Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced a bipartisan bill on Thursday that would hold colleges accountable for sexual assaults.
She says that under the current system, colleges have incentives to hush up assaults. They’re bad publicity and scare away prospective students. Her bill aims to change that. It creates a national anonymous survey for students to report sexual assaults. Results for each college would be public online.
Gillibrand says that if they try to cover up assaults, “schools will be considered outliers that their numbers are lower than what other students are saying is actually happening on that campus.”
The bill raises penalties for breaking reporting rules and requires training for campus officials who deal with assaults.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing a bill to extend SUNY’s new sexual assault policy to all colleges.