Dive Brief:
- The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is now investigating 106 colleges and universities for their handling of sexual assault cases on campus.
- The Huffington Post reports the number of schools undergoing such investigations has doubled since last May, when the Department of Education first disclosed the list of schools under review.
- Some of the latest additions to the list are UC-Davis, UC-Santa Cruz, and Buffalo State College, with additional investigations opened at the University of Denver and Saint Mary’s College, according to the Huffington Post.
Dive Insight:
Title IX, most commonly known for its requirement to allow women access to school sports, obligates educational institutions to provide students with a learning environment free of sexual discrimination and harassment. Some experts argue colleges and universities are poorly positioned to handle allegations of sexual assault because both parties, the victim and the perpetrator, are students to whom the institution is equally bound. OCR investigations come with the possibility of losing federal funding, but most institutions revise their policies for preventing and responding to sexual assault and move on. The increased attention on such policies over the last year has prompted many schools to conduct internal assessments without the prodding of an official OCR investigation.