “Sexual assault awareness is important and no single action constitutes ‘enough’ to be sure we are carrying out our organization’s ideals,” Osterholm told Refinery29 when asked about the banners. “The chapter unequivocally condemns sexual assault.” He also said, “after the allegation originally surfaced on social media, members of the chapter immediately invited the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Police Department to the chapter house to assist with the investigation. To our knowledge, no one has been charged with a crime.”

Osterholm adds that the chapter participated in a university-sanctioned disciplinary process earlier this fall, but adds that the university didn’t “charge the chapter with a violation of the university’s sexual misconduct policy.” Rob Caudill, the executive director of Phi Gamma Delta’s International Headquarters, didn’t respond to Refinery29’s multiple calls and email requests for comment. 

In November, UNL Police Sgt. Margot Mason told Refinery29 that no other details about the case are being released until an investigation is completed, adding: “There’s been a lot of speculation regarding this case. Some things are true, some things are not true. The rumor mill is churning out a lot of details that have never been confirmed by this department.”

Meanwhile, the frustration over what other students see as schools’ long-standing failure to address rape culture on campuses has encouraged them to push for change at a grassroots level. UNL student Rose Felice, for instance, created the account @shutdownfiji to drive attention to a Change.org petition that called for the school to close the Fiji frat house. She hoped “to hold these people accountable and to show that they can’t just throw the big red rug over everything that happened,” she told Refinery29 in September, referencing the school’s colors, scarlet and cream. “The problems here have been swept under that rug for far too long.” Felice’s petition was named by Change.org as one of its “top 10 petitions that changed 2021,” saying it “resulted in much-needed attention to the stories of survivors on college campuses.”

In April 2021, after Ware and other students came forward about UVM’s mishandling of their Title IX cases, student activists created the Instagram account UVM Empowering Survivors, hoping to force change by providing a supportive and safe space for survivors to share their stories. 

Many similar social media accounts sprung up at colleges across the country in the summer of 2020, inspired by examples of digital activism following the murder of George Floyd in June of that year. “We really do owe a lot of credit to the BIPOC Surviving PWI [Black, Indigenous, People of Color surviving Predominantly White Institutions] movement accounts that shared collective trauma,” says Grace Verbrugge, a student at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who helps run Survivors of Gettysburg, an account dedicated to sharing sexual assault survivors stories. “A lot of activists who’d been working to prevent sexual assault saw this model and said, ‘Wow, we could really utilize this, too.’”

These types of accounts became so common that many of the administrators formed a coalition: the University Survivors Movement, which provides resources to people hoping to start similar accounts at their schools. The accounts reassure survivors that they’re not alone, provide information to empower people to fight for change, and sometimes function as a kind of digital “whisper network” about who and where to avoid on campus. They’re largely survivor-led, says Verbrugge, the co-coordinator of outreach and communications for USM. 

Some survivors say contributing to these platforms was validating. “When I finally felt like I could talk about it, that was when everything kind of changed for me,” says Sarah McCluskey, a 22-year-old drama major at New York University who runs the @nyu.survivors account. At her Title IX hearing, she wished that the committee weighing in on her case would have been more gender diverse, and she felt that she wasn’t treated with the same level of respect as her respondent. After that experience, she felt “lost,” says McCluskey. “I wanted to share my story, [and] help other people share theirs.” A spokesperson for NYU didn’t respond to Refinery29’s requests for comment.

But this work can take a toll on the survivors’ and activists’ mental health; it also opens them up to harassment. After creating the @shutdownfiji account in August, Felice quickly found herself on the receiving end of serious backlash. One person commented on her Change.org petition, “You will start hearing that this rape story is all a lie. So [Rose] better buckle up because they’re coming for you.” Felice’s last Instagram post was September 10. 

Dom Liu-Sang, who helped organize the Fiji protests early in the school year, also received criticism after her involvement. “When you talk about sexual assault, yes it happens to everyone, but when it comes down to demographics and things, Black people, women of color, people of color — we don’t get the same treatment coming out of it that other people do and it’s a lot more silenced,” she says. “We were trying to bring that up… People didn’t like that I was bringing that perspective and narrative to the situation.” She said that, as a survivor herself, the pushback she received was difficult for her.

“Most of us doing this work, we all have a shared burning feeling that what happened to us should never happen to anyone else again, and you can’t just stand idly by as you watch your university actively work against you to allow this harm to perpetuate itself,” says Maya Greally, who graduated from the University of Vermont last year and who co-founded the UVM Empowering Survivors account. “It’s a difficult balance because you want this work to be survivor-centered. But also, why are we the ones doing all the work?” 

Too often, the answer to Greally’s question is: because no one else will. 

“Most of us doing this work, we all have a shared burning feeling that what happened to us should never happen to anyone else again… But also, why are we the ones doing all the work?” 

Maya Greally

UNL officials, however, have remained unified in the position that they’re already doing all they can. “The university cares deeply about the safety of our campus community and takes all reports of sexual misconduct seriously,” Counley, UNL’s Title IX coordinator who investigated Brun-Ozuna’s case, told Refinery29 in a statement. “UNL has established policies and procedures to investigate complaints and address identified concerns as required by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) and related laws, regulations, and guidance.”

One remedy that UNL officials have repeatedly pointed to as proof of their commitment to change is the October 2020 report on campus-wide sexual misconduct. In September 2021, UNL released a statement that claimed that the university has successfully implemented 15 of the 35 recommendations from this report, including three “critical points,” one of which was “promoting broadly the definition of affirmative consent.” 

