bring post secondary options to less settled area of the u.s. the frontier at the time. but many states continue to bar the enrollment of african-americans in their colleges and universities. so the establishment of a second land grant act was required to encourage those states to build separate institutions for african-americans. subsequently, funding from the higher education act of 1965 was also -- was also awarded to those institutions in order to continue their important work. but one of the things that is also important is to consider legal context. so the legislative bills in history and also legal context. and in the institution where i work at has been directly impacted by this in the late 1980s. there was a legal case ruling that texas had inequitably

funded its post secondary institutions, not funding institutions that had served large proportions of mexican americans, including many of those along the south texas border. and deborah has written about this. in effect, identifying that south texas was an education desert. we see that that is still the case with one of the counties that nick hillman talked about. people in my own department actually teach students at that institution that nick hillman identified. we actually bring a program out to them. so that they can have access to doctoral education and policy studies. even though i live in a metropolitan area, even though we are located in a metropolitan area, we have to reach out to them. we are held to the same standards, texas is one of the

25 states with performance funding. we are held to the same standards of needing outcomes as other universities like the university of texas at austin that served half as many low-income students or fewer and we serve over twice as many latinos students. i think an important point about that education is that there may be a ripple affect further away. institutions in my county, it's not necessarily an education desert but we're trying to make up for what's going on in some of the counties around us. and if we also get penalized, then that has an even greater ramification. i think that's important to consider in future policy. >> thank you very much. our final commentary this morning is going to be in a sense -- this session is trying to bring researchers to talk to people about pending policy

issues. fortunately, we have a policymaker here who is in the middle of this discussion and was generously willing to come and meet with us today and to talk about her reactions to what she has heard and what's going on in the government. deputy under secretary jamienne studley is here and we are pleased to have her with us today. >> it's good to be doing something with you and the center again. i'm not the only one here working on this project, you will be grlad to know some of m colleagues are here as well. your questions are our questions. the president's challenge, if it has done nothing since last august 22, is along with a lot of other work by many of you along the way, is moving the conversation and the focus to better questions. the best question of all we can

reframe it in different ways is, what institutions are successfully contributing to college completion with a meaningful education for students with the least income and the least historic opportunity? that's the way we are coming at it. and i sense in just literally this year that we are asking smarter questions with that as the objective. to do that, we have to ask what practices, conditions, investments lead to those positive outcomes. what educational choices, what kinds of recruiting and selection process, what financial aid practices and student supports and linkages with jobs and the workplace will actually help us accomplish those things? so one alternative to squeeze months of thinking and reading into five minutes is to say, yes, fair questions. every question that i have heard and read in the papers is a very

appropriate one. and you would be pleased to know that the conversations that we are having are similar to the one that i have heard this morning and that i have engaged with with some of you and that some of my colleagues have been having with many of you over time. we are all trying to think about how to design methods that would capture important differences and advance our policy goal. my own personal test, when we have something to test, would be whether the places that you think are doing a good job and, an impressive job in turning access into quality completions are well rated in the process. that's going to be my home version of whether what we do is working. and that the ones that you worry about across the sectors, the ones that you say that place truly is struggling, i would hesitate to let my child go

there are the ones that we should be identifying as worthy of concern. it should be very practical and logical. and one of the correctives is -- one of the realities is that we will not leap to a proposal. we will have continued conversations. and what we think is the best possible amalgamation of the issues will be published in draft for further and serious conversation. so we will want the expertise of all of you to help us. as we think about the design, let me pick a few items. because i want you to know at a more granular level how we are thinking about some of these. we are thinking about, for example, student academic preparation. but given that not all students do the same kinds of things on their way to a post secondary experience, we're thinking about what exists and what markers

there might be. is there a way to evaluate high school and yet we would say, not everybody comes from high school. to zip codes. for what home, at what moment. but do they tell us something about the academic preparation? a way that's usable enough to be helpful? we know -- i haven't spoken to a single person about this process who isn't well aware that the iped graduation rate is a very limited indicator. folks like you know that it is going to be better for part-time and transfer students within a couple of cycles. what can we do with that? how will that affect things over time? will that solve the problem, or are there other ways to get at the actual population? first generation status is another element that we're thinking about.

one area that i didn't hear you talk about that's also much on our minds, if you want to go on beyond, is the whole area of looking at postgraduate outcomes where we have graduation. we can look at things like repayment or default rate. looking at whether people work, whether they work at above the minimum, whether they are better off in terms of their earnings capacity after school is an important set of questions. and it's one that students and families tell us matter to them. but it, like all the others, is complicated and freighted by existing discrimination in the marketplace. we think about whether to use earnings information early in someone's career or a later after there is more stability. but a counter narrative is that the further out people are, the more their earnings may be affected by race and gender

bias, by local and geographic income realities. i don't have to tell all of you that this is hard work. i want you to understand that we are working as hard as you are to understand what those affects would be. gary asked me to think about some questions for you. one of them that i would have besides how to accommodate all of this and find something that does have meaning and achieves, incorporates what you are being l looking at strongly enough, seriously enough that we get answers to what schools are contributing to real outcomes for low-income and previously excluded people, how do we do that to serve the dual purposes of this system? to the extent thatsumer family understand, choices that people have to make based on their own options and what might happen

for a student at a particular school and that there are policy and potentially federal investment decisions to be made, would do you the same things? what would those differences be? it's been pointed out very thoughtfully that when you try to do two things, you may need variations for those two purposes. and yet there are challenges in using different data. we would love the field's help on that. it's very likely that we would have some experiment with ratings and some ability to try them out and improve them before proposals came forward to congress, which would have to approve any affects on the way federal student aid or other federal resources are allocated

based on a rating system. so our hope is that we would get -- that we would find we had achieved the goals, possibly revised it to satisfy the questions that you had asked and be able to use ratings for several different purposes. one is, this is the rare place where somebody invests $150 billion and doesn't have any accountability for how it is spent in terms of the results that are achieved. we have very soft subjective, informal measures. but to sustain national confidence in the student aid system and to be able to continue to justify that we are getting what we want as a nation from it, which is education opportunity and education results for all, we need to have a political structure of support that is strong enough to keep us

putting precious and highly competed for federal funds into student aid. one very clear purpose is also to help push the state reinvestment in student aid. federal money cannot chase the declines that we are experiencing for so long in state investment in public systems. that reorientation of the traditional bargain about the feds, the states, the institutions and families and philanthropy, together paying for education, is something that we need to improve. fortunately, it's been stabilizing in many states. and maybe we are moving in that positive direction. but something that is overlooked if we think about the danger

side of a -- of an allocation that follows institutions that are effective in educating first generation under represented students, those who have -- who do indeed pose an educational challenge for institutions and whose graduation is the reason for our investing so much in student aid, we look at the negative side of who might lose. i would encourage us to think about the positive side of having the information that would allow us to reinforce the resources and grow the resources to the institutions who have the track record that many of you were talking about so that we put the resources into their hands to be able to do the things that they are doing or do it for more students or do it with less struggle and be the models that we're looking for for that kind of success. this is very complicated work. many of you here in the audience

and on the panel have been very generous with us in helping us think about these issues. and i hope that we can count on to you do it as we get closer to versions that we would like to share with you and then share with the entire public. so that we can achieve the kinds of goals that you are talking about and do it according to the tests that -- sara, right? dr. goldrick-rab was talking about. because, in fact, those are my questions as well. those are the benchmarks for us in a system that succeeds in understanding better who is succeeding at these important goals and where students are truly being bilked and diz ed disadvantaged and where students should not be able to participate in our aid system. thank you. >> thank you very much. we have time for two or three short questions.

come down to the microphones. if you don't, i will ask some. this is your chance. >> hi. i'm from the national women's law center. my question is short for dr. hillman. the slide that you showed comparing public institutions and for-profit institutions and the default rate for for-profit it said zero with an as ter rte >> they are 68 students total. my guess is that they probably don't need to report that data out to the feds. you have an institution that has less than 30 borrowers, you have a different criteria for calculating default rates. that's my hunch with that one. which speaks volumes about how we measure things that we think are straightforward but are not. >> they could be zero means zero to 100.

>> thank you for your research. thank you for this panel. i am a reporter with the nnpa, known as the black press. my question is more about the proposed standards for a count bui built. has there been any thought about helping poorly ranked schools actually turn themselves around and improve? i know that as sara was saying, we have seen what happens at the k through 12 level. is that something we're trying to duplicate on a higher education level? >> go ahead. >> we have lots of programs currently in place that do try to strengthen institutions to be able to carry out these purposes. the entire notion of including improvement so that institutions

wherever they are, if they are on a positive trajectory toward greater effectiveness on whatever measures we end up choosing, would be recognized and be protected. as everybody said it's hard to talk about something that doesn't exist. but that's -- everything i say is that people have suggested or it's possible that we might. because the goal is to have lots of opportunities for people to go to schools that will serve them well. our objective is not to eliminate. it's to improve the overall system availability. so the more we can identify good practices, expedite their -- people's awareness of them, identify innovation in education that have value for educating the populations that we're talking about, the happier we will all be. there's no reason that -- we're

not looking to eliminate unless there are places that are truly not using federal funds to get educational value for people. improvement would be very important for us. >> that was the last question, the last word. i want to take a couple minutes. we are famous for doing things on time. we know you have given us your morning. we appreciate that tremendously. what you have seen today is a very thoughtful multi-dimensional effort to understand and think about what could be done about the accountability proposals that the president and others have made in higher education. i'm shadowed by worried about accountability on plans that exist in a number of our states, in elementary and secondary, that have produced counterproductive impacts.

the different analyses have shown you many ways of looking at these issues from looking at the geography to looking at the precollege preparation to looking at a variety of institutional resource factors. inequalities in many respects. we have a very complicated system of higher education which n which the states are primary actors in the public sector. so we have 50 different higher education systems in a country where the federal government has been the primary actor in the student aid area. very important. and a vast amount of money goes into this, and a vast amount of the of the hopes of generations of americans that their children will have a chance to be in a middle class, depends on having post secondary credentials. the stakes are high here. and the reason we did this conference is we want to make sure that they are not the

unintended harm. the first rule of policy making, when it's close to the destiny of american young people, is do no harm -- do no additional harm. try to think about ways that you can do things positively and contribute. i don't think anybody who presented today doesn't think that it would be better to have better, more accountable institutions. but it's not a sim sple issue. particularly it's not a simple issue as some of our panelists have pointed out that the data doesn't exist. when you enact a sound bite on basis of data that doesn't exist, you create problems. so i think that what we will do as we go forward in this area is to be taking these papers -- not that the authors have a chance

to speak, hear your comments, questions, hear the thoughtful response of our deputy under secretary, to think deeply about them to revise them that we will be publishing these as they go through review and are advised. they will be on the website. they will certainly appear in the professional literature. we hope they will appear in congressional testimony and other considerations as this unfolds. this was not designed to be an attack on the obama administration and its proposals. it's a thoughtful way to try to contribute to an ongoing discussion. and we greatly appreciate the welcoming of these contributions into the discussion. i would like to thank the authors and the commend tatetat tell you, this is just a step. this is a very high stakes set

of issues that will determine the destiny of individual students, of communities. it will affect racial equality y in the united states. i urge all of us to continue to look at this with great interest and careful and critical judgment and to contribute to a policy making process that turns out to be a lot smarter than the policy making that was done in elementary and secondary education when sound bites were enacted into law and we have been stuck with them for 14 years. i would like to thank everybody for their participation and to close this session now. thank you very much. [ applause ]

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missouri senator claire mccaskill has hosted a series of

discussions about campus sexual assaults. one panel included former student victims along with campus safety and sexual assault experts. they talked about how universities are handling compliance with laws designed to prevent very much you'sexual as. this part of the session is an hour. >> we are glad that you are all here. we are going to convene our first of three round tables on the serious problem of sexual assault on college campuses. these round tables will occur every two weeks for next six weeks. today we are going to focus on

the clairery and save acts and talk to you about the challenges that those rules and regulations present. two weeks from today we will cover title 9 and then four weeks from today we will cover both the administrative process but there has been a great deal of focus on the criminal law process and where we are failing to get the perpetrators into the criminal justice system and what we need to do to improve our record in that regard. i thank all of you for being here. you were all invited because you are experts in various ways on this issue. this is not a hearing. this is a conversation. the goal here -- i want to say for the senators, they are very sorry they can't be here today. i'm sure they will participate in the other roundtables we will have. we are working on drafting legislation.

what we want to do is maybe simplify. because i know this is a complex labyrinth of different rules between save and cleary and title 9 and different standards of proof, different state statutes. we don't even agree on the definition of consent. those are challenges that i know this area represents. we want to see if we can simplify, clarify, augment, support, perhaps provide more mandatory training, but with the grants that go with that so that universities can access grants to help train people on cam pulses for important things like that initial forensic interview that we know is crucial that frankly if there's one thing i could do by waving a magic wand, and that is making sure every victim at the moment of report is immediately seen to by someone who is trained that can do the type of interview that

makes the difference between success and failure in terms of ultimately bringing someone to justice for a serious fell any. as many of you know, i have sent letters requesting detailed information from the department of justice and the department of education regarding their enforcement and oversight. i have launched a survey of 450 college and universities regarding their policies and procedures relating to sexual violence. i'm holding these roundtables to hear from people regarding how they think we can best address this significant problem. today, we will focus on cleary and campus save act, two pieces of legislation which among other requirements mandate that schools collect and report information about sexual violence. these requirements are a great start. but i'm concerned they haven't been adequately enforced. i believe that we can do better to address this problem through

this enforcement regimen. i'm a former prosecute with years of prosecuting sexual assault crimes. that informed my approach to this problem. i want to know that survivors are getting the services they need and that perpetrators of sexual violence are being held criminally accountable. i know that's not all that's required. i also want to make sure that whatever steps we take going forward are the right ones and that we respect the rule of law in this country which includes due process. i know that commitment is shared by others. i now would like to invite our participants to go around the table and introduce themselves. give a very brief introduction as to the work you do and where you are from. i would ask you keep your remarks limited at this point so we have time. i got lots of questions. i want to make sure we have time to get to all the questions and that i hear your concerns and comments that i know will inform our decisions as to legislation moving forward. why don't we start to my left?

>> my name is tracy vitchers. >> lit thit the button. >> i'm tracy vitchers and with students active for ending rape. we were founded at columbia university. we empower student activists to reform sexual assault policies and hold campuses accountable to transparent processes and supporting survivors. >> my name is holly rider-milkovich. i'm the director of the asexual assault and awareness center at the university of michigan. i'm responsible for overseeing the institution's prevention efforts. our response efforts as it relates to students who are survivors of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, sexual harassment and stalking. i serve in a leadership role in developing policies and processes at the institution and ensuring compliance with campus

save and other federal mandates. >> good afternoon. my name is lynn mahaffie. >> i'm alison kiss. i'm the executive director for the cleary center for security on campus. we were founded in 1987. we provide training and technical assistance specific to cleary compliance and some prevention work as well. >> i'm caroline fultz-carver. i represent the university of south florida system. i'm the associate compliance officer for that system. my chief responsibilities are to oversee higher education opportunity act compliance including cleary, campus save,

the violence against women act and also where those laws interface with title 9. >> my name is eric heath. i'm the chief of police at george may sore university. i'm here on behalf of the international association of campus administrators. >> thank you very much. >> i'm laura dunn. i'm a campus sexual assault survivor. i recently graduated from the university of maryland law school this last friday. i guess i'm a lawyer now. >> that's the first time you have been able to say that. >> kind of. feels good. i'm the founder of serve justice, which empowers survivors. >> senator baldwin, welcome. we are glad you are here. i will turn it over to you. if you have any comments before we begin? >> absolutely. i want to thank you along with

