Thirty-one current and former students filed a federal Title IX complaint against the University of California at Berkeley last week, alleging that the university had discouraged reporting of campus sexual assault, failed to inform victims of their rights, and had mishandled sexual assault cases being heard through the school’s disciplinary process. The complaint comes after a student government ruling last April of no confidence in the university’s sexual assault policies as well as an investigation into four public California universities by the state auditor.
This is the second complaint filed by Berkeley students against the university. An earlier complaint, filed by nine students in May 2013, alleged that the university was purposefully under-reporting sexually violent crimes on campus in violation of the Clery Act. The US Department of Education has yet to respond to the students’ May complaint, prompting, in part, this most recent complaint, which now includes 22 new student and alumni testimonies.
“Neither the Department of Education nor UC Berkeley have made the efforts necessary to address the pervasive culture of sexual violence on our campus,” said Sofie Karasek, one of the students who filed the complaint. “This is not only disappointing; it is also dangerous for the students who attend college here, and is representative of a larger problem: the federal government is not adequately enforcing its own laws.”
Occidental College professors Caroline Heldman and Danielle Dirks report in the Winter/Spring 2014 issue of Ms. magazine, that 1 in 5 women in the US will experience a rape or an attempted rape at some point during her years in college. “But there’s hope and evidence that this situation is changing, as a reinvigorated campus anti-rape movement is burgeoning across the country,” they write. “The tools of this movement – Title IX complaints, the Clery Act, group lawsuits and social media – have effectively brought school mishandling of sexual assault and rape into the national discourse.”
Although UC Berkeley did not formally comment on the complaint last week, Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks issued a statement announcing a new university position created to investigate sexual assault claims and help survivors navigate the reporting process as well as a new policy allowing victims to appeal decisions in their internal cases.
Media Resources: LA Times 2/26/2014; Sacramento Bee 2/26/2014; Huffington Post 2/26/2014; Ms. Magazine Winter/Spring 2014
