The University of Hawaiʻi’s neighbor island campuses had disproportionately higher rates of Title IX complaints than its flagship Mānoa campus did in 2025, according to its annual report to the Legislature.

Title IX is a federal law that prohibits gender- and sex-based discrimination and sexual violence in federally funded education programs. 

Despite having significantly less students than the Mānoa campus — nearly 18,000 fewer — 3.67% of Maui College students and 3.25% of UH Hilo students made complaints or filed reports, compared to just 1.57% of Mānoa students. 

A report is the first notification that a violation took place and can be made by anyone, including witnesses. A complaint is a document detailing the incident and must be signed by the victim.

In past years, UH’s Title IX offices have been underfunded and understaffed, state Rep. Amy Perruso said. Though it’s begun to change, she said there’s more work to be done to create safer campuses. Educating the community on appropriate behavior, she added, is one way to do it.

UH offers in-person and online Title IX training every year. Training includes an overview of university policy and behavior considered harassment and discrimination as well as an outline of how to report incidents.

UH employees are required to complete training every year, but the average number of employees who completed training across the campuses was just 58% for online and 15% for in-person training. The university follows up with employees who have not completed training but it does not have a policy to enforce the requirement.

State Lawmaker Wants New Training Requirement

Fewer employees at the Hilo and Maui campuses completed the mandatory Title IX training compared to Mānoa. Even less students received training. 

Roughly 27% of Mānoa students completed an in-person training and 3.3% completed the online course. At UH Hilo, 5.5% of students completed an in-person training and 1.1% did the online training. At Maui College, 3.5% received an in-person training and 0.3% of students took the online training.

UH Hilo’s Title IX office prioritizes training housing staff and athletic departments to ensure they meet NCAA standards, according to Shaunda Makaimoku, UH Hilo interim Title IX coordinator. 

Makaimoku’s office cast a wide net in the past, reaching out to as many departments as possible to host in-person training. This year, they’ve focused on units that have had prior concerns. 

The office is short-staffed, but Makaimoku said they’ve been doing what they can to make the office visible and sharing information to the campus community. But students, she said, are hard to reach. 

Perruso, who represents District 46 on Oʻahu, hopes to address that problem. This year she plans to introduce legislation making Title IX training for students required. She said the university has made progress in preventing student-teacher incidents, but student-student harassment and discrimination persists.

“If the training is uniformly required, that will help develop this common language and common set of expectations, so that we will see these kinds of incidents decrease,” Perruso said. 

To ensure the training is actually getting done, she wants to follow the lead of other universities across the U.S that make it a requirement to register for classes. 

Providing more resources to Title IX offices would make it easier for students to report and receive support, she said. But getting funding for the university amidst the current economic downturn makes that a challenge. 

“Change within the (state) capital seems to be fairly incremental…And these kinds of things take time. Changing culture takes time, and it takes prolonged effort,” Perruso said. “Consistency and diligence are important.”

Making training a requirement for students and creating a way to enforce it is one piece of the puzzle, she said, but it’s a step that’s doable right now.

Read the University of Hawaiʻi’s full annual report to the Legislature on Title IX cases below.

Civil Beat’s reporting on women’s and girls’ issues is funded in part by the Frost Family Foundation; coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation; education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.