Today the U.S. Department of Education released a list of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for mishandling sexual assault and harassment complaints. The list runs the gamut: Ivies like Harvard and Princeton, small liberal arts colleges like Sarah Lawrence and Amherst, big state schools like the Universities of Michigan and Connecticut. (Full list below or here.)
Rape on campus is a federal concern because, in addition to requiring women’s athletics programs, the 1972 Education Amendments’ Title IX ensures that schools that receive federal funding not be hostile environments for women. (Here is a good explanation of how Brown University became a hostile place for one sexual assault survivor.) Even without any further details, the list is at least a tip-off to applicants as to which schools might not know what to do in the not-nearly-rare-enough event their students are raped. Some congressmen hope such information will affect the schools’ carefully guarded U.S. News and World Report rankings.
This, to me, is a much more satisfying response than the White House’s celeb-studded “1 is 2 Many” campaign — if less fun to look at.
That PSA featured actors like Benicio del Toro, Steve Carell, and Daniel Craig urging men not to rape people and to stop other men from raping people. A nice message — especially coming from a bunch of guy’s guys — but not one that addresses the institutional failures that keep rapists on college campuses. Most campus rapes are committed by repeat offenders, after all, many of whom don’t think they’re rapists.
Meanwhile, presenting this week’s White House report of recommendations for colleges, Vice President Joe Biden suggested vigilante justice:
“In the neighborhood [Senator Bob Casey] and I were raised in–I want you all to listen to this–if a man raised his hand to a woman, you had the job to kick the living crap out of him if he did it. Excuse my language. […] Now I realize that’s not very presidential or vice presidential. But it’s something every man should begin to understand.”
Having the vice-president beat up campus rapists is one solution. After perusing the White House report, Slate’s Emily Bazelon arrived at another: Actually enforcing the law and sanctioning schools that drop the ball. “In the history of Title IX,” she writes,
“the Department of Education has ‘never once sanctioned a school for sexual violence-related violations of Title IX.’”
Arizona State University
Butte-Glen Community College District
Occidental College
University of California-Berkeley
University of Southern California
Regis University
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Colorado at Denver
University of Denver
University of Connecticut
Catholic University of America
Florida State University
Emory University
University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Idaho
Knox College
University of Chicago
Indiana University-Bloomington
Vincennes University
Amherst College
Boston University
Emerson College
Harvard College
Harvard University—Law School
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Frostburg State University
Michigan State University
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Guilford College
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Minot State University
Dartmouth College
Princeton University
Cuny Hunter College
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sarah Lawrence College
Suny at Binghamton
Denison University
Ohio State University
Wittenberg University
Oklahoma State University
Carnegie Mellon University
Franklin and Marshall College
Pennsylvania State University
Swarthmore College
Temple University
Vanderbilt University
Southern Methodist University
The University of Texas-Pan American
College of William and Mary
University of Virginia
Washington State University
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Bethany College
West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine