Dive Brief:
- A Title IX complaint filed against the University of Connecticut by seven current and former students who claim the school failed to protect them from sexual assault will be investigated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
- The OCR's Kate Upatham, in a letter sent Friday to UConn President Susan Herbst, noted that the investigation — which the school's general counsel, Richard Orr, said was expected and welcomed — doesn't signify a determination of the case's merits.
- The complaint was filed on Oct. 21, when four of the seven women held a news conference with attorney Gloria Allred, telling those in attendance of how they had been raped or harassed and not taken seriously by campus officials and police.
Dive Insight:
A letter issued by Herbst following the Oct. 21 filing, in which she said the idea that UConn is "indifferent to or dismissive of any report of sexual assault is astonishingly misguided and demonstrably untrue," created backlash from students who felt she called the complainants "misguided" and was calling into question the truthfulness of their allegations. The four students who went public at the news conference also have a federal lawsuit filed against the school. As for the Title IX investigation, the Office for Civil Rights usually wraps up cases within about six months, though the UConn case could prove more complex than usual, and some investigations have taken as long as three to five years.