some of our other senate colleagues for convening this first in a series of roundtable discussions. i want to thank you for your work on the issue. i also want to share some words of praise with the administration for taking, i think, very important steps to raise the pro file of student sexual violence, including an establishment of a white house task force to look further into the issue. while i'm encouraged by the advances that we're seeing on this issue, including the strengthening of federal law that we will talk more about today, i also think we can all agree that there's much, much left to be done. so i wanted to call attention to two quick issues. i was proud in recent weeks to introduce the tyler clemente

anti-harassment bill that would include cyber bullying and harassment into our anti-harassment policies. for those of you who know about the life of tyler clemente, he was the victim of cyber bullying and ended up, after his freshman year, committing suicide because of the activities. i also -- we can address this in the discussion. senator mccaskill, you and your colleagues on the armed services committee have just done such an incredible job of elevating the issue of the sexual violence that we see in our military. there's one issue that i see sort of overlap between what we are talking about today and that, and that's the rotcs on

our campuses across the country where many of our officers are trained and come through. and i have certainly heard information that concerns me and think we need to raise -- elevate the focus on that in terms of data collection and understanding really what's happening. and so it compliments your leadership on that committee with what we're doing here today. so, again, thank you to all of you for coming. see a fellow badger. thank you for being here. >> thank you. we're glad you are here, senator. let's start with the cleary act. maybe alison, you can start off. all of these -- everyone should jump in. this is a free-flowing discussion. the worst thing is for you to leave the room saying i wish i

would have told her this, i wish i would have told them about this. we want to hear everything that frustrates you, everything that you think is working, everything that you think is problematic. please don't hold back. the clary act, i think it was enshigs e envisions it would be data that could be relied on and consumable by someone. i don't think anybody knows the data is there. getting past the first problem that it's not reliable. the second problem is that it doesn't appear to me to be out there where families even know that it exists. this is something they could ask for and find out what the data is on a campus. alison, who do you believe the data is intended to be for? >> sure. again, i just interviewed one of

our founders for something separate. we talked about the intention being for -- to be forwarned, to let people know when they go to a campus what crimes have been reported on the kaccampus. the other side to that -- you said to air anything we had to air. i will take that to heart. often, how it plays out if you have a campus, for example, that reports 60 sex offenses versus a campus that reports zero, the per session by the public is that that campus reporting 60 is unsafe. when i would disagree with that. that campus reporting 60 and as a former prosecutor you know, it's an under reported crime. if students are coming forward and reporting and they are seeking help and they know where to go, they are getting the education to know to call that sexual assault. so that's one of the challenges i see with the numbers.

the annual security reports that campuses produce that are to be made public for families, for employees are wonderful documents that provide summaries of policies. one of the other struggles i see is to check off the compliance box, sometimes is those documents are created and they have policy statements so summaries, for example, of the sex offense policies. but then there's no complete policy behind it. or if there is a complete policy behind it, that policy is not being implemented on the campus. i'm sure some of my colleagues could add to what i just -- how i started the conversation. >> how do we get -- how do we do better on the problem that if a college campus says they have had zero, that should be a red flag to any parent, that means they are not reporting the statistics and don't take this problem seriously as opposed to one that may have 60 which is counter intuitive, it may mean they have a robust program where they are accurately collecting

data and victims feel comfortable coming forward? does anybody have any ideas as to how we could get past that bump? because that's going to be the problem. i think that is the problem now. i think there's an incentive to not accurately report. >> i think the white house actually already started addressing that. they called it a climate survey. they are talking about a victimization survey. when we measure that and have that number at the top of the chart saying there's 100 rapes and have the number being and only five are reports, that's how you contrast. sexual violence is everywhere. we need to get that understood. i think when colleges have to face those numbers that incentive is to have the 60, close the gap as well as decrease victimization. the white house was looking to implement that. we start thinking about that now. the challenge is it's geographic by bound. how does that work with

victimization? >> right. so the answer to the problem is maybe mandating? the white house is talking about voluntarily doing climate surveys? >> i'm very for mandating. they can figure out how to make students talk a survey. we need to be thoughtful about how it's framed. you can't be, were you raped? is it t has to be subtle, have you had an experience where you didn't want this to happen? when you force people to identify legally, you will see -- i didn't know what happened to me was rape for a long time. i thought it was my fault or something bad that happened. it took me a long time to come to that realization. the content of the survey is an issue. >> content and probably how it's actually conducted. there's been a long history of victimization surveys in the united states done by the department of justice. do you have thoughts or recommendations on that in terms of people sharing?

>> one of the recommendations that i would encourage is that campuses who are doing surveys use validated instruments for those surveys. so that we are able to be able to compare from campus to campus of information that is coming out of these surveys. in the ways that clary was intended to function. also, that there would be -- able to be comparable data. so that will be possible when we use survey instruments that have been tested, that have been demonstrated to actually measure that which we are hoping to pressure. i would note the university of new hampshire has had for 20 years a survey that they have used and that that has a validated instrument that could be the beginnings of an ininstrument that other campuses could adopt. >> what you are saying is, potentially we -- education or

d.o.j. would come up with a standard survey that everyone would use withsta standard lange on the questions? >> i would hope we would come up with a core of standard information that would be able sto be comparable from institution to institution. but also that institutions be able to adapt some portions of the survey so that they can actually measure some of the other kinds of interventions that are happening from campus to campus. that this serve not only as a tool for consumers to be able to use to compare data but also as a learning instrument for the campus itself to be able to identify what practices are effective and it is my hope that those kinds of measures will feed into the yawning gap of research and evidence on what our best practices for prevention as well as response on college campus. >> to state the painfully obvious, those surveys need -- we need to be able to afford

whoever responds to those surveys anonymity, confidentiality, so we can get at the heart of what's happening. because if anyone has an inkling that their identity is going to be revealed, they won't reveal. >> i was going to say, a good model would be something like the american college health association, which administers survey annually at many college campuses. looking at some of the instruments that they use to administer many institutions if not all regularly do. it's just a matter -- >> which is private health data but done anonymously. there is confidence that the people taking the survey realize it's anonymous. >> absolutely. >> to speak to senator mccask l mccaskill's question about the accessibility of the data, currently, depending on how you filter the data and how you access the data through the website, if it pushes the information out in a csv format,

sometimes the tab data comes out incorrect. there are many typographical errors. there's errors in spacing. there's errors in the columns. we found that to be a huge challenge. >> tell me again where you are getting -- you used an acronym. sg >> the office of post secondary education website. it often comes out with significant typographical errors, spacing issues, the headings are sometimes not correct. there are periods s where they should not be. it questions how valid it s. if you are getting the most accurate data for the campus you are looking at. >> related to that, talking about accessibility of data, obviously the government came out with notalone p.gov. they listed the 55 skchools undr investigation, but they won't do that again.

you have to request it. one of the big problems with the issue -- law enforcement can speak do it, it's a violence issue. people don't know there's a complaint on campus. if they did, they would feel more comfortable sharing information. the data gets flushed out. other incidents that weren't reported come forward. i think data is of concern. >> let me ask our police chief, one of the things that i real e realized is that the clary act uses definitions from both the ucr, feiucr and national incident base reporting and it's my understanding that if someone is taken by force into their car and driven across town and then they break in somebody else's apartment and then there is a rape, you are reporting a

kidnapping, a rape and a breaking and entering as three separate incidents and nobody has any idea that it was the same all in one crime. is that actually the way it works? >> yes, madam senator. one of the challenges with campus law enforcement -- it's something we have talked greatly about is, not accessibility to the information but making it useful. that's one of the problems that we encounter in our business and law enforcement on campuses is the challenge of the differences between ucr and that over time the clary act has expanded some definitions that aren't covered that creates logistical challenges for campus law enforcement to address when other counterparts or sheriff's departments or local agencies, they are counting these statistics yet college campuses are required to determine where in specifically does it meet the particular crime, because as we know, state laws vary throughout this country. so being able to try to capture

that particular information. then to answer the second portion of your question, the hierarchy of rule of how we count the particular crimes, when we talk about making it accessible we talk about making it accessible and useful. the fact of the matter is when the information comes out, it's aggregate data. it looks like all these crimes are happening on your campus, when in fact it may be one incident. >> somebody who goes on a crime spree one night and could blow up the data over one continuing criminal behavior over one evening because it embraced so many different types of behavior. >> exactly. a good example would be a hate crime. maybe you have to designate a crime as a robbery, but there's some hate in it, you designate

it a robbery as to where it occurred and as a hate crime. it looks to the untrained eye as two crimes. >> why are we using both uci and neiber. does anybody know how that came about? >> rather than putting statistics and numbers, schools have the flexibility of writing a narrative and showing it is one event, and that is what we turned out to do with the gender violence crime. my concern, actually is we only count by victimization. so you can have a gang rape that's one rape even though there's ten perpetrators. that, to me, is shocking. and that's coming up with a bigger problem where we have fraternities and teams. that's a common form of sexual violence. >> we're counting all the crimes but not all the different perpetrators. >> yes. we forget where this problem's coming from.

