On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence

This explosive investigation reveals the profound failures of the Title IX system and identifies concrete, surprisingly simple steps we can take to protect students.

The debate over campus sexual violence is more heated than ever, but hardly anyone knows what actually happens inside Title IX offices. On the Wrong Side provides the first comprehensive account of the inner workings of the secretive Title IX system. Drawing on a yearlong study of survivors, perpetrators, and the administrators who oversaw their cases, sociologist Nicole Bedera exposes the structures that predictably punish survivors who come forward in the service of protecting--or even rewarding--their perpetrators. In doing so, she reveals that the system tasked with ending gender inequality on campus only intensifies it, upending survivors’ lives and threatening the degrees that brought them to college in the first place.

Equally heartbreaking and optimistic, On the Wrong Side makes it easy to imagine life-changing interventions for the next generation of students by proposing specific solutions to the structural problems of Title IX. Bedera proves that ending sexual violence is within our grasp--and dares us to be courageous enough to take action.

Dr. Nicole Bedera is a sociologist and cofounder of the antiviolence consulting practice Beyond Compliance. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan. She has spent more than a decade studying sexual violence and advocating for survivors in media outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and Harper’s BAZAAR.