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Sexual Assault on Campus

Sexual Assault on Campus Shrouded in Secrecy

By Kristen Lombardi

Three hours into deliberations by the University of Virginia’s Sexual Assault Board, UVA junior Kathryn Russell sat with her mother in a closet-like room in sprawling Peabody Hall. Down the corridor, two professors and two students were deciding her fate. Russell was replaying in her mind, endlessly, details of her allegations of rape when, she remembers, Shamim Sisson, the board chair, stepped into the room and delivered the order: You can’t talk about the verdict to anyone.

That stern admonition was a reminder of the silence Russell had been keeping since, she says, she struggled to break free from a fellow student’s grip in her dorm. That’s the account she gave local authorities, who declined to prosecute. And that’s what, in May 2004, she told the UVA Sexual Assault Board, whose decision she’d considered “my last resort.”

Russell stands among the tiny minority of students who have pursued rape complaints in the college judicial system — 33 at UVA, a school of 21,057 students, since 1998. She became well-versed in the confidential nature of the process as described in the school’s 2004 written procedures. Deans repeated the blanket stipulation to her “ad nauseam,” she says, throughout her three-month proceeding. The school later defended its mandatory confidentiality policy before the U.S. Department of Education even while softening the language.

Relating the gag order back in the room, Sisson, Russell says, provided a strong incentive to keep quiet: If you talk of the verdict, you’ll face disciplinary charges.

Sexual Assault on Campus

Reporter's toolkit: Investigating sexual assault on your campus

By iWatch News

The Center for Public Integrity is launching a series of pieces on how sexual assault complaints are handled on college campuses. After nine months of reporting, the Center has reached some troubling conclusions about how certain institutions collect and report sexual assault statistics, and how sexual assault cases are adjudicated in campus judicial systems. This toolkit serves as an introductory guide on how to investigate the ways your school deals with sexual assault allegations. Click the tabs below to learn more, or download the full toolkit as a PDF by clicking here.

Sexual Assault on Campus

Understanding the law

By iWatch News

These three laws have had a dramatic effect on the way sexual assault claims are adjudicated on America’s campuses:

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972

Passed by Congress in 1972, Title IX is the civil rights law that requires gender equity for males and females in every educational program or activity that receives federal funding. Title IX applies not just to K-12 schools, but to institutions of higher education as well. Title IX is familiar to most people as it applies to sports, but athletics is but one of 10 key areas addressed by the law. Under Title IX, discrimination on the basis of sex also encompasses sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape.

If a college or university is aware of, but ignores sexual harassment or assault in its programs or activities, it may be held liable under the law. A school can be held responsible in court whether the harassment is committed by faculty or staff, or by another student. In some cases, the school may be required to pay the victim monetary damages.

As an alternative to suing in civil court, student victims can also ask the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate a school’s response to sexual assault. The Office for Civil Rights has issued a 2001 guidance document covering harassment of students by school employees, other students, and third parties. The office mandates schools take “prompt and effective action to end harassment and prevent its recurrence.” 

Since its passage 35 years ago, Title IX has been amended three times, and has been the subject of a variety of reviews, Supreme Court cases, and political protest actions.

FinanceEducation

Lobbying showdown over the future of student loans

By Danielle Knight

When Sallie Mae, the nation's largest provider of student loans, saw the possibility of its own extinction in a plan advanced by the Obama administration, it did what just about any big corporation would do: It hired the best lobbyists money can buy.

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