McCaskill plans to use the findings to inform legislation she’s writing. McCaskill: Colleges fail on assaults

Colleges and universities across the nation are violating federal law by failing to investigate sexual assaults on campus, according to a report released Wednesday by Sen. Claire McCaskill.

The report draws on a national survey that collected responses from more than 300 colleges and universities — and uncovered major lapses in staff training and institutional responses to student reports of sexual violence.


Among them: More than 20 percent of schools allow their athletic departments to supervise cases of sexual assault involving student athletes. More than 40 percent have not investigated a single case of sexual violence in the past five years.

(Also on POLITICO: Do Democrats need a Bubba strategy?)

And law-enforcement officials at 30 percent of the schools say they’ve received no training in handling reports of sexual assault.

McCaskill (D-Mo.) plans to use the findings to inform legislation she’s writing with a bipartisan team that includes Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). They plan to release the bill, which would tighten campus disciplinary proceedings, in late August or early September as students head back to campus.

The Obama administration has seized on the issue as well. This spring, the White House released extensive recommendations for campuses to address sexual violence, and the Education Department is in the process of updating the Clery Act, which requires colleges to publicly report all crimes on or near their campus. Public comments on the proposed revisions are due next week.

In the meantime, campus administrators and student advocates are poring over the survey results — and pronouncing them both startling and disturbing.

(Also on POLITICO: McConnell strikes back on Medicare)

“What it tells us is that many schools are not following best practices or even the basics of current law,” said Lisa Maatz, the vice president of government relations for the American Association of University Women. “Schools cannot continue to bury claims and hope students won’t come forward.”

But Ada Meloy, general counsel of the American Council on Education, said the report was unfair, shaped and written to “excoriate” institutions. It “ignores how hard colleges and universities are working to address this complex societal issue,” she said, and “ignores the fact that these are incredibly difficult cases to investigate and solve.”

McCaskill called out one statistic in particular: More than 40 percent of schools in her sample — including a strikingly high number of private, for-profit institutions — have not investigated a sexual violence claim on campus in the past five years.

“Which means they’re saying that there have been zero incidents of sexual assault on their campuses in the last five years. That is hard to believe,” she said.

( Also on POLITICO: Castro confirmed to lead HUD)

Other findings:

— More than 20 percent of the nation’s largest private institutions aren’t investigating all the sexual violence incidents they report to the Education Department. Some campuses report “as many as seven times more incidents of sexual violence than they have investigated,” McCaskill concludes.

— Campus law enforcement at 70 percent of colleges said they don’t have protocols on how to work with local police to respond to incidents.

— Just half of responding institutions provide a hotline for survivors to report an assault. Eight percent don’t offer any way for students to confidentially report an attack.

— More than 10 percent of schools don’t have a Title IX coordinator — as is required by law — to investigate claims of sexual discrimination.

— More than 40 percent of the nation’s largest public schools allow students to help determine whether a sexual assault occurred — and to participate in disciplinary proceedings.

— Just 16 percent of colleges and universities conduct campus climate surveys to determine the extent of sexual violence. The administration has asked schools to pilot these surveys next year with the goal of making them mandatory by 2016. McCaskill has said she supports that goal.

Fatima Goss Graves, a vice president at the National Women’s Law Center, called the findings “startling.”

“Too many institutions lack adequate policies, their adjudication systems are not appropriate and they are failing to meet the most basic requirement of having a Title IX coordinator,” she said.

McCaskill sent her survey to a nationally representative sample of 350 four-year colleges and universities educating more than 2.3 million students. The response rate was 67 percent. Surveys also went out separately to dozens of the largest public and private nonprofit universities. McCaskill announced in advance that she would not disclose the names of respondents in order to keep their answers honest.

The Missouri Democrat has complained that a webinar hosted by the American Council on Education may have dissuaded administrators from responding.

Meloy, the ACE general counsel, said that wasn’t the case. But Meloy said she — and many college administrators — felt McCaskill’s survey was biased.

For example, the survey questions didn’t offer colleges and universities an option to answer “not applicable.” So, for instance, when the survey asked schools if they educate fraternities and sororities on sexual assault, schools with no Greek life had no choice but to answer in the negative.

The survey also uses the words “defendant” and “adjudicate” throughout, Meloy noted, implying that colleges and universities are courts. “We are not,” she said.

But Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, said the survey would be useful.

“It will help us identify and fix systemic problems, such as the large number of campuses that currently provide no training for law enforcement, students or employees, as well as the alarming number that leave oversight of some cases to the athletic department,” he said. “Overall, it will be very valuable as we work with Congress and colleges to reduce the number of assaults, bring more rapists to justice, and provide victims with the help they deserve.”

McCaskill said she hopes her forthcoming bill will require campus disciplinary bodies to consider sexual assault cases under a “preponderance of evidence” standard, rather than the higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence” that some campuses have been using. She also wants the legislation to empower victims, she said.

In addition to Gillibrand and Rubio, the bill-writing team includes Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Republican Sens. Dean Heller (Nev.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.).