• 01
  • June
    2011

New guidelines - issued by the United States Department of Education and made public by Vice President Joe Biden - set forth revised criteria for schools, colleges and universities to use in order to stem the tide of sexual violence on campuses across the country. The guidelines were created in part due to recent surveys which indicate that as many as one in five college-age females are victims of sexual violence in some form and that over 10 percent of high school-age girls report that they were pressured, coerced or under duress before they first had sex.

According to information provided by The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Department of Education's lengthy new guidelines - nearly 19 pages in all - do not provide any hard and fast rules for how to deal with the perpetrators of sexual assaults on school grounds. The guidelines serve to educate institutions on the extent of federal laws that prohibit gender-based discrimination. Those laws - including Title IX of the United States Code - aim to keep men and women at educational facilities that receive federal funds safe both on and off campus.

The new Department of Education guidelines also require colleges and universities to:

  • Inform students, faculty and staff about anti-discrimination policies
  • Name a Title IX overseer to handle discrimination-based complaints coming from students or employees
  • Draft procedures and policies to investigate and resolve complaints

The guidelines also present a new standard for how allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault should be handled on campuses across the country: the "more likely than not" standard. This standard is much lower than the traditional criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt," and lower than the previous investigative standard of "highly probable or reasonably certain that the sexual harassment or violence occurred." It is hoped that the standard will lower the rates of criminal sexual-based behavior on school campuses around the country. However, implementation of the lower standard does raise the risk that the standard may be abused and possibly force the accused - even when innocent - to face unwarranted negative consequences before all the facts have come to light.