Universities face a dilemma in determining how to create fair, consistent, and reliable processes that respect the rights of both alleged perpetrators and victims and encourage people to bring complaints forward. Using the literature on non-law forms of ordering and neo-institutional theory, this article examines university Ombuds and Title IX Coordinators and their handling of sexual misconduct disputes. Primary data collection included a review of 1200 documents and interviews with 14 Ombuds and 13 Title IX Coordinators from 22 large institutions of higher education between 2011 and 2014. This study concludes that Ombuds and Title IX Coordinators, despite being designed in sharply contrasting ways, converge (but not fully) toward a hybrid of formality and informality. This paper examines Title IX to understand what drives convergence behavior and to analyze how the recent changes in the law may alter the process of convergence. As Title IX law continues to develop, the theory of procedural convergence has important implications for the creation of non-law dispute mechanisms and the balance between individual rights and the organizational development of legal norms.

中文翻译：

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程序收敛

大学在确定如何创建公平、一致和可靠的程序以尊重被指控的肇事者和受害者的权利并鼓励人们提出投诉时面临两难境地。本文使用关于非法律形式的秩序和新制度理论的文献，研究了大学监察员和第九条协调员及其对性行为不端纠纷的处理。主要数据收集包括对 2011 年至 2014 年间来自 22 家大型高等教育机构的 1200 份文件和 14 名监察员和 13 名第九条协调员的审查。本研究得出的结论是，尽管监察员和第九条协调员的设计方式截然不同，但它们趋于一致（但不完全）走向正式和非正式的混合。本文研究了第九条，以了解是什么驱动了趋同行为，并分析了最近的法律变化如何改变趋同过程。随着第九条法律的不断发展，程序趋同理论对非法律纠纷机制的创建以及个人权利与法律规范的组织发展之间的平衡具有重要意义。