Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. This is Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235, codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688.
Sexual misconduct is misconduct of a sexual nature which exists on a spectrum that may include a broad range of sexual behaviors considered unwelcome. This includes conduct considered inappropriate on an individual or societal basis of morality, sexual harassment and/or criminal sexual assault.
The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at 20 U.S.C. § 1092(f), with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at 34 CFR 668.46.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Education that is primarily focused on enforcing civil rights laws prohibiting schools from engaging in discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, or membership in patriotic youth organizations.
Kenneth L. Marcus is an American attorney, academic, and government official. He is the founder and leader of the Brandeis Center. He was the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education from August 6, 2018 through July 9, 2020, after which he resumed his position at the Brandeis Center.
Thomas Kent Norment Jr. is an American politician who served as the Minority Leader and Majority Leader of the Senate of Virginia. He was elected to the James City County Board of Supervisors where he served as chairman before being elected to the Virginia Senate in 1991. According to the Clerk of the Virginia Senate, Norment was first elected as Minority Leader in 2007 and is tied with Senator Richard "Dick" Saslaw for having switched between Minority and Majority leader more than any other two senators in Virginia's history. Similarly, Senator Norment holds the records for the longest serving Republican senator as well as the longest serving Senate Republican Leader in the history of the Commonwealth.
Campus sexual assault is the sexual assault, including rape, of a student while attending an institution of higher learning, such as a college or university. The victims of such assaults are more likely to be female, but any gender can be victimized. Estimates of sexual assault, which vary based on definitions and methodology, generally find that somewhere between 19–27% of college women and 6–8% of college men are sexually assaulted during their time in college.
Annie Elizabeth Clark is a women's rights and civil rights activist in the United States. She was one of the lead complainants of the 2013 Title IX and Clery Act charges lodged against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, claiming that the institution violated the law by the way they handled sexual assault complaints. Clark and Andrea Pino, then a fellow UNC student and also a victim of sexual assault, launched a nationwide campaign to use Title IX complaints to force U.S. universities to address sexual assault and related problems more aggressively. Clark is co-founder with Pino of End Rape on Campus, an advocacy group for victims of campus sexual assault.
Andrea Lynn Pino (born February 15, 1992) is an American women's rights and civil rights activist, author, and a public scholar on issues of global gender based violence, media framing of violence, gender and sexuality, and narratives of survivorhood. She is the queer daughter of Cuban refugees and has stated that she is a survivor of sexual assault.
The Victims Protection Act of 2014 is a bill intended to help protect the victims of sexual assault in the military. The bill would allow victims to give a preferences as to whether they would prefers their cases take place in the military or in the civilian justice systems. It also applies these changes to the military academies as well.
The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault was formed on January 22, 2014, after President Barack Obama directed the Office of the Vice President of the United States and the White House Council on Women and Girls to "strengthen and address compliance issues and provide institutions with additional tools to respond to and address rape and sexual assault". The Task Force is part of a wider federal move to bring awareness to sexual violence on American campuses, which also included the Office for Civil Rights release of a list of American higher education institutions with open Title IX sexual violence investigations and the It's On Us public awareness campaign. The co-chairs of the Task Force are Vice President Joe Biden and Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett.
In April 2013, Occidental College was one of the first in a series of US higher education institutions to be accused of failing to take campus sex crimes seriously by improperly reporting and adjudicating sexual assaults and covering up rapes. Occidental students and faculty filed two federal complaints against the College, alleging violations of Title IX of the US Education Amendments of 1972 and the Clery Act.
Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) was a work of endurance/performance art which Emma Sulkowicz conducted as a senior thesis during the final year of a visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York City.
The Hunting Ground is a 2015 American documentary film about the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses in the United States and the reported failure of college administrations to deal with it adequately. Written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering, it premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released on February 27, 2015, an edited version aired on CNN on November 22, 2015, and was released on DVD the week of December 1, 2015. It was released on Netflix in March 2016. Lady Gaga recorded an original song, "Til It Happens to You," for the film, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Know Your IX is an American political advocacy group founded in 2013. It aims to inform students of their right to an education free from gender-based violence under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in institutions receiving federal government funding. The organization also seeks to influence legislation and policy to improve federal enforcement of Title IX and treatment of student victims.
Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE) is an American advocacy group whose stated goal is to ensure fairness and due process for all parties involved in allegations of sexual misconduct on college and university campuses. FACE was started by Sherry Warner Seefeld and two other mothers who say their sons were falsely accused of sexual misconduct on their college campuses.
The Safe Campus Act was introduced to the US House of Representatives by Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and Kay Granger (R-TX) on July 29, 2015. The bill aims to prevent colleges from pursuing internal investigations in cases of campus sexual assault. This restriction would legally require alleged victims of sexual assault to report the crime to the police in order to see justice on campus.
In April 2013, Emma Sulkowicz, an American fourth-year visual arts major at Columbia University in New York City, filed a complaint with Columbia University requesting expulsion of fellow fourth-year student and German national, Paul Nungesser, alleging he had raped Sulkowicz in her dorm room on August 27, 2012. Nungesser was found not responsible by a university inquiry.
After a sexual assault or rape, victims are often subjected to scrutiny and, in some cases, mistreatment. Victims undergo medical examinations and are interviewed by police. If there is a criminal trial, victims suffer a loss of privacy, and their credibility may be challenged. Victims may also become the target of slut-shaming, abuse, social stigmatization, sexual slurs and cyberbullying. These factors, contributing to a rape culture, are among some of the reasons that may contribute up to 80% of all rapes going unreported in the U.S, according to a 2016 study done by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act is a provincial law in British Columbia, Canada, requiring publicly funded post-secondary institutions in the province to implement a policy addressing campus sexual violence and sexual misconduct. Post-secondary institutions subject to Act 23 must develop a policy that covers several specific types of sexual misconduct involving a student, sexual misconduct prevention, and institutional responses to sexual misconduct. Post-secondary institutions must make their policies publicly available on their website. The legislation was passed in 2016 and came into force in 2017, by which time all post-secondary institutions subject to the Act were required to have developed a policy.
