Dive Brief:
- The University of Southern California and Occidental College went public with the details of their underreporting of campus sexual assaults.
- USC failed to report 13 of its 39 sexual assaults in 2010 and 2011, while Occidental didn't report 24 of its 36 total.
- The Clery Act requires schools to report sexual assaults to the Department of Education each year, and the revelation could result in fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for both schools.
Dive Insight:
Both schools are among several, such as Yale and Dartmouth, that faced Clery Act complaints and investigations in recent years. Occidental is currently under investigation for such complaints, while complaints against USC have yet to be investigated. Both schools, however, are under investigation for Title IX violations. Both schools say the statistics were mistakenly underreported, though that explanation isn't likely to sit well with victims and federal officials.