>> just to add on it too. there's also the public crime law requirement under clery, you have the ability to detail in more plain language, user-friendly language so to speak that's accessible. so if you are looking at it in institution statistics, you have the ability to request the crime log and get a sense for what occurred or what happened. so there'd be a little more detail there. >> can i just add to that? that is true about the crime log. and i'm thinking as a parent of the and the whole idea is to give parents and students to the institution informed information, the probability that they're going to even know that they can request the crime log, much less read through it to figure out was it one event being counted as many or a gang rape being counted as one. i think that's too much to ask. >> and the third issue to counting, is it's reported as raw numbers.

so two rapes at a campus that's a small cosmetology school, 25 students, in a small rural area, versus a large institution, two rapes, 100,000 people. they're both two rapes, both horrible but it's a different safety situation. i think, in my mind. and with the raw numbers, there's no way for a parent to compare apples to apples. >> so oh do we need a whole new data schematic for this? anybody willing to sign up for that project? >> i think you can capitalize that alone. you can go in and type in your zip code and see the crisis intervention surveys. type in your school, have the ability to contrast a few colleges. if you want the data to be useful, we need it in one location. and the question on the crime log, it's typical to be on campus and can you go see it. it can also be electronic.

maybe schools can have a link to. >> it seems to me, with technology today, we ought to be able to do a lot of this more simply with electronics. there ought to be a way that you could have a user-friendly dynamic, where you could go on and click on a university, get the data, get the crime logs. get, and so you could get context, how many students, and even allow the university to talk about, you know, where their numbers are. are they up? are they down? let them do a narrative to explain, for example, if they are a high number, that this is because they've put an emphasis on reporting, that they have doubled the number of rape crisis centers and counselor and as a result victims -- i don't know. should that all be done through

clery? probably, right? >> one of the things i think would be very helpful and i would just reflect also that when we look at the numbers and we know that reports don't equal a clear picture of what's happening on campus, i talk to a lot of parents, and parents want to know, how do i make determinations about what is a safer campus for me to send my child. and i think that looking at the prevention and response efforts that are happening on a campus are an excellent determination, because that is something that campuses are able to effect and that's something that we have more evidence makes an impact on campus. so i think, as we're looking at finding ways to compare campuses, i think allowing for parents to have the data about those prevention efforts and have the data about those response efforts in addition to

the reported incidence would be a very helpful matrix. >> it's context. >> absolutely. it's context, not only what's happening on the campus, but what is the campus doing to address these matters, both proactively and in the event of a traumatic incident. >> one of the things the white house talked about and spent some time on and haven't, i don't think it's come to any conclusion, and that is, should somehow this data be included in school rankings, like the u.s. news and world report rankings? >> one of the challenges with that is because we're requiring schools to self-report. this data that it might not actually paint an accurate picture if you're just looking at the statistical numbers. if you're looking at things, you know, that holly mentioned, like what are the prevention efforts happening on campus. do they kent students with a local rape crisis center. do they have a record of crisis intervention, prevention.

that data may speak more loudly in itself. students have filed more and more clery act violations against their campuses. we cannot trust every institution to report the data accurately. if you look at new york state campuses, for example, if you go into the clery data and look at how many assaults are happening per campus in new york state, it's less than a half of an assault happening per campus. and if you have one in five woman who's a result of a completed or attempted sexual assault, we know that's not correct. and you really have to rely on the institutions to general rate that data, so i don't know if using those numbers is the best way. the climate surveys would be a more accurate picture. >> absolutely. and i know they are trying to figure out how to measure, not just compliance with the laws, but true safety. and so having an objective third party kind of coming in as a watchdog and saying

institutions, of course you think you're doing a great job, but do you have this policy? do you have this practice? are you coordinated with local law enforcement or do you have your own security in force. i think we need to look outside schools to see what's really happening. >> i think it's a very wise suggestion to look at climate survey, but in terms of getting better, more accurate, higher quality cleary data, are there clear impediments we should be thinking about? we're talking about campuses that have their own police department versus campuses that are reporting and interacting with one or more municipal police departments that are responding because there isn't a campus. you know, definitions that may be being applied differently in different states and different campuses. are there a set of clear obstacles that we ought to be

grappling with to make that campus-based data more accurate? >> i have something, if you don't mind. one of the things that's very difficult for me is the compliance person -- >> move the mic up a little closer. there you go. >> one of the most difficult things for me as a compliance person is compliance is all about training, getting everyone on the same page, reporting the same thing. even the way the law is written right now, we have to train employees on this jurisdiction. dating, violence, domestic violence and stalking, they may or may not have a definition. they may or may not have a definition and consent. when i report for my school, i must report based on the cleary definitions. and they're not always the same, obviously. so to me, there's a disconnect. to me, it needs to be very

simple. everybody has the same definition. we all report on the same things. apples to apples. >> and i think to piggyback on that, the first thing i want to talk about is we talked about having this document that talked about prevention and has the statistics. institutions have to do that right now with their annual security report which essentially has these cliff notes and policies, and then the numbers. and if order to put that together well, it requires training. so having training, that when you have these summary policies, these policies actually have full policies that they support. and then a step further, the institutions are trained to implement them. what we've seen with a lot of the cases on college and

university campuses across the news is they're not implementing policies well, and survivors are suffering as a result. and that's when you see major changes made. so some of the institutions that have made some major changes, specific to cleary compliance as well as title ix -- that's a conversation for two weeks from now. they're making changes because they've been called out on it. there's been public scrutiny. so now they're investing resources, leadership. they're talking about cleary when their board of trustees or chancellors have never talked about it or possibly have misspelled it for several years. so now they're talking about it and doing some work around compliance. so a lot of, too, a lot of what is there in the law, if you're trained on it, if it's being implemented, i think works well.

the challenge i see a lot day to day as a campus director and as an organization that works and trains folks on compliance with cleary, we get some people who get it on campuses who really are in a compliance role, and they get it, and they understand what the requirements are. but they're that lone soldier. a lot of times when we talk institutions. we'll say just support, ask them what they're doing and how to help. even if having the president's name attached to something can help. so i think there's -- and i don't have a solution, i wish i did -- but you can't have a conversation without ignoring the organizational elements. >> it has almost been like a check the box thing on too many campuses. we are going to do the bare minimum weigh have to do to be compliant.

