Still, after the referendum passed, Hammonds commissioned a working group to study the College’s existing sexual assault resources and any potential improvements that could be made. The working group met from last December until the end of the spring semester before writing a report during the summer recommending improvements, according to activist Pearl Bhatnagar ’14.

Meanwhile, Mia Karvonides, the University’s recently appointed Title IX Coordinator, has sanctioned a separate working group at the University level to develop recommendations for changes to sexual misconduct policies and procedures across all Harvard schools.

In an emailed statement Wednesday, Karvonides wrote that the working group is “moving towards the end of this process” and that the Harvard community could expect to see results in the coming months.

But Bhatnagar, who is a lead organizer for the Our Harvard Can Do Better campaign, which organized the referendum, said she is concerned about the way administrators have approached the issue of sexual assault policy reform.

For one, she said, the working group was not charged with examining two proposals that were enumerated in the original referendum—endorsing the concept of “affirmative consent” to sex and clarifying the definition of “mental incapacitation” that would make a person unable to consent to sex.

Bhatnagar also said that the sexual assault policy discussion has been complicated by the recent departures of several administrators involved in those conversations. She pointed to Hammonds’s resignation as Dean of the College over the summer, and Sarah Rankin’s departure as director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response this fall to become the Title IX Investigator at MIT.

“With the point people no longer in their posts, we have to rebuild relationships,” Bhatnagar said.

Bhatnagar said that although she has yet to see any changes to the College’s sexual assault policy, she still believes the referendum was productive. “The referendum was a clear way of showing...that the student body wanted to revisit the procedures around sexual assault,” she said.

According to Bhatnagar, the referendum offered a “great building point” for the sexual assault reform campaign to conduct more research into student perspectives and necessary steps to change the policy.

Still, she said that research has shown that in working with Harvard’s intricate bureaucracy, merely holding a referendum vote is not enough to convince administrators to change their position. “Once you do get students to vote on your referenda there are a host of other steps that need to be taken by the activists involved that may not be clear given the decentralized nature of Harvard University,” Bhatnagar said.

—Staff writer Steven S. Lee can reached at steven.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenSJLee.