The Education Department has proposed new rules to firmly cement domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking as forms of gender discrimination under Title IX, in an effort to further sexual assault prevention on college campuses.

The Education Department has previously expanded rules regarding how schools should teach sexual assault prevention and deal with sexual assault and misconduct on campus.

These new rules—currently pending—give definitions to three terms in particular: domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. Universities are required to deal with these instances under Title IX rules if they do not want to risk federal investigations or loss of funding.  Campuses are also required to report campus crime statistics, including assault and rapes, under the Jeanne Clery Act.

According to victims’ rights advocates and lawyers, while many schools have naturally assumed that these events would fall under the category of sexual harassment, it has not previously been so clearly defined as required under law, and therefore some schools may not have given their staff adequate training to address these issues as they should be: as civil rights violations.

Dating violence and stalking are often pushed to the side as less severe than other sexual harassment incidents, but these are serious—and dangerous—issues. And assault on campuses is on the rise – in New York state, over 4,000 complaints of sexual assault on college campuses were reported in 2018 alone, and lawsuits filed for rape and emotional distress around the country.

“There’s still a lingering idea that dating violence is an interpersonal issue that two folks need to work on, something that just happens between men and women, rather than seeing it as a form of violence that has an impact on education,” said Sage Carson, the manager for Know Your IX, a victims’ right advocacy group.

Dating violence and stalking are serious enough as they are, even if they go no further, inflicting abuse and fear. But these issues can also lead to further violence, even to being killed.

Dating Violence Leads to Death

University of Utah student and track star Lauren McCluskey was killed in 2018 at age 21 after she broke up with her boyfriend (for lying to her about both his age and his sex offender status) and he fatally shot her in response.

The school is reported to have missed a number of warning signs about this issue, including ignoring multiple complaints by Ms. McClusky.

Matt McCluskey, Lauren’s father, expressed concern about the lack of attention being paid to dating violence. “Dating violence often gets lost in the harassment issues, and there are issues in domestic relationships that are just as toxic and dangerous,” McCluskey said.

Lauren’s parents, faculty members at Washington State University, have since filed a lawsuit against the University of Utah for its alleged failure to investigate their daughter’s reports of abuse. The lawsuit claims that at least six staff members were aware of these reports, yet school officials “only considered threatening Lauren with guest policy violations,” because her ex-boyfriend—and later, her killer—was not a student.

According to the lawsuit, Lauren’s complaints were not taken seriously—and not brought to the police—based on the “assumption that Lauren, like most women, was unreasonable, hysterical, hypersensitive, paranoid, overreacting to the situation and not being truthful.”

These proposed sexual assault prevention rules are generally being considering a good thing by victims’ rights advocates, especially compared with most of the proposals from Betsy DeVos’s Education Department—which have largely favored the rights of the accused and made reporting sexual misconduct more difficult on campus.

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.