Campus sex assault rules fall short, prompting calls from some for changes

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — What Karla Arango says started as a dorm-room sexual assault got even worse as word spread around campus. Her attacker's fraternity brothers snubbed her, she says, whispering about her in the cafeteria, blocking her phone number and unfriending her on social media. Soon her grades were slipping.

Arango's experience in her first year at Northern Kentucky University highlights what experts see as deep-seated problems with Title IX, the 1972 federal civil rights law that prohibits sexual discrimination in education. It turns 50 this month.

Heralded as a gamechanger for female college athletes, the law also is supposed to protect sexual assault and harassment accusers like Arango, giving them options like moving dormitories or even getting their attackers removed from the school.

In practice, the law's protections fall short, accusers and advocates say.

Polarizing regulations passed under former President Donald Trump have discouraged students from coming forward with abuse allegations. Those who do face a live hearing and cross-examination by a person of their alleged attacker's choosing. The rules also narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and allowed colleges to ignore most cases arising off campus.

President Joe Biden and other critics say the rules, finalized in 2020 by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, fail to adequately protect sexual assault victims, deter them from reporting misconduct and go too far in shielding the accused. Biden is expected to announce new rules as soon as this month.

In the meantime, many students have opted out entirely, never reporting the abuse. Or they've chosen to go an informal route, in which the accused might be asked not to take classes with the accuser, or to switch schools — often with no mark on their record.

Arango ultimately decided not to pursue her case, and nothing happened to the other student.

"I felt like my identity was beginning to form, and then it was completely stripped away," said Arango, now 21 and heading into her senior year. "Everyone just saw me as this girl that was lying about being sexually assaulted. And I was spiraling really bad."

The Associated Press typically doesn't identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, but Arango allowed her name to be used. She serves on a caucus of survivors for End Rape on Campus, a national advocacy group.

Sexual assault is commonplace on college campuses. Thirteen percent of college students overall and nearly 26% of undergraduate women reported nonconsensual sexual contact, according to a 2019 Association of American Universities survey of 181,752 students on 27 campuses. Rates were nearly as high for students who are transgender, nonbinary or otherwise gender nonconforming.

Only about one-third of the female accusers reported what happened, according to the survey. Doing so often ends badly, according to Know Your IX, an advocacy group that has found students who report abuse often leave school, at least temporarily, and are threatened with defamation lawsuits.

"The current process is not really working for anybody," said Emma Grasso Levine, the manager of Know Your IX.

At some universities, the Trump administration rules have been followed by a decrease in the number of complaints addressed by Title IX offices, according to records provided to The Associated Press.

At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 204 Title IX complaints were logged in 2019, but just 12 in 2021, records show. The number of cases that met the criteria for formal investigations fell from 27 to zero in the same period. No student has been found responsible for a Title IX violation at the university since 2020.

At Michigan State University, the number of Title IX complaints dropped from more than 1,300 in 2019 to 56 in 2021. School officials say the drop is the result of narrowed definitions in the 2020 regulations. Complaints that fall outside the scope of the federal rules now go through a similar but separate disciplinary system, officials said.

Arango's nightmare began in August 2019, when she blacked out after playing a drinking game with her new fraternity friends.

She recalls waking on an air mattress, a male student on top of her, although she had given no consent for the sex. She grabbed her belongings and headed to class, acting like nothing had happened.

She kept quiet until that October, when she told a fraternity friend but swore him to secrecy.