Betsy DeVos Is Under Fire For Scaling Back Campus Rape Investigations

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) urged Secretary of Education Betsy Devos on Wednesday to reverse a decision her department made last month that would impede its ability to investigate campus sexual assault.

The head of the Department of Education’s civil rights office, Candice Jackson, issued a memo in June instructing staff to scale back their investigations of systemic civil rights issues at public schools and universities, including the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Whereas the Obama administration required staff to review past information along with each complaint to identify potential systemic problems with how campuses handle rape cases or discriminate against certain classes of victims, the Trump administration will scrap those rules and investigate each complaint at face value.

Gillibrand and McCaskill, the latter of whom is a former prosecutor, are concerned that if the administration handles complaints on a case-by-case basis, rather than considering a school’s broader history of dealing with sexual assault, it will allow schools to continue to sweep the problem under the rug rather then forcing them to overhaul their policies. Title IX federal law requires the government to protect women at publicly funded schools from sex discrimination, including assault and harassment.'