Dive Brief:
- Emails between Virginia’s elected officials, as well as University of Virginia leaders, and the U.S. Department of Education show a concerted effort to control the findings of an OCR investigation before a report was released to the public.
- The Washington Post reports that Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Virginia’s two senators contacted U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to request that UVA be able to see the findings of the Office of Civil Rights sexual assault investigation before they were made public so the university could address any concerns.
- The findings were submitted to the university Aug. 31, after which President Theresa Sullivan wrote to the Department of Education saying they were “replete with factual errors,” and OCR collected more information before releasing a final, shorter version.
Dive Insight:
It would not be a surprise to learn virtually every single institution under investigation lobbies to ensure the findings of the Office of Civil Rights are as minimally damaging as possible. The University of Virginia was particularly sensitive to the close of this investigation as it followed the now-discredited Rolling Stone article that chronicled a culture of indifference to widespread sexual assault on campus, as well as the murder of Hannah Graham and a black student’s violent arrest outside of a bar.
The University of Virginia was, however, found to have violated federal rules with its handling of sexual assault cases, acting too slowly in response to specific allegations and allowing a hostile environment to exist for some students. The Washington Post reports that UVA’s lobbying may have narrowed the time frame the report covered and limited the number of supporting examples the OCR included with its findings. But it likely did not result in radically different findings.