Office For Civil Rights Releases New Guidance: Questions And Answers On Title IX And Sexual Violence
On April 28, 2014, the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights released a new guidance entitled Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence.Here is their summary of the Guidance.
Not Alone – The First Report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault
Late yesterday the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault released its first report entitled Not Alone. Here is the report's executive summary and a link to the report.
Nonconsensual Sex: How Colleges Rebranded Rape
Nonconsensual sex is sexual assault. Several schools make that clear. In Princeton University’s policy, for example, next to the category “non-consensual sexual penetration,” it states in parentheses that the act is “commonly referred to as rape.” And next to “non-consensual sexual contact,” the act is “commonly referred to as sexual assault.” But the reason that hearing boards winced at the word “rape” is the exact reason activists think the term is important: It’s violent and powerful, and does justice to the violation that victims experience. Anti-rape campaigners have pressed their communities to understand what rape is, and how much it happens. Many see “nonconsensual sex” as a harmful euphemism.
An Open Letter To University Presidents About Campus Sexual Assault
On March 7 2014, you were granted unprecedented authority to engage in gender discrimination and explicit subjugation of women on campus. Bestowed upon you by Congress, the Campus SaVE Act (SaVE) provides that the redress of civil rights violence on the basis of sex should occur under less protective standards compared to civil rights violence on the basis of all other protected class categories such as race, national origin and religion.
Sexual Violence Begins in Middle School
A recent survey of 1,391 students from four Midwest middle schools (grades 5-8) indicated that middle school-aged students are experiencing real acts of sexual violence. The survey sample was evenly split between boys and girls.
Campus Update: Why Am I Afraid?
I am currently a freshman at Fordham at Lincoln Center, a Jesuit university in the heart of New York City. As a newly independent young woman, I follow these basic rules along with a few extras: don't ride subways alone after 10 PM; don't go out without telling someone when you'll be back; and if you notice someone following you, take a circuitous route to maximize the number of open businesses and potential safe havens you pass. And it constantly occurs to me that all of these apprehensions are completely unfair. I should not be afraid of walking home, I should not be afraid of running alone in the park, and I should not be afraid of the guy staring at me through the Starbucks window as I write this. But I am.
Bloomberg Businessweek – Changing How Colleges Deal With Rape
On April 20 of that year, Karasek says, she and three other women walked into Berkeley’s Center for Student Conduct to report that the same student had assaulted them. They told their stories to several administrators, including the school’s Title IX officer, Denise Oldham. At the meeting with Oldham, who enforces women’s rights to equal education under Title IX, Karasek says they were asked to write statements about the assaults. She assumed this was a formality and didn’t submit hers for almost a month. One woman, she says, misunderstood and didn’t write anything. Karasek says the school never followed up with that student. “She thought that telling her story out loud counted as informing the school,” she says. Berkeley acknowledges that a verbal report is enough—but Karasek says the women don’t know if that complaint was ever addressed. Berkeley says it can’t comment on specific students’ conduct cases and refused repeated requests to make Oldham available for interviews, saying “she’s focusing all her attention on addressing the situation.”