But when Refinery29 asked Susan Swearer, PhD, the chair of the now-renamed Chancellor’s Commission for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct, what this meant in practice, she responded, “That’s a good question,” and recommended I talk to another member of the committee, Dr. Stenberg, the professor of English and women’s and gender studies at UNL. Dr. Stenberg told Refinery29 in an email that the school promotes the definition of affirmative consent “through education — by having conversations with students about respect for people’s (and especially women’s, because it has been denied across history) sovereignty or agency over their own bodies. This means that sexual activity requires an affirmation from both parties that they consent to the act.”

Dr. Swearer is also the chair of UNL’s Department of Educational Psychology and a licensed psychologist who’s worked with both survivors of and perpetrators of sexual assault. She told Refinery29 that it’s important for people to know that sexual assault can be “complicated,” adding, “Not all perpetrators have been assaulted nor molested themselves, but many have and so sexual misconduct is a complex cycle of violence and victimization.” 

Because sexual assault “is such a complicated pattern of behavior,” Dr. Swearer said, “it really takes everyone to work together to change behaviors and the campus climate.” After the protests earlier this August, “the Greek system kind of organized a response,” she added. But when asked for specifics about what the response was or how the university participated, she referred Refinery29 to Chancellor Green’s video statement about the schools’ efforts to handle the incident and in a later email pointed to students’ “kNOw More” campaign that included the banners on the Fiji house. 

Dr. Swearer adds that the Nebraska University system has mandated annual sexual misconduct training for incoming students, faculty and staff, University Police, and University Health Center employees, and says education and training will be a focus of her new commission. UNL is also expanding the facilities of their CARE office and has plans to hire more CARE staff members and a director this year. Green has pledged to re-establish UNL’s partnership with Voices of Hope, which offers confidential, free services to survivors of sexual violence. Additionally, in a statement to Refinery29 Deb Fiddelke, UNL’s chief communication and marketing officer, said that UNL was “training relevant Title IX employees in trauma-informed care and restorative practices as an option for informal resolutions.” 

“It really takes everyone to work together to change behaviors and the campus climate.”

Susan Swearer, PhD

But, “they claim to have been using trauma-informed training this whole time,” Brun-Ozuna said. When asked about that assertion, a UNL spokesperson said, “We have always taken care to follow best practices, and since 2020 we have enhanced training on trauma-informed care when responding to reports of sexual misconduct.”

For Brun-Ozuna, watching UNL’s response last year was like watching history repeat itself. After her interactions with UNL’s Title IX office in 2017 — during which she says she was denied even a hearing to investigate her case — she started the student-led advocacy organization Dear UNL. 

“I got a group together and we had a story in the newspaper and we tried to work our way up to the chancellor’s level to say, ‘Hello, we have a big problem’,” she told Refinery29. “It felt like we had a lot of momentum, and then the University of Nebraska did what the University of Nebraska does very well, which is use bureaucracy to slow and stop any type of dissent and remove it from the minds of the public to the point where you no longer really have a voice for your cause anymore,” she said. She felt there was nothing to do but file a lawsuit.

She worries that the current outrage over the Fiji house and UNL’s inaction will follow a similar trajectory. But she hopes her lawsuit will set a precedent that holds her alma mater accountable and creates lasting change. She may have seen the system fail her and many of her classmates, but she believes it can undergo changes for the better in the future — even if those changes are forced by the courts. 

It’s unclear whether UNL is currently working its way toward real, systemic change, or if school officials are, yet again, attempting to slowly sweep what happened on campus in August and September under the “big red rug” Felice described. Meanwhile, many students and survivors like Hannah Johnson are left to deal with the traumatic aftermath of their assaults on their own.

When I spoke to Johnson for the first time in September, the background of her Zoom screen revealed a slice of her dorm room, which looked like hundreds of others: twinkle lights, a can of Febreeze, and college-ruled notebooks. And while the details of her story are unique, the alleged mishandling of the case by her university also echoes a reality that’s become all too typical for college students. 

Before the assault and hearing, Johnson was “like the sunshine of every room,” according to her friend Kim Luis. After, though, there have been many days where Johnson felt like she couldn’t even get out of bed. For months, she didn’t go a day without thinking about the assault. 

Last December, Johnson was officially diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which gave her a sense of validation that she never received from her hearing. “Having that diagnosis helped,” she says. “[PTSD is] a well-known, real disorder, and it made me feel like, People are taking me seriously… That was a huge step in my progression in general.” 

While Johnson says she’s been able to get to a better place after being diagnosed with PTSD and receiving therapy, she wishes her case had been handled differently by the school and hopes student actions — including survivors speaking out about their experiences, as she did on the steps of the student union that August evening — prompt UNL to improve its processes. She hopes future survivors can feel safer and, at the very least, be listened to. 

Feeling heard, especially during a trial or hearing that’s carried out fairly, can make a major difference for survivors’ outcomes, Truszkowski says: “What I hear students wanting to say is, ‘Listen to me. Give me the benefit of believing my story, and a fair, reasonable investigation. I can live with the outcome.’”

“What I hear students wanting to say is, ‘Listen to me. Give me the benefit of believing my story, and a fair, reasonable investigation. I can live with the outcome.’”

Karen Truszkowski

For a long time, Johnson would replay the hearing in her mind, trying to figure out if she would have been believed if her final witness had been able to speak, or if the school had held her respondent to the same strict standards she’d been held to. But, in the end, she believes that the system was always set up to fail her. “Title IX isn’t set up to protect survivors, it’s set up to protect the school and students — including respondents,” she says. 

Johnson’s been working toward making peace with the outcome, but she wishes she didn’t have to. “If I could say anything, it’s believe people — even if their story isn’t in the context you’d think of sexual assault being in,” she says. “After everything that happened and all the questioning, I have to go back and remind myself, still to this day, ‘Hey — that wasn’t your fault.’” 

If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please call the RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you are thinking about suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or the Suicide Crisis Line at 1-800-784-2433.

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