Don’t Criminalize College Responses To Sexual Violence

It is no secret that college and university campuses habitually tolerate assault, abuse and harassment. Recent student outcry across the country has highlighted schools’ failures to live up to their Title IX responsibilities: Colleges from Amherst to Arizona State have routinely responded to students’ reports of violence with indifference at best, while others have struck back at survivors with vicious retaliation. Students who are victims of sexual assault thus often spend their college years, a time for growth and study, instead skipping class to avoid running into their rapist in the halls, all the while alienated from a school that has betrayed them.