but we're not having the support on campus to make this work the way it's supposed to work. i mean, frankly, we don't have a data yet from the survey, but i think we do need to make some changes, because nothing is more frustrating than a rote exercise that you are required to do that has no meaning. that's why people get mad at the government. and that's one of the problems that we've got here. if every campus took it seriously and tried to support it and understand that there's something that's required other than cut and paste -- oh, it's time to cut and paste on the security report again, right? and, and put the same language in. i bet if we look, those reports change very little. >> and i'm someone that says, i wish we didn't have to do enforcement. i wish we could train and educate and people would do it. but we're seeing, anecdotally, is that enforcement is the only way we're going to see changes. i can name five institutions on one hand who do it really well. they're all under investigation. >> right. >> to piggyback off what allison

was saying in october of last year, our results were published from our accountability project. and we looked at 300 school policies related to campus sexual assault. a third were not compliant with the cleary act in written policy. so we're seeing a third of the schools out of 300 samples are not complying in some way with their policy how can they be compliant in action. >> that means thousands of schools are not compliant. >> exactly. >> and i'd like to add, to me, as a compliance officer, what i do is look at the statutes, i look at the regulation and then i help administration and management interpret it into a policy, and then i work with the units to help get it done. but i'm a compliance officer, and my management team, they're not experts in sexual assault, dating violence, domestic

violence, preventing those types of crimes. what we need is simple things. give us a model policy. what does it look like? and not just cut and paste. here's the legalese from the legislation. i put it in my policy, now we have a policy. we need the procedures to implement it. and i thought of a simple solution. the department of education, they conduct audits. surely they could publish best practices. what have they seen when they've gone into institutions. the institutions that are implementing procedures that are right. could they publish their audit report so that we can see, the good and the bad. >> where are those audit reports? do those audit reports get published? >> our office of student aid does compliance reviews, and that information does become public. i want -- >> and where, if i wanted to go look at the results of a compliance audit done by d. or

not, department of education, where would i find it. >> it's on the fsa data website. >> what's that stand for? >> the office of federal student aid? >> so click on there, am i going to be able to find this, these audits and universities that have been cited for not being compliant on clery? >> yes. >> and is that just part of a larger audit, or do you do clery specific audits? >> we have put a highlight on clery in recent years. in 2010, the office of federal student aid, which is responsible for enforcing the cleary rules created a special unit that does nothing but cleary compliance. it started out with five staff members. it's grown to 13, and we have plans to double that in the next few years. so there are specifically cleary

compliance reviews being done. as well, when we do audits on larger compliance issues, we also look at clery through them. so it's being done through two different mechanisms >> so about how many institutions on an annual basis are getting a clery compliance audit either through this clery specific unit or as part of the larger student aid, is that what it's called? >> yes. >> a larger fsa audit. what would be the number on an annual basis in. >> i don't know the number on an annual basis. about 300. >> 300 a year. and has there been any attempt to collate those results and put a report together on the status of clery compliance on college campuses on an annual basis that we could look at year to year? has there been any effort to do that? >> we have not done it yet, but we are going to implement that. >> okay. and i, i've, besides being a prosecutor, i was also an auditor. you have 7,000 campuses? >> yes, we certainly are planning to grow that office, and as i mentioned, we are also doing that through our larger compliance efforts, so it's not just 13 people.

>> how many of the just clery audits are being done by the 13 auditors on an annual basis as opposed to the 300 number? the clery special unit, how many are they doing? >> about 20. >> that's still a lot for 13 people. i can't wait to look at the audits. i want to see what they are. >> we actually have a summary, if it would be helpful, too, of the findings that we put together and a spreadsheet i'm happy to share. >> that would be great. i'd like to see it. >> to the don't's credit, they're the only department enforcing it.

they're not specialized. and that is a big part of this problem. we spend all day making laws, making rule, making regulations. it's overwhelming to institutions. then when it comes to survivors, you don't have enforcers who know the details. so on the government's side there could be a better pro; having more people, having more funding, not a big person on giving more money for other than survivors to recover, but if you're going to spend money somewhere, please spend it on enforcement. allow them to have specialized units. >> or at least forced integration. >> and i think that would help institutions, because they are splitting their minds on the issue of sexual assault between two laws. and now three. and it is difficult. so if the government can figure out how to put it into one unit, so can institutions. >> and they can model that better for the institutions. >> absolutely. >> let me add this to that. i was also a former auditor but

of clinical trials. and what we did for fda studies, they had a wonderful checklist, if you will. so we knew when the audit team came in, what are they going to be looking for, so that's whew -- what we were going to be graded on. you've got all this time where we're not getting it right, and i'd rather get in front of it and get it know, caroline, you've got to do x, y, z. fine. >> the only problem with that, i will tell you that having, when the federal government does audits on law enforcement, on child support, and when i took over that office, we weren't collecting very much child support, but we were passing every audit. so they were so busy checking the box that they knew they were going to be looked at, nobody was asking the question, why aren't we collecting more child support. so they were busy. so you have to be careful when you do that because then institutions train themselves to be audit responsive as opposed to getting at the underlying problem.

it's not that they pass the audit, it's that victims are getting the services on campuses. young people on campuses are being trained about the reality of this problem and we are getting more law enforcement activity around these crimes. i mean, that's ultimately the goal here. that's the ultimate deterrence. i mean, it's hard for me to talk about the criminal justice system today, because i've got

to wait two weeks to do that, but it is a huge part of the problem. let's look at some of the other things i have on my list here. the reporting changes that are coming through save, which were part of vowa. i know we're supposed to see a draft soon? >> yes, we will publish that in mid june. >> under the new law, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking must be included. how are you going to handle the confusion around those three crimes? we already have the confusion of reporting each crime separately, but maybe not each perpetrator

separately. are you going to be providing definitions for the difference between dating violence and domestic violence? >> yes. we had a negotiated rule-making committee. and several of the members of this round table served on that committee. and we were very grateful for the expertise that you brought to the table. the committee represented a very wide group of interests, from law enforcement, that's victims advocates, state attorney generals. basically, we tried to get the gamut of different interests that would be affected by these regulations.

and we grappled with a lot of issues that we've been talking about today, including definitions, including how crimes are counted. we talked about training programs as well. and we were able with this group with very different interests to come to consensus on language. and i really credit the group, all of you who worked on that, because a lot of tile and effort went into that, and you've worked very hard to come to consensus on that. so we feel as though we have a very good regulation that we'll be publishing in mid june for public comment and we plan to publish it in final by november 1. >> the definition was the definition on consent, which did come up at the rule-making table and we didn't create. you mentioned the ucr, that leaves it up to states. unfortunately, not all states handle it the same. >> some have incapacitation. >> absolutely. wisconsin used to be one of them. i don't know what can be done on a federal level there, but we did have a very wonderful, the department did a great job of presenting a definition of consent that talks about not only affirmative consent. you don't have to yell no. you are simply focusing on is there a yes, is there an agreement. and absent that, it can't confer consent. that's why it hurts survivors so much to say clearly it's consensual, because you didn't

do x, y, z when you lived through it. that's what's missing, and it needs to exist. >> the problem is, that obviously, this is not a federal crime, unless you're on, in the district of columbia or indian reservations in some instances. you know, these crimes are state crimes. so we can't define for states elements of their crimes. >> but we can do models and incentives. >> we can. and i think that's one thing we should look at in this legislation is how can we incentivize states. i was surprised we had 16 states that said it was only by force or threat of force. that's a lot of states that still don't understand that that is an inappropriate and incomplete definition of consent. >> madam senator, that's exactly what laura was talking about specifically. but also when you go back to negotiating rule making and coming up with a consensus. the piece on the ucr and neibers, if we can get states to be consistent on their laws, dating violence are not listed. so you are going to continue to have an inconsistent definition from what sheriff departments are reporting versus what campuses are reporting. >> should we put clery down as part of the ucr? should it go in to the fbi's uniform crime reporting program? has anybody given that any thought? >> if i felt the data was

accurate, i would say yes, but i know it's very much not at this point. i think in the years to come, when survivors are more empowered, that will change. we'll feel safe coming forward and reporting. i don't know if it would have the effect we want right now, but in the future. >> okay. let's talk a little bit about accountability and enforcement. when i realized that the punishment for the department of education and for d.o.j. is suspending, i know there's a $35,000 fine for violation. but then there's, the punishment that supposedly, supposed to provide all the meat behind this, all the stick behind this is suspending institutions from participating in federal student financial aids program. does anybody believe that punishment is ever going to be given to anyone?

