Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has scheduled a media availability to answer questions later Thursday, but the department said she would not announce any policy changes. | Getty DeVos vows changes on campus sexual assault policy

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaled Thursday that she plans to overhaul controversial Obama-era guidance on campus sexual assault, telling reporters "this is an issue we're not getting right."

But she offered few clues about what those changes would be, when they might happen or how she would balance the rights of victims against those of the accused.


The far-reaching 2011 guidance told college and university officials they must combat sexual harassment, including sexual violence, under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination, and threatened a loss of federal funding to institutions that failed to do so. Among other things, the guidance pushed a lower standard of proof in campus disciplinary hearings than is used in criminal trials.

While many advocates for survivors of sexual assault hailed the guidance as a crucial step in cracking down on what they describe as an epidemic of campus sexual violence, critics said it has pushed college administrators to trample the rights of accused students.

DeVos’ comments came at the end of a day of angry protests by advocates and sexual assault survivors outside her office seeking to preserve the status quo and what she described as "emotional" meetings inside — first with sexual assault survivors, then with students who say they were falsely accused of sexual assault and, finally, with college officials. She told those she met with that she planned to do more listening sessions in other parts of the country.

The meetings “made it clear to me there’s work to be done,” DeVos said. “This issue is hurting too many students. We’ll get to work to figure out the best way to solve this problem.”

Sexual harassment and assault on campus was a signature issue for Obama’s Education Department as it sought to use Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination, to force colleges to crack down on the problem which research shows is pervasive and under-reported.

In a controversial “Dear Colleague” letter it issued in spring, 2011, the Obama administration threatened to cut off funding for schools that weren’t doing enough to protect students, though it never actually did so.

But some higher education, civil liberties and legal groups complained that the administration’s recommendation to use a lower standard of proof in academic disciplinary hearings to adjudicate incidents of sexual violence was unfair to the accused. The “preponderance of evidence” standard — essentially “more likely than not” — is significantly lower than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” common in criminal trials.

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One group that met Thursday with DeVos, Families Advocating for Campus Equality, says it has been contacted by nearly 400 students who say they were falsely accused of sexual assault.

Jonathan Andrews, a former Hanover College student, says he was twice falsely accused of assaulting one of his fraternity brothers. Administrators first cleared Andrews, but expelled him after the second accusation. He has since filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights, which last year opened an investigation at the school.

Andrews told POLITICO the lower standard of proof hurt him in his disciplinary hearings, as did officials’ refusal to disclose the full extent of what he was accused of, or to allow lawyers to represent him. He and others accused of assault want DeVos to make clear that colleges need to respect due process rights, as well as those of victims.

“From our standpoint, the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter started with really great intentions,” he said. “It’s important to realize that women and victims of sex assault haven’t always been listened to.” But Andrews says his case “is one of the sides that hasn’t been told” and he wants “to make the point — it’s not just white men, it’s LGBTQ, it’s women, it’s black men, it’s minorities who are being affected by this.”

The sense by survivors of sexual assault that they were getting short shrift increased Wednesday after DeVos’ acting civil rights chief, Candice Jackson, told The New York Times “the accusations — 90 percent of them — fall into the category of 'we were both drunk,' 'we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.'" She later issued a written apology, saying, her comments “poorly characterized the conversations I’ve had with countless groups of advocates. What I said was flippant, and I am sorry.”

Jackson tried to explain her comments in the face-to-face meeting with sexual assault survivors, participants told POLITICO.

"There’s no way to take it back, unfortunately,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center. “It’s been put out there. The only thing they can do now is exercise the leadership and spending a lot of time rejecting the rape myths they propagated this week."

DeVos mostly listened during the first, 90-minute meeting as assault survivors shared their experiences, according to several participants in the meeting. The advocates said they were cheered that the meeting went over by 15 minutes and everyone had a chance to tell their story. They also gave a binder of stories about sexual assault to DeVos.

But they criticized DeVos for giving men’s rights groups like the National Coalition for Men as much attention as they gave sexual assault survivors. The group claims on its website that false rape accusations are “a form of psychological rape” and are “much more common than we are told.”

“In our view, 90 minutes is hardly enough time to hear from survivors and advocates, particularly when she's also giving 90 minutes of airtime to men's rights activists and schools,” said Alyssa Peterson, a policy and an advocacy coordinator at Know Your IX, one of the groups that organized a protest outside the Education Department on Thursday. “They're going to hear from us regardless.”

DeVos said changes would be made through a “process,” not an “event,” and promised to make the process a “collaborative” one.

“We can’t go back to the days when allegations were swept under the rug," she said. "And I acknowledge there was a time when women were essentially dismissed. That is not acceptable. It’s clear that there are failings in this process. A system without due process protections ultimately serves no one in the end.”

Diamond Naga Siu contributed to this report.

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