A survey of 440 public and private colleges and universities shows many of them have poor records of handling campus sexual assault complaints. Senator McCaskill, who had the survey run, says two-thirds of the schools responded, and 49 of the fifty largest campuses returned the surveys. She says that for-profit schools had the worst response record.
McCaskill is not revealing specific responses from specific institutions. She says she had to promise secrecy to get candid responses. But she says the findings should give parents and students plenty of questions to ask of the schools their children are attending or are considering attending.
McCaskill says legislation is being written that will be introduced in late August or early September.
Among the “disturbing” findings McCaskill cites are:
–more than forty percent of schools have done no investigations of campus sexual assaults for five years.
–One in five schools do not train faculty and staff on handling incidents and almost one-third of the responding schools provide no training for students.
–One in ten schools fail to meet a federal requirement that they have a person on staff who coordinates compliance efforts by the institution, including investigation of sexual harassment and sexual violence.
–Although federal law requires schools to have an adjudication process to determine if there was an assault and, if there was, to make some determinations, one-third of the schools did not train people to adjudicate claims, 43% of the largest public schools allowed students to help adjudicate cases–although the students might know the victims.
–Twenty-two percent of schools allowed the athletic department to have oversight of cases involving athletes, a situation McCaskill calls “borderline outrageous.”
–Only sixteen percent of schools survey students to get an idea of the number of sexual assaults or cases of sexual harassment that take place.
–And coordination of campus police with city police is poor Less than one-third of the institutions provide their law enforcement officers with training on how to respond to reports of sexual violence and almost three-fourths of the responding institutions have no protocols for cooperative work by their campus law enforcement officers and municipal police.
McCaskill is not revealing specific responses from specific institutions. She says she had to promise secrecy to get candid responses. But she says the findings should give parents and students plenty of questions to ask of the schools their children are attending or are considering attending.
McCaskill says legislation is being written that will be introduced in late August or early September.
AUDIO: McCaskill conference call 36:27
