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US Education Department Releases Rules on Campus Sex Assault Probes
The U.S. Education Department on Wednesday finalized campus sexual assault rules that bolster the rights of the accused, reduce legal liabilities for schools and colleges, and narrow the scope of cases schools will be required to investigate.
The change announced by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reshapes the way the nation’s schools respond to complaints of sexual misconduct. It is meant to replace policies from the Obama administration that DeVos previously revoked, saying they pressured schools to deny the rights of accused students.
“Today we release a final rule that recognizes we can continue to combat sexual misconduct without abandoning our core values of fairness, presumption of innocence and due process," she said. "This empowers survivors with more tools than ever before."
Under the new rules, the definition of sexual harassment is narrowed to include only misconduct that is “so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive” that it effectively denies the victim access to the school’s education programs. The rules add dating violence, domestic violence and stalking to the definition of sexual harassment.
Wider definition
The Obama administration, by contrast, used a wider definition that included a range of conduct that “interferes with or limits” a student’s access to the school. It said that could include “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”
DeVos’ policy adds new measures intended to make sure students accused of sexual misconduct are judged fairly in campus disciplinary hearings. Students on both sides must be given equal access to evidence gathered in the school’s investigation and be allowed to bring an adviser, which can be a lawyer, to the proceedings.
Chief among the changes is a policy requiring colleges to allow students on both sides of a case to question one another during live campus hearings. The questioning would be done through representatives to avoid direct confrontation, but opponents have said it’s a cruel policy that forces victims to relive the trauma of sexual violence.
Democrats and education groups had asked DeVos to delay any changes until after the coronavirus pandemic, saying colleges don’t have time to implement new federal rules while they respond to the crisis.
Opponents quickly condemned the policy and its timing. The National Women’s Law Center, a Washington advocacy group, said releasing the rules now “unveils a disturbing set of priorities.” The group said it plans to challenge the new policy in court.
“If this rule goes into effect, survivors will be denied their civil rights and will get the message loud and clear that there is no point in reporting assault,” said Fatima Goss Graves, the group’s president and CEO. “We refuse to go back to the days when rape and harassment in schools were ignored and swept under the rug.”
Criticism of past rules
Several of the rules cement changes that advocates of accused students have long been calling for. Parents and lawyers say that, in the past, federal rules encouraged schools to take hasty and unfairly harsh action against any student accused of sexual misconduct.
For colleges, the new policy narrows the type of complaints they will be required to investigate. It orders colleges to pursue cases only if they’re reported to certain campus officials, and it says schools can choose whether to handle cases in off-campus areas that are outside their “programs or activities.”
The Obama administration encouraged schools to handle complaints that arose beyond their borders, and it required them to address any misconduct that the school “knows or reasonably should know” about.
Under the new rules, the Education Department will also use a different standard to determine if schools responded appropriately to a student’s complaint. Colleges will be held accountable, the rule says, if it’s found that they acted with “deliberate indifference” toward the allegation.
DeVos’ rules effectively tell the nation’s schools how to apply the 1972 federal law known as Title IX, which bars discrimination based on sex in education. It applies to colleges and universities, along with primary and secondary schools.
For years, schools relied on a series of letters issued by the Obama administration telling them how to respond to complaints. Missteps could bring federal investigations, with penalties as high as a total loss of federal funding.
Advocacy groups for victims say the Obama rules forced schools to stop sweeping the issue under the rug, while those supporting accused students said those rules tipped the scales in favor of accusers. Some colleges complained that the rules were too complex and could be overly burdensome.
DeVos proposed her new policy in 2018 and opened it for public comment. The proposal drew more than 120,000 comments, more than any other proposal in the department’s history.
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Republican Representative Virginia Foxx said the three presidents were called to testify because “we heard in particular that the most egregious situations have occurred on these campuses.”
Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, faced particularly difficult lines of questioning from congressional Republicans, including one fraught exchange with Representative Elise Stefanik, who demanded that Gay resign.
Stefanik, a Harvard alumnus herself, grilled Gay over whether the university would rescind admission offers to students who support Hamas’ murderous beliefs.
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The theme of Gay’s testimony was her dual commitment to “combating hate while preserving free expression.”
Gay said her administration would only punish “hateful, reckless, offensive speech” when it crosses the line into physical violence or targeted harassment.
Foxx, the panel’s chair, railed against Gay and the other university leaders, claiming that “institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poisoned fruits of your institutions’ cultures."
Republican lawmakers repeatedly criticized progressivism and tied it to antisemitism in higher education.
All three university presidents outlined their strategies for ensuring student safety and open discourse on the Israel-Hamas war.
"As an American, as a Jew, and as a human being, I abhor antisemitism. And my administration is combating it actively,” Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, said, adding that “problematic speech needs to be countered with other speech and education.”
Kornbluth said free speech that promotes harassment or incites violence is not protected by the university, but those who try to shut down campus protests are essentially advocating for unworkable “speech codes."
Harvard and UPenn have struggled. Both schools found themselves under investigation by the Department of Education over complaints of antisemitism on campus.
“This is difficult work, and I know I have not always gotten it right,” Gay said of her efforts to promote free speech and inclusion. She noted the difficulty of balancing the concerns of different groups, including Harvard’s Muslim community, which Gay noted faces the threat of rising Islamophobia.
“During these difficult days, I have felt the bonds of our community strained,” Gay told lawmakers.
UPenn President M. Elizabeth Magill came under fire for the Palestine Writes Festival, an event hosted at her university in September that was a flashpoint of antisemitism, according to a complaint submitted to the Department of Education.
Magill condemned antisemitic rhetoric at the festival but maintained that measures had been instituted to ensure student safety.
The presidents made clear to the Republican-run House Committee on Education and the Workforce that their schools have taken steps to prevent harassment and bullying, including public announcements.
The president of Columbia was invited but did not attend, citing a scheduling conflict, Foxx’s office said.
November polling by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel found that, since Oct. 7, 46% of Jewish students felt safe at their colleges, a marked drop from 67% before the war. Students across the nation said they were wary of walking around their campuses wearing a Star of David necklace, kippah or other emblems of Judaism.
In late October, an upperclassman at Cornell was taken into federal custody after allegedly making online posts promising to kill any and every Jew he saw on campus.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other advocacy groups reported that hate crimes against Muslim students were also on the rise.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters have been doxxed — their names and pictures paraded around their campuses on mobile billboard trucks — in what activists say are attempts to intimidate them into silence.
