The Atlantic

How Do States Handle Sexual Assault on Campus?

Non-federal statutes vary widely and could come into play should the Trump Administration move to decentralize the Office for Civil Rights’ hardline on sexual assault.
Source: Elijah Nouvelage / Reuters

There are 306 sexual-violence investigations currently pending at postsecondary institutions, according to the Office for Civil Rights’s most recent report, which was ultimately released on Thursday.

Each week for the past two years, OCR, an office within the Department of Education, has released the list of active probes, but it failed to do so through mid-day Thursday, bucking the routine of earlier release. The absence was interpreted by some—including the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee’s ranking Democrat, Senator Patty Murray—as a signal that the Trump Administration would be less transparent about and aggressive against sexual assault. When the Education Department did eventually release the contemporary list of investigations, it attributed the delay to a

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