okay. so every time i told my kids, if you did that again i'm never going to speak to you, it took them about ten minutes to do it again because it wasn't a realistic deterrent because they knew it wasn't a realistic punishment. what do we need to do, obviously not just with clery, and by the way, a $35,000 fine is nothing to a large institution. i mean, i can't imagine, what's the annual budget at the university of michigan? >> several billion. >> yeah, so $35,000 fine to an institution that has a $2 billion budget or $3 billion budget, whatever it is, i few it was a lot because you guys have a huge system compared to a small campus that maybe has 500 students, you know, that doesn't appear to make much sense, and it certainly doesn't make sense to threaten something we're

never going to do. so what do we do about meaningful deterrence? does anybody have any ideas about other ways we could make this work? >> this is my favorite discussion to have, because it's so needed. cleary, i do think the fines are small ir. i don't know if there's a way to do it percentwise there is a way to do it percentage wise so it does hurt. at lunch we were discussing penn state getting fined more for their sports violations, millions versus what clery could do it. i think you're hitting at title ix. there are two ways to get at it. one requires voluntary compliance. tufts. we saw it first, they violated and they made another agreement again. watch out, you're only going to get another contract. these are survivors' lives being destroyed, leaving schools.

so i do think we need intermediate sanctions. save was with aiming at that. obviously that fine is arbitrary. it isn't meaningful. i don't know if we can adjust it per institution. under title ix you have to remove that voluntary requireme requirement. we're being way too nice to institutions. and as a survivor who suffered at an institution. they don't care. they didn't have a cost. they still don't. and we need to change that. >> anybody else on fines? >> i would say that institutions are already operating, i think, under a lot of anxiety and fear around addressing sexual assault on a college campus. i would be concerned about adding more sticks with no carrots additionally. one of the things that we don't have enough of are programs or grants that encourage and inspire innovation and new practices and new knowledge about this issue, when we're placing all of our resources in

enforcement and not complementing that with innovation, then i think that brother' creating a situation where we do have box checking instead of new thinking. >> well, you know, one of the things about that, and i understand what you're saying, i get what you're saying. but one of the things that's disappointing to me about this is that we depend on college campuses for innovation for so many things in our society. and you have on a college campus, and i don't want to pick on michigan, although i kind of would like to pick on michigan. if you were kansas i'd really like to pick on you. your system, you have law schools. you have a medical school. you are training psychologists and psychiatrists. and social workers.

you have every discipline. and academic excellence in every discipline that is needed to come together on this problem. and you have endowments. you have alumni. if this problem is causing such stress to universities, and it is, because they are worried that they are going to be next. there is going to be a victim come forward and tell another horrific tale about how they were marginalized, how they were shunted aside. there is a trail of tears of inaction from people who were in a position to help. why we are not getting more innovation from these college campuses on an interdisciplinary approach that they are willing to put money behind from their own resources to make it work better. >> i am very proud to say the university of michigan is in

fact innovating that we created one of the first ever primary prevention programs for the college-age population, that we have implemented a control group matched four-year longitudinal study of that program so we can vigorously identify its efficacy. we are planning a second as well. and that is because university of michigan has an extraordinary wealth of resources in all of the ways in which you've identified. and we have chosen to invest them in this effort of the many campuses do not have that benefit of the and we need to be able to extend the ability to innovate to other campuses that don't have those kinds of resources because campuses look different, and we need to have different kinds of knowledge and different kinds of innovations to address specific campus populations. and for those campuses that don't have these resources it's important that they have the

support and research to do that new thinking >> so if michigan has, i'm not, i'm sure you do have a program that you've put together that is excellent. that's one of the reasons you're on this panel. what are we doing, and maybe, laura, you can speak to this or any of the other round-table participants. what are we doing to share that? if you put together a model that works. >> mm-hm. >> where you've got an interdisciplinary approach, where you've got a criminal justice degree, where forensic interviewing is taught, so there are people on campus who understand, there's a big difference between where were you, what did you do, why, why are we not seeing this cross pollinate across the country? >> i now the office of violence against women has been highlighting what has been done, what does work, and i think that they should be provided resources to do that. i will say in this discussion of carrot, they'll give a grant for three years and the school gets rid of their program when the grant's up. it is about enforcement, because schools will have an incentive to keep funding their own programs. they have money. they don't need more. they need to use that money wisely. and unless there's a cost, they won't. there are models of schools that do well. university of michigan has been highlighted. i'm very proud that they have

done such gait things. but leave that to newspapers and other things. i don't know if that's the business of the government to be doing it. the government needs to put the incentive in the right place. we don't need to be handing out money to rich institutions. harvard is in trouble. they have money. they will figure it out. right now, those who leave school in debt have no compensation ever for what is done to them. it is about enforcement because schools will have an incentive to keep funding their own programs. they have money. they don't need more. they need to use that money wisely. unless there is a cost, they won't. but there are models of schools that do well. university of michigan has been highlighted. i am very proud that they have done such great things but leave that to newspapers and other things. i don't know if that's really the business of the government to be doing that. government needs to put the incentive in the right place.

we don't need to be handing out money to rich and wealthy institutions. harvard is in trouble. hopkins is in trouble. they have money. they will figure it out. because right now the people that are suffering are the victims who leave school in debt, have no compensation, ever, for what is done to them. we're going to give money, let's give scholarships to survivors who are brave enough to file complaints and have a negative experience on their campus to make the school better for

everyone else. >> the prosecutor in me just said we can't give scholarships to someone who's brave enough to make a complaint because then they're going to be cross examined because they got a scholarship. their credibility would be attacked on that. we doesn't do that. but i get the point you are making but it is a valid one. does anybody disagree we should be look at fines tied to the size of the school as opposed to a set amount? >> i don't know that i necessarily agree. i say that reluctantly. i agree with the point that holly made that -- and again, going back to i did make the statement that institutions that have changed have been under investigation. they haven't even been found in violation yet so they've made the changes from my view based on -- or from where i sit based on the media scrutiny. they've main made changes even before they're been any finding of violation yet.

so while fines, i'm sure, serve as some deterrent, i almost think that the public being out there in public, the attention that has been on this issue particularly in the last six months to two years, but six months in particular, i think the spotlight has really shown on this. so i don't know that putting all of the eggs into looking at fines and the energy into looking at fines. i'm not sure it's the way to tackle it. holly makes a great point that i really agree with coming, putting on my prevention hat, working in a community organization in prevention and formally in a college in prevention, i was it. so i was charged with preventing alcohol use, suicide, eating disorders, sexual assault, dating -- whatever the issue, whatever that came up through athletics, through greek life. they'd pick up the phone, okay, we have an eating disorder and you need to go out --

and, you know, beyond writing a check, which i certainly can't do from our non-profit budget, how do we, how do they do this, right? and even if it's creating a grant program. and we have one. they do not hand out a lot of those. it's only a small amount. and it's writing, again, being at a institution who could have applied for that. i would have had to then write that federal grant, with maybe the help of irb, who would just sign a piece of paper. so i think that struggle comes in, and it goes back to some of the organizational dynamics within in terms of what is valued, and is prevention valued? and i wish i didn't have to say it, because i value it, but i don't know that it's valued in all institutions yet. i think we have a long way to go on the prevention side. >> but if we don't step up the enforcement side, i mean, the enforcement side brings the media attention.

so, if we're going to say, the only thing we can rely on, that makes these universities and colleges do what they should be doing is for them to get a bad story. >> sure. >> first of all, that's a lot of victims. >> yeah. and, you know, that, to me, would be a depressing conclusion. so we've got to figure out some way to up the ante that is short of waiting for another tragedy to hit the pages. >> i would say a 13 team person can't do it, so i think it's the changes i've seen institutions start to make are when they're immediately under investigation, so no fine yet. we don't know if the fine is $35,000 or upwards of $1 million. so i would almost rather see the investment in a team. >> but in all fairness, the fines will be paying for this. we have this coming in our government, where does the money come from? i think every survivor would back that up.

