On July 29, 2015, House Representatives Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and Kay Granger (R-TX) introduced a bill entitled the "Safe Campus Act". Ostensibly designed to improve the investigation and adjudication of sexual assault on college campuses, the bill contains several provisions that would likely harm survivors and decrease the number of reported assaults. Under the bill, an institution of higher education would not be permitted to investigate a reported sexual assault unless the survivor also reported the assault to the police and cooperated in any police investigation. The bill would also give law enforcement exclusive, 30-day jurisdiction to investigate a reported assault, thereby delaying a campus investigation and any possible student disciplinary proceedings. Further, if a campus investigation resulted in a student disciplinary proceeding, the bill would allow schools to choose the standard of evidence to be applied, contravening current Department of Education guidance stating that the "preponderance of the evidence" standard is to be applied.
MCASA strongly opposes the Safe Campus Act for the additional obstacles that it adds to the already difficult and often-times traumatic reporting process. MCASA agrees with the statements made by Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women's Law Center to
The Washington Post, "This bill is absurd. It would make campuses less safe. It would mean that fewer students make reports to their campuses at all, because why would you, if you knew that there was this range of additional hurdles?" As Liz Roberts, deputy chief executive Safe Horizons, noted to the
Post, "The traumatizing nature of of sexual assault is that sense of powerlessness that the victim experiences . . . Any policy that takes away choice and options from the victim has the potential to do real harm."
This bill is also opposed by the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. To view their letter in opposition to the bill, please click
here.
More information about this bill is available
here, and
here.
A September 13, 2015 article on Huffington Post included statements in opposition to the bill from over 20 different victim services organizations. That article may be found
here.
