Dartmouth College has proposed new policies in regards to the administration's response to sexual assault that promise to expel more students who are found responsible of sexual misconduct.
According to the Huffington Post, the school will unveil the proposal in full this week and will leave it open for comment until April 14. The school's Board of Trustees reportedly expressed unanimous support for the proposal at their meeting Saturday.
Dartmouth is one of more than a dozen schools either is or had been under investigation from the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for their sexual misconduct practices and policies. Such investigations are started when a student or group files a federal complaint alleging a Title IX violation on the school's part.
The proposal says those found responsible of sexual assault will be subject to "mandatory expulsion in cases involving penetration accomplished by force, threat, or purposeful incapacitation." At the very least, perpetrators will face "a strong presumption in favor of expulsion."
Under the Clery Act, schools are required to release transparency reports of any crime committed on campus. Under Title IX, schools are required to give equal treatment to men and women and to not perform inadequate or incomplete investigations of reported crimes.
New provisions to the Clery Act were included in President Obama's 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Now, schools must report possible sanctions they could face if they violate one of these federal laws.
Most often, sexual assault complainants who file complaints with the OCR allege their school either performed a weak investigation or levied soft penalties against the perpetrator. Both of these protect the institution from lawsuits from the accused or from reporting the crime in their annual Clery Report.
President Obama has been a higher education advocate since taking office. While the cost of tuition and the problems facing Sallie Mae and student loan debt have been his main cause, he recently took on the problem with campus sex crimes.
In his Rape And Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call To Action initiative, Obama cited statistics saying one in five women experience sexual violence in college but only 12 percent of these victims file a report.