>> senator mccaskill, if i could add that enforcement, i understand that component, especially being in law enforcement. the important piece is to have clarity. you're enforcing something, yet there's so many people so confused about how to read the regulation or understand what's going on. so it's hard to say up enforcement when you have so many people who don't understand the regulations. it comes down to training. it comes down to doing a lot of things on the back end. i work with a lot of really good people who want to do the right thing. so i'm cautious to label institutions when you know, you know, the backside of people who are, a lot of people are really doing the right thing. it's just mass confusion. >> a lot of it isn't about law. it's about treatment, value that you give to students. i understand. i went to law school. i studied this law. i understand how hard it is.

but we're talking about victims. >> at the end of the day, we all want to be on the same page, and that's exactly what i'm talking about. >> through these round tables, i already, today i thought i knew this area pretty well. i've already learned several things today that i didn't know. there are ways that we can simplify this. i think particularly around what needs to be reported and how you define it. and we need to be less reticent about best practices models being provided to schools. i know the task force has done some of that tool kits. for universities, to help them figure out the right way, and the more we do that, the more consistency we get from campus to campus, and it means all of it gets more reliable. because we can compare apples to apples. we have no ability to know which campuses are doing well and which ones aren't because they aren't even doing it the same way. i get the point you're making. you can watch the rest of this at c-span.org. you will find streaming video of

all the events we cover along with live video streams and scheduling information. c-span's campaign 2014 is bringing you more than a hundred debates for the control of congress. stay in touch with coverage and engage @cspan on twitter and facebook.com/c-span. tonight see a new hampshire senate debate between gene shaheen and republican and former has mass senator scott brown. at 9:00 the first and only debate for oregon's senate between jeff merkley and monica webby. 10:00 a large field of candidates in louisiana. lance mcallister debates harris brown, raffle abraham, clyde hallaway for the fifth district seat tonight on c-span.

be part of c-span's campaign 2014 coverage. follow us on twitter and like us on facebook to get debate schedules, video clips of key moments, debate previews from the politics team. c-span is bringing you over 100 is that the, house and governor debates. you can share your reactions to what the candidates are saying. the battle for control of congress, stay in touch and engage by following us on twitter,@cspan and like us on facebook at facebook.com/cspan. now more on college campus sexual assaults. panelists include a senior justice department official, university administrators and advocates for victims of sexual assault. this is an hour. thank you so much, senator. i'm so pleased to be here today with you and with senator tester and with my co-panelists.

i'm so grateful to both of you for your commitment to this incredibly important issue and to all of you at this table for your commitment to doing something to address the pervasive and horrible problem of sexual violence on campuses. as senator mccaskill said today, i am not able to address individual fact patterns or hypotheticals, because we want to ensure that we are able to conduct investigations of complaints and cases with the kind of independence that we need in order to be able to ensure respect in the court system. but i am delighted to be here today to talk generally about this problem and to answer whatever questions i can. i don't think i need to tell any of you that sexual violence is a form of discrimination. it refers to physical acts that are perpetrated against a person's will, or where a person is incapable of consent, can include rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual abuse and sensual coercion. i use the term sexual assault to refer to all of those. they are obviously a safety

issue. but importantly, for the department of justice and the department of education, they are also a civil rights issue, and we have tools that we are committed to using to the utmost extent in order to ensure that people's civil rights are protected on the nation's campuses. we enforce a variety of statutes that have relevance to the issue of sexual assaults. one, of course, is title ix of the education amendments of 1972, which we enforce in conjunction with the department of education and other agencies that fund institutions of higher education. we also enforce title iv of the civil rights act of 1964, which bans, among other thing, sex discrimination in public schools and schools of higher education. in addition we address the violent control act and the state streets act.

and those statutes allow us to take a holistic approach, because it gives us jurisdiction over sex discrimination by law enforcement agencies. and as senator tester knows, we worked very cooperatively with both the university of montana at missoula, and the missoula police department to enter into agreements to address the handling of sexual assault complaints by students and members of the missoula community using all of these statutes. and i think our hope is that those agreements will be a model for other universities around the country to be able to adopt the kind of proactive steps that are necessary to really address these problems. so just a word on what those proactive steps are and the

provisions of our agreements with the university and the law enforcement entities in montana, one thing is a requirement that universities have clear and accessible policies that comply with the law. it is critical that students know their rights and that students, faculty, staff and everyone on campus know their responsibilities when it comes to dealing with sexual assault, without inclusive policies, too often, schools treat victims of, for example, same sex sexual assault or dating violence the same. saying that it is only perpetrated by men against women or stranger rape. it is neither of those things, and schools need to have the kinds of culturally inclusive policies that enable them to deal with each case on campus. they need to broadly disseminate these. the best-written policies in the world are not worth very much if students don't know where to go when they have a concern.

that's something that the university of montana has now done very well. when we did our investigation, we discovered that they had eight different policies that referred to sexual assaults and sexual harassment in various capacities. and it just wasn't clear where students were supposed to do or what the processes the university was supposed to follow were. pursuant to the agreement, they have now created a policy that provides for a uniform and clearly disseminated way to address sexual assault. training is also critical. for school officials, for students, for any one involved in the investigative or

disciplinary process. people really need to know how to understand, how to investigate a complaint of sexual assault, how to treat victims with sensitivity and respect, and what kinds of remedies they need to institute when they find that sexual assaults have in fact occurred. in montana, our agreement calls for training campus law enforcement on investigative techniques. our office of violence against women and deputy director allison randle is with me today. it includes training on various ways to address sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking and other forms of sexual misconduct. ensuring a response to complaints is an effective way to deal with sexual assault. we look at how campus law enforcement and campus officials deal with sexual assault, how they treat the victims and the perpetrators as well.

again, at the office of the violence of women, the act provides for programs that provide for training for sexual assault response teams, for sexual assault nurse examiners. for investigation on trauma and the special investigative techniques they need to take for people with these horrible forms of assault. i'm happy to talk more about those programs. finally, if they find sexual assault, universities need to take effective corrective action. that means stopping the assault, preventing it from happening again and remedying the impact of that assault, whether it's on the individual victim or the campus as a whole.

individual relief can include enabling students to change their course schedule, re-take classes without penalty. additional time to prepare for exams. expunging grades that were reduced by the trauma that they were suffering. institutional and campus-wide responses can include improving training, changing policies, increasing monitoring of spots on campus where sexual assault has occurred. ensuring that everyone on campus knows their rights and their responsibilities with regard to addressing sexual assault. just two other things that i wanted to mention that we do. one is that in addition to working directly with universities, we file amicus briefs in federal court to address the legal standards that apply to sexual assaults, and i think those have been effective in shaping the way in which the law has been applied. we also work very closely, as you know, with the office of civil rights, the department of education, both on investigations and enforcement action and on development of policy guidance and anticipate that we will continue to do so. in closing, i just want to again thank you so much for the

opportunity to appear. thank you for your commitment to this issue. i really look forward to today's discussion. i know that together we can really come up with effective solutions to this ongoing problem. >> thank you, ms. samuels. we really appreciate you being here. senator blumenthal has joined us, he has already had a series of round tables in his state, similar to what we're doing but on different connecticut campuses. and he and i are working closely on developing legislation going forward. would you like to make a few comments, senator blumenthal? >> just to thank you, senator mccaskill for your leadership on this issue and for convening the series of roundtables that we're having and thank you to every one of you for being here today. i have a number of questions. i'm going to wait until we finish with some more of the statements. but thank you for all your great work on this issue, and coming

together in this way. i think we have the tremendous opportunity, huge potential to really achieve some lasting and vitally needed progress in this area. so thank you for all your great work. and thank you again. >> thank you, senator. why don't we go around the table and start with katie and go clockwise. if you would identify yourself and where you're from and take a moment to explain your involvement in this issue and in what capacity you serve. >> my name is katie eichley. i am from the university of minnesota. our sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking program on our campus. i have seven years of being a judicial officer and investigator for the university and so i have that unique perspective of being a student conduct officer, writing policy and investigating cases, and now more of an advocacy role. and so working with our

campuses, with both policies and prevention efforts. >> to be clear, katie, when you were an investigator, were you investigating title ix complaints? >> i was not necessarily investigating title ix complaints. >> good afternoon. i'm deborah noble-triplett, and i'm here today leading the task force from our president, tim wolf who is very passionate about this topic and would like to ensure not only that our four campuses in our system, our campuses that are safe and have the appropriate communication of policies, the appropriate prevention programs, and the appropriate training, but also that we have a culture of respect. and driving the task force that was formed in february for our university is an effort to evaluate all of our policies,

all of our practices and all of our investigatory practices as it relates to mental health issues, which we know can be onset from the trauma of a sexual assault but also to look at what we do for not only victims but those who are alleged perpetrators to ensure due process. so we've been extensive in our efforts and are looking to become exemplar of the best practice in the months and days to come. >> hi, thank you for having me. i'm ann from the american association of the university of women. aew is a national organization with over 170,000 members and supporters. 1,000 branches and 800 college and university partners across the country.

in addition to the advocacy work we do on issues including title ix, campus safety, we also support women who are pursuing higher education by giving out around $4 million in scholarships every year, training and working with student leaders on college campuses and conducting research on topics like harassment and violence on campus. >> thank you. >> i'm kathryn samuels. i wonder if i could introduce my colleagues, dan goldberg, allison randall and becky monroe in the civil rights division. thank you. >> i first want to say thank you so much for having me here and for your leadership on the issue. it means so much to survivors to see you taking this on. my name is dana bolger. i'm a very recent amhurst college graduate and a former co-director of a grass-roots, student led group.

