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Catholic University is one of 55 colleges and universities currently under investigation by the federal government for its handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released the list of possible Title IX offenders today, days after the White House put out recommendations on how colleges can better prevent and handle rapes on campus.
“We are making this list available in an effort to bring more transparency to our enforcement work and to foster better public awareness of civil rights,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon said in a release. “We hope this increased transparency will spur community dialogue about this important issue. I also want to make it clear that a college or university’s appearance on this list and being the subject of a Title IX investigation in no way indicates at this stage that the college or university is violating or has violated the law.”
Case-specific facts will not be disclosed, beyond when the investigation began. The list will be regularly updated and the outcome of the investigations — “whether OCR has entered into a resolution agreement to address compliance concerns at a particular campus or found insufficient evidence of a Title IX violation there” — will be disclosed upon request.
In a statement, Catholic University said it was informed of the complaint in January. “The complaint concerned the investigation and adjudication of a report of sexual assault that occurred in December 2012,” the statement said. “The University has cooperated fully with the Department of Education to provide all of the information that the department has requested in a timely manner. It will continue to do so and is confident that there will be a just resolution of this matter.”
As part of the new resource site, NotAlone.gov, Title IX resolution agreements with schools across the country have been published. This includes a 2004 Clery Act report on Georgetown University that concluded the school could not force students to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Other schools named today by the Department of Education include Frostburg State University in Maryland, the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and the University of Virginia.
