Balancing Accountability and Flexibility

Last summer, the controversy surrounding sexual assault on college campuses came to Congress when a group of senators proposed a bill that would regulate how publicly funded colleges managed sexual assault. The legislation, known as the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, cited a study that found that 41 percent of surveyed colleges had conducted no sexual assault investigations over the last five years. Among other provisions, the bill mandated the yearly release of campus surveys and the hiring of “confidential advisors” to hear student concerns. Media coverage, however, did not correspond to political popularity, and the bill was never enacted.

Sexual assault has, of course, far from disappeared since then. Last week, the defeated legislation resurfaced with the majority of its provisions intact, including the one requiring confidential advisors, but also some notable changes. In particular, the new bill altered the yearly requirement of a campus survey to a biennial one, demanded that involved parties learn of disciplinary investigations within 24 hours, and specified that non-compliant institutions could face fines up to one percent of their operating budgets.

The seriousness of this drive for national legislation matches the seriousness of the situation. According to one widely cited report, an estimated one in five women are sexually assaulted during their time at college. University students report around 5,000 forcible sex offenses per year; another 25,000 are believed to go unreported. Sexual assault is a national problem and consequently deserves a national solution.

Title IX regulations fill part of this need. The landmark legislation obligated colleges to have a formal disciplinary procedure, act without delay in the case of a complaint, and provide formal hearings. While these requirements are certainly positive, the persistence of unreported sexual assaults illustrates that Title IX is not enough.

Certain components of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act are desirable supplements to Title IX. Specifically, the call for campus surveys and frequent statistics would help colleges address the issue by spotlighting areas of systemic weakness.

But the bill overreaches by specifying strict deadlines for each measure. Enforcing biennial surveys with the threat of major financial penalties reflects a stubborn posture that is unwilling to give institutions adequate autonomy. This additional oversight would prevent a university from tailoring sexual assault measures most effectively to its individual campus cultures. Universities may, for example, need more time to design and administer surveys that capture the viewpoints of as many students as possible as accurately as possible.

Ultimately, the federal government should not be determining an exact policy that all colleges must adopt. Instead, Congress must work to ensure that each institution both meets necessary benchmarks, and has enough room to craft individual policies that reflect the culture and problems of its campus. While the legislation currently on offer is well intentioned and contains several laudable ideas, it falls short due to its overly rigid requirements. Congress should not rest here, but rather should strive to develop legislation that both establishes appropriate, enforceable requirements for colleges and allows those institutions some freedom within those constraints.