I found the title of the article “Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence” in the Washington Post to be extremely misleading. I expected to read a some stories of how schools are adequately and sincerely making efforts to prevent and respond to crimes such as rape, but instead I found myself reading a boring, shallow article that barely grazes the real picture of violence on college campuses and how institutions are dealing with it.

One thing that resonated with me, though, is a trend that I am sure is a huge factor in the lack of proper response to gender-based violence:

“Most students don’t think violent relationships are a problem at college…If students think about abuse at all, they picture an older married couple, maybe poor or alcoholic — nothing like their friends at school.”

I would not hesitate to think that those false assumptions stop at students – many college administrators probably believe that, too, which obviously is a recipe for disaster. The media has taken a liking to highlighting the tragedy of Yeardley Love’s murder at University of Virginia as a sort of anomaly, while I hesitate to think that’s the case. I think that the perfect combination of a young white woman attractive by mainstream standards with the right people caring and spreading the word has contributed to her name becoming nationally recognized.

The article periodically throws in some lukewarm, general statements about measures that are supposed to be preventing sexual violence. “Schools can offer a level of protection beyond the criminal justice system’s capabilities” – they can but do they? The Center for Public Integrity has made it clear that schools often opt to let a student accused of rape go free, rather than have a legitimate, thorough investigation and subsequent judicial process.

I think the journalist who wrote this failed to paint a proper picture of what is being done about violence on college campuses. One commenter, 3russells, seemed to have agreed with me. If you remember, Yeardley Love murderer was a student at UVA. 3Russells details a history of sexual violence that has happened at UVA for years and lack of response.

“UVA maintains a zero tolerance for cheating but not for rape….

In 2005 the University responded to a Freedom of Information request to divulge the exact number of student reported rapes. The UVA response was 52. That’s 52 crimes that resulted in zero arrests, zero sanctions…

In addition, the Dept of Education found UVA to be in violation of the Clery Act.”

Schools shouldn’t be merely TRYING to respond to sexual violence. They SHOULD be responding to it and preventing it. Most college campuses are no stranger to gender-based violence, so it is not a legitimate excuse to say that the sudden media spotlight of a murdered student suddenly awakened them to this prevalent, urgent issue.

Merely having policies, education programs, judicial processes in place isn’t enough alone. We should be looking at how effective these measures are and if they’re actually being implemented properly.

If you missed my first post, or need a little more information, I wanted to flesh out the federal government’s ruling related to the University of Virginia’s prohibition on students talking about their disciplinary hearings. You can read about the case background in this longish article by a Charlottesville paper. In summary, a student was raped, her rapist was found guilty by the disciplinary board, he was allowed to remain on campus(!), and she was told that if she told anybody about the disciplinary hearing or its outcome, she could be punished!

UVA argued that such a confidentiality requirement was mandated by the law that protects student privacy – FERPA – while the former student, Annie Hylton, argued that the Clery Act supersedes FERPA in making the final determination of a college or university disciplinary process available without condition to both parties. Hylton was supported in this effort by Security on Campus, the organization that helped get the Clery Act passed 18 years ago. S. Daniel Carter, the Director of Public Policy for SOC, explained the ruling to me (and corrected a mistake I made – the gag rule only ever applied to the institutional process, never the survivor’s story of the assault itself).

The U.S. Department of Education’s letter to us regarding their findings in Annie Hylton’s Clery Act complaint against the University of Virginia draws on a similar ruling from 2004 that found Georgetown’s policy of requiring sexual assault victims to sign a non-disclosure agreement also violated the Act’s requirement that disciplinary results be shared with “both the accuser and the accused”
equally and unconditionally.

The new ground in the University of Virginia case is that it clearly applies the principal to cases where there isn’t a written non-disclosure agreement but either a verbal agreement not to talk and or the threat of some type of punitive action if a victim shares the information. This was implied in 2005′s “The Handbook for Campus Crime Reporting” (see page 105) but this is the first instance where it has actually been applied under these circumstances. This is important because the UVA approach is far more common than Georgetown’s.

You can read more about the Education Department’s rationale in their findings letter in the Georgetown case here.

Please note that this ruling applies to the final results in disciplinary cases which are defined as “the institution’s final determination with respect to the alleged sex offense and any sanction that is imposed against the accused.” This would include the name of the accused (and or information that could be used to personally identify them), what they were accused of, and whether or not they were found responsible as well as, ideally, an explanation for that finding.

There may still be FERPA based restrictions on other information provided to a victim if it was taken from the education records of the accused or another student as the Clery Act does not guarantee access to this information. So it is important to note that there may still be some restrictions under certain circumstances in some cases.

Finally, this issue concerns speaking about the actions taken by an institution in response to a report of sexual assault not the underlying sexual assault itself. In neither case was a restriction on speaking about the rape itself at issue rather victims were being silenced with respect to the actions their universities had taken in response.

Carter began his work with SOC when he was a student at the University of Tennessee a decade and a half ago, working on the “Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights” that was added to the Clery Act a few years after it was first passed – an inspiring example of how student activism can lead to a life-long career!

The Department of Education has ruled that UVA cannot prevent students from talking about their sexual assaults or their experience with the school’s Sexual Assault Board. Under the school’s previous policy, which was revised in 2005 and may now be in partial compliance with the ruling, students could face disciplinary sanctions if they spoke to anyone about their case or its outcome.

Although UVA claimed that such a gag-rule was necessary to comply with regulations governing student privacy, a former UVA student, with the assistance of Security on Campus, successfully argued that the Clery Act prevents such a gag-rule in cases of sexual assault and the Department of Education agreed.

I have not yet been able to find a copy of the letter the Dept. of Ed. sent to UVA, I will write with more details when I do. But many schools have versions of this rule – Kristen mentions it in her story from Adelphi – and this decision should help a lot of students who are afraid to talk about their experiences for fear of being punished by their school.