48 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION ⁄ THE LAW REPORT
Colleges Climbing
the Learning Curve:
Sexual Violence
BY SUSAN K. EGGUM, SHAREHOLDER AT
LANE POWELL PC
ALL OVER THE U.S., CAMPUS SEXUAL VIOlence against predominantly freshmen women
is still not a thing of the past. In fact, according
to data issued by the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Office of Civil Rights (OCR), since 2009,
sexual violence complaints at colleges and universities have increased more than 1,000 percent.
As of April 2015, according to the OCR, 106 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. that
receive federal funding (such as financial aid)
are being investigated for their failure to comply,
or failure to comply fully, with Title IX. Some of
these schools have multiple OCR cases open.
As a result, as of April 1 there were 113 pending
investigations. Additionally, hundreds of lawsuits
have been filed by students against colleges and
universities for alleged “deliberate indifference”
in the face of reported sex-without-consent
incidents.
In April 2014, the OCR issued a guidance document to be taken to heart by colleges that loudly
reaffirms the responsibility of any college that
receives any federal funding to implement fully
Title IX’s mandate that the student body be protected from sexual violence. Title IX’s mandate
is that colleges must seek to end sexual violence
on the campus and prevent recurrence. The mandate of Title IX includes a requirement to both
prevent and to remedy campus sexual assault.
Activists, legislators and federal agencies alike
expect colleges to be held strictly accountable.
The colleges and universities under investigation by the OCR include some of our best
establishments, such as University of California
Berkeley, University of Southern California,
University of Alaska System of Higher Education, California Institute of the Arts, Arizona
State University, University of Chicago, Harvard
College and a host of many other institutions
An article published in February
2015 by the Stanford Alumni,
copyrighted by Stanford
University, on the subject
of campus rape, states that
“[s]topping sexual assault
is a national imperative.”
We are all in agreement.
that have enjoyed significant respect for many
decades within the higher education community.
Once the OCR decides to take a case, even as a
result of an anonymous student complaint, an
OCR investigation could take literally years to
conclude and will take up hundreds of hours and
significant college resources.
No college in any of the 50 states that receives
any level of federal funding can guarantee its
female student body that they will not be subjected to sexual assault by their fellow students,
by campus sports team stars or by students who
may already be under suspicion for sexual misconduct. The leadership of colleges can set the
tone, be proactive and persistently reinforce a
culture of intolerance for its entire student body
and athletic programs, combined with delivery
of swift and severe sanctions for students and
athletes that have engaged in such conduct.
This is particularly so given the Title IX threshold of “preponderance of the evidence” — not
the higher criminal law threshold of “beyond a
reasonable doubt” standard — in judging the
evidence the college gathers in an immediate,
thorough and unbiased investigation. Nor can
the Title IX investigation wait on the outcome of
any law enforcement investigation and cannot
substitute its own conclusions for those reached
by law enforcement given local police needs to
satisfy the state prosecutor’s standard of “beyond
a reasonable doubt.”
In addition to the college’s responsibility under
Title IX to prevent sexual assault on its campus,
colleges also bear a responsibility under Title IX
to remedy sex-without-consent incidents. Expulsion of students and student athletes has been in
the past a rare sanction. It need not be as college
leadership continues to communicate absolute
intolerance plus swift and severe outcomes for
student body members and student athletes who,
by only a preponderance of the evidence, engage
in non-consensual sex. The remedy portion of
the Title IX duties imposed on colleges include
providing immediate accommodations for the
alleged victim before the college’s investigation
concludes, and further economic and noneconomic accommodations for the victim where
the preponderance of the evidence indicates an
absence of consent.
An article published in February 2015 by the
Stanford Alumni, copyrighted by Stanford University, on the subject of campus rape, states that
“[s]topping sexual assault is a national imperative.” We are all in agreement. n
Lane Powell PC
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Portland, OR 97204
(503) 778-2175
eggums@lanepowell.com
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