welcome, miss lhamon. please proceed. >> thank you so much, chairman harken, ranking member alexander, members of the committee. i appreciate the opportunity to share our work with you today. i am catherine lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the united states department of education. the enormously talented staff i work with and i have the privilege of enforcing our nation's federal civil rights laws in schools, including title nine of the education amendments of 1972. and we have made as a country great strides in the 42 years since title nine became law with many colleges and universities having changed their policies, their practices, so that they're not discriminating and in compliance with the law. i applaud those colleges and universities for recognizing that their core educational mission includes ensuring safety of their students on campus. still, sexual violence is pervasive across too many of our campuses. we are committed to ending that reality in schools. in this administration, we

lhamon here. the next panel there will be a witness. i read it last night she said the disproportionate and practical nation of the only sanctions are efforts at an enforcement. ocr should be given the latitude to design smaller and flexible sanctions appropriate to the violations. not everything rises to the level, i would say to my friend, to the level of a felony. additionally, rather than simply imposing fines of varying sizes, ocr should be empowered to impose signs to forced budgetary reallocations to push goals into compliance. when we were talking earlier, i think you may have thought i was trying to say we should take away the nuclear option. that's fine. if that's the only thing you have in your arsenal then it makes it very hard to respond to incidents that may not rise to the level of a felony, but still are egregious actions on the part of one student to another student. i just wanted to make that clear. i thought you were basically saying, no, you don't need anything other than the nuclear option. >> so if i may, i just wa

lhamon as part of your enforcement strategies?he may begin to investigate do have the investigation of their own. because it may seem like they're not reporting properly. and for ben creation of the status cool. >> i am almost at a time but are there and other data that you will find helpful that you feel ought to be there? but one that i would like to have now. i have a civil rights data collection night conduct is that i find for the work that we do? it is for a civil-rights compliance. >> i very much appreciate this. >> i am glad to hear about this. >> to collect better data if i needed that focus on prevention needs to be far more intense. >> senator casey. >> mr. chairman thank you very much and a witness says for the testimony on this tool get the word you have done were so many others this has persistedw[ in for reacting appropriately this is the ultimate betrayal of a woman who attends college. but then they send them to institutions that many don't take this issue seriously. it should be under the of zero tolerance effor

lhamon here. the next panel there will be a witness. i read it last night she said the disproportionate and practical nation of the only sanctions are efforts at an enforcement. ocr should be given the latitude to design smaller and flexible sanctions appropriate to the violations. not everything rises to the level, i would say to my friend, to the level of a felony. additionally, rather than simply imposing fines of varying sizes, ocr should be empowered to impose signs to forced budgetary reallocations to push goals into compliance. when we were talking earlier, i think you may have thought i was trying to say we should take away the nuclear option. that's fine. if that's the only thing you have in your arsenal then it makes it very hard to respond to incidents that may not rise to the level of a felony, but still are egregious actions on the part of one student to another student. i just wanted to make that clear. i thought you were basically saying, no, you don't need anything other than the nuclear option. >> so if i may, i just wa