Campus sexual assault has always been a serious issue in the US.

Campus Sexual

Assault (CSA) Study reported that one in five women experienced sextual assault

during college. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shows that approximately

95% of campus rapes in the U.S. go unreported. From the depressing data, one can

clearly feel the seriousness. What draws more concern is how college are handling

these problems. According to a study done by Kansas State University, among those

women who do not report, one third thought that nothing would be done about it.

More and more students activists groups, like the No Red Tape and the Carry That

Weight Campaign at Columbia University, are condemning the unfairness and

inefficiency in the sexual assault cases that college handled. Many evidences began to

show up against college. Gustavus Adolphus College was found sanctioning the rapist

by requiring him to write a 500-word reflective essay. Amherst College was pushed

by students to release a report showing that no student committed sexual assault was

expelled and the punishment was even less than the punishment for laptop theft.

While the victims are having a hard time defending their rights, the accused students

of rape also complained about the fairness of campus procedures, and these

complaints are surprisingly similar to the victims’ complaints: “the length of

investigations, the protocol for submitting evidence or calling witnesses, the fairness

of sanctions, and the partiality of adjudicators” (Sara Ganim & Nelli Black, An

Imperfect Process: How Campuses Deal with Sexual Assault). Law professors and

faculties at Harvard and University of Pennsylvania have slammed the current policy

and called for greater right for accused students publicly. The only thing that all
groups agree is that whatever college is doing, they are handling the problem in a

wrong way.

Sexual assault is one of the traditional felonies that was covered by the legal

system and handled by the states police for a long time. However, as the federal

government involved more in higher education, it sought to regulate sexual assault on

campus. In 1980, the OCR—Title IX’s enforcement agency—was included into the

Department of Education and handled the sexual assault committed by school

employees. In 1990, congress passed the Clery Act which requires the universities to

disclose campus crime statistics. In 1992, the Higher Education Amendments required

the college to develop their own policies and adjudications but not use the law

enforcement. Sexual assault was firstly treated differently from other felonies. In

1997, the OCR issued a “Sexual Harassment Guidance” document which required

college to punish any speech that tend to be sexism. In 2011, Office for Civil Rights

issue the "Dear Colleague letter”, which required the college to adopt certain federal

procedures to handle the campus sexual assault cases. It require the college to adopt a

low “preponderance of the evidence standard” which reduce the due-process rights of

the accused. It discouraged the corss-examination and required colleges to speed up

the investigation. OCR threatened to withhold the federal funding if universities do

not properly respond.

According to the ACTL, “concerns of withdrawal of federal funding, combined

with media attention surrounding campus sexual assault, may cause universities—
consciously or not—to err on the side of protecting or validating the complainant at

the expense of the accused. These not-so-subtle pressures may contribute to partial

and discriminatory investigations and the absence of protection for the accused.”