Wow is this overdue, but very, very welcome.
“The American people have kind of woken up to the fact that we’ve got a serious problem when 20 percent of coeds say they’ve been sexually assaulted,” said Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California.
Lawmakers and the White House have condemned the assaults on campuses, but the federal government has largely left it up to college officials and the local authorities. Congress last year passed the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, which requires domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking cases be disclosed in annual campus crime statistics. But victims’ advocates say that does not go far enough.
And a federal law from decades ago that requires colleges and universities to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses, including sex offenses, is rarely enforced, critics say . . .
Last year, the agency fined Yale University $165,000 for failing to disclose four sexual offenses involving force over several years. Eastern Michigan University paid $350,000 in 2008 for failing to sound a campus alert after a student was sexually assaulted and murdered. The department also reach a settlement last year with the University of Montana at Missoula after investigating the university’s sexual-misconduct policies and finding them woefully inadequate.
Under the new crackdown, the White House will urge colleges and universities to conduct “climate surveys,” in which participants anonymously report their experiences with unwanted physical contact, sexual assault or rape, and how their schools responded. Some lawmakers would like to see such surveys mandatory and to possibly make federal funds like Pell grants contingent on their being carried out . . .
Ms. Speier would like to see the government do more, liked requiring schools to post Title 9 rights and where students should go if raped.
Under the White House plan, the federal government would also help colleges and universities gain a better understanding of their obligations to protect students and their legal rights.
20% of coeds. That’s disturbing. (Also, can we stop using the term “coed”? It’s anachronistic, at best, at this point, if not just sexist.)