>> hi, there. my name's john kelly, i'm a rising senior at tufts university and a special projects organizer for know your ix alongside dana. i recently finished up a stint on the rule making committee through the department of education with cat here. and i'm a trained rape crisis counselor for the state of massachusetts. >> hi, my name is cat riley. i am title ix coordinator for the university of texas branch in galveston island. i have worked at five different institutions. a new career was really born april of 2011. and that's the title ix coordinator and my role became that at that time. we have been pursuing the educational pieces, training, victim advocacadvocacy, all of issues in each of the schools

that i have been at. so i try to be very inclusive in that process. >> i'm horrible at technology. i will say this right now. it's difficult. i'm lindy aldrich. i bring a unique perspective to this. we are a legal aid provider. we have a second office in oregon. we serve over 400 victims of rape and sexual assault a year, and we specialize only in rape and sexual assault. we are generalist lawyers. the population is so young for this crime. education became a massive part of our practice. i'm the managing attorney as well, so i hear almost every case that comes through the doors. what we realized after 11 years of being open is we have a huge amount of knowledge. we work with victims in disciplinary hearings. we ask for accommodations. we file title ix ucr complaints. instead of sitting on our strategies we could go out and teach them. for the last four or five years we've been going out and working with campuses.

we work very closely with the office of violence against women. we teach with the mississippi cooh ligs against sexual assault. we work with campus grantees. and i do consultations with schools all across the country. i bring a varied experience. not only just in education but training on the higher ed side as well. >> great. well, i've got far more questions than we have time. but i also want everyone to feel very comfortable jumping in. this is a discussion. this is not a formal hearing. so please contribute when you've got something to say. the worst thing that could happen is for us to finish a couple hours of this and you walk out of this room sayi, boy, they need to know this. we are here to listen and learn. and not pontificate. i'll start with a few questions and then i'll turn it over to my colleagues to ask some questions. but you should feel comfortable asking each other questions also along the way. as long as we are respectful. ms. samuels probably can't answer all of them.

you may want to ask her about specific cases or specific hypothetical. us let's start with what institutions are doing now. what i have been surprised about is i really got into the weeds on this, is how different every >> and i know i think there was a comprehensive set of guidance besides the two dear colleague letters that have come out from justice, the q&a that came out the end of april i thought it was rable in terms of how comprehensive it was and to me it gave a lot of quitance on a lot of different topics. but what i want to try to drill down on today is what are the things that we should legislate about how institutions are handling this. what are the things we should avoid legislating on.

not every problem lends itself to a legislative solution. sometimes we have universities checking too many boxes. meanwhile they are not really getting at the essence of the problem which is how much do students know and do we have counsellors? is there a safe access point and have we figured out public safety versus confidentiality. obviously there is a stress there that we have got to manage. so let me start first with this. is 60 days right now, universities have 60 days to complete an investigation. is that long enough? do we need to look at the 60-daytime limit on an investigation in any way? >> i would be glad to speak to that. 60 days in terms of the hard work of the investigation is adequate. i have done cases that involved 45 men and 60 women and was able to facilitate that all within 60

days. one challenge that is presented if you are at a systems school, it depends on who the respondent is. how far up can it go? can it be handled to general council at the higher level and how much longer that takes. that's a bit of a challenge. >> anybody else have input? >> i would at that it is adequate. there is confusion as to when the investigation ended and when things have moved on to a next step in the process. the best practice that may be made clear to communicate that with everyone involved. it can feel like 90 or 180 if they were not open by the way they proceeded and what stage that process is in.

that goes beyond your initial question. i want to emphasize around what step you are in and can impact what the 60 days means and looks like to a school involved in the process. >> do any of you believe universities need guidance on now that they do not have if they bothered to look for it? >> i think that a huge thing at a number of different schools in my experiences of failure schools to recognize the form that same-sex, sexual violence and sexual violence in the queer community takes. how rampant that is. statistics say over 50% of survivors of sexual violence over 40% of bisexual women are survivors and you are ten times more assaulted if you are

identified as gay than if you are straight. in the q&a, for the first time it was exciting to see sexual violence is being acknowledged. something that needs to be handled. more adequately, but the unfortunate reality is right now there is not a lot of guidance over how they can be the most inclusive. when you are talking about how schools can be truly gender-neutral and how policies would adjusticate the sexual assault between men or women. just a couple of things. i would love to claim credit for the q&a that came out and for the prior policies. those were drafted by the department of education and we consult and had a lot of input. i think they deserved the credit

for the release although we agree with the inclusivity point and with many of the others in there. the one thing i would say about legislation is i think that there is a value to uniform standar standards, but what we believe is that universities have to engage in a process that is their own with their communities and with their stakeholders to address the kinds of campuses that they are. the nature of the problems they find and that's why, for example, it's very difficult to have a model sexual harassment and assault policy that works for every institution. it's by the process of engaming that officials can learn what needs to be done and ensure

credibility and buy in. >> maybe model policies are not the place we need to fill, but checklists and protocols have been well-wived as apart of the launch. the faq was incredible and detailed and hope schools are reading it. it it really distills things and it came along with a protocol and there will be a model on how to develop with the local law enforcement and service providers. those are tools when provided on a national level make a difference to administrators and students feel empowered when they can take that. getting that is key. we haven't collected the names

until this is going to start happening this coming year. and i hope we can figure out if we develop it and talk about the right things to develop and we also talk about how we get that information to schools to use. >> it's incredible that we require k-12 to report the title nine coordinator to doe, but not colleges and universities. shouldn't we require colleges and universities to report the name of the title nine coordinator and shouldn't that be something that we should require? is there a disagreement about that? >> it's important for the victim work. many had no understanding of where they are supposed to go. communicating out, i think policy a massive piece of problems. there is a lot of cutting and pasting and they are not taking a strong and deep invested look

at who they are. the things they hold sacred. what does the institution say and how ever they going to infuse that? i would like to make a push as well for the response teams. i go on training with a lot of them. they have a multidisciplinary approach to the problem that yes, it is hard to figure out whose lines begin and end there and if we don't have the discussion and we get the initial arguments and discussions out of the way, we can't build towards facing the issues. i definitely think that telling the victims who they are and creating larger teams to do those and enforce them is huge. >> i would agree there is a lot

of complexities to sexual assault cases that come forward. having those meetings and conversations of here's a case study. how will this individual or partners come and work through this process and then where the gaps in our policy are protocol. also having it written down. to have more and more things to have what this office and department would do. they help to provide that longevity. >> i guess this kind of dove tails on what we have been talking about. you have done work in montana. i feel pretty good about the work that is done in the joint effort moving forward there.

were there gaps that you needed things for congress to do to make your job your timely or get to the point? >> one of the things that we were able to do in montana that we are not able to do in all cases and to launch our own. the only way to initiate a title nine investigation is if we fund a university. title nine effectively follows follow funding. so we had authority under title four to investigate