This New Bill Could Help Curb Campus Sexual Assault
A bi-partisan group of senators are trying to make college campuses safer places. (Photo: Corbis)
College campuses reported over 5,000 forcible sex offenses in 2013 – but a recent government study shows that the actual number of offenses is estimated to be at least six times that number.
On Wednesday afternoon, a bi-partisan coalition of senators led by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) took steps to change those numbers, announcing the re-introduction of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA).
The coalition believes that, under the current laws, colleges and universities are incentivized to under-report instances of campus sexual assault. “Perversely, the current federal reporting requirements actually incentivize non-reporting, under-reporting and non-compliance with the standards under Title IX and the Clery Act,” Gillibrand’s website states, along with this:
In addition, there is very little cooperation on the part of universities with local law enforcement and, furthermore, students are not provided with adequate information about their rights and options in the event of a sexual assault. The result: according to Senator Claire McCaskill’s campus sexual assault survey of 440 four-year colleges and universities, 41% of the schools surveyed have not initiated a sexual assault investigation in the past five years.
CASA outlines a number of measures to address the campus sexual assault epidemic in terms of providing campus resources for students, creating regulated, minimum training standards for campus personnel, implementing new transparency requirements, and establishing enforceable Title IX penalties for schools that fail to comply and adequately support and report.
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Some important specifics of the new proposed legislation include the creation of Confidential Advisor positions on all college and university campuses. As the name suggests, these new staff members will serve as a confidential resource for victims and help students who have become victims of assault effectively navigate access to support services and reporting to both school officials and local law enforcement.
Another critical aspect of CASA is that, according to the summary of the bill on Senator McCaskill’s website, “For the first time, students at every university in America will be surveyed about their experience with sexual violence to get an accurate picture of this problem. This new annual survey will be standardized and anonymous, with the results published online so that parents and high school students can make an informed choice when comparing universities. The Department of Education will also be required to publish the names of all schools with pending investigations, final resolutions, and voluntary resolution agreements related to Title IX.”
Additionally, “all schools will not be required to use one uniform process for campus disciplinary proceedings and may no longer allow athletic departments or other subgroups to handle complaints of sexual violence for members of that subgroup along.”
Schools that fail to comply with the measures outlined in the proposed legislation would face penalty fees up to 1 percent of the school’s operating budget; penalty fees for violations of the Clery Act would be raised to $150,000 per violation as opposed to the current $35,000.
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Scott Berkowitz, President and Founder of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network said in a statement today following his attendance at a press conference alongside the senate leaders supporting the bill, “We’re grateful that so many Senate leaders are working hard, in a bipartisan way, to solve the problem of rape on campus. The Campus Accountability and Safety Act will help improve the way that colleges deal with sexual violence, and will give more victims an opportunity for justice… By passing this bill to help fix the way colleges deal with sexual assault, and increasing the number of prosecutions so we take more rapists off the streets, we can make students safer. We owe it to them to pass this bill as soon as possible.”
CASA was previously introduced last summer in the Senate; co-sponsors of the bill in additions to Senators McCaskill and Gillibrand were Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mario Rubio (R-FL), Dean Heller (R-NV), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Mark Warner (D-VA).
Those critical of the bill feel it does not due enough to uphold the due process rights of the accused and will add unnecessary costs to college operating budgets and thus tuition.
And yet, when the bill was originally introduced, Sen. Rubio explained the reason for his support, “We are telling our young people every day that in order to get ahead they have to go to school. Let’s make sure that when they do that they’re safe.”
