Claire McCaskill introduces updated bill

On March 9, Claire McCaskill held a telephone press conference with students from university newspapers throughout the state of Missouri, and A&E Editor Zarah Laurence and I took part. Throughout the call, McCaskill explained changes she and other legislators had made to the Campus Accountability and Safety Act concerning sexual assault on college campuses. The changes she and her co-sponsors have made will benefit students further and have helped to create a more concrete bill that satisfies the majority of stipulations made from both the Republicans and Democrats involved.

In the original bill, every university in the state of Missouri would have been required to have its students take a climate survey every year. After speaking with campuses and other people involved, it was decided that these surveys would give a more reliable set of results in an "apples to apples" comparison over time, therefore the surveys would be given every two years. McCaskill stressed the importance of these surveys to give the universities an idea of how they feel about sexual assault on campus and how knowledgeable they are in terms of campus counseling resources. She explained that this process would be more accurate than the Clery Act, which according to her, "no one sees or understands." The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that may participate in a financial aid program provided by the government to disclose information about crimes that happen on or near their campuses.

Another change is that fines that come from these offenses will be set aside for a special grant that can be given back to campuses in a positive way to help them fund programming and resources to further educate individuals about sexual assault. Before, money from the fines would have gone to the agencies enforcing the fines and could have created an incentive for those agencies to fine people rather than for the purpose of rightful justice.

A final change McCaskill made to the bill was to make clear the duty an institution has to give written notice to victims and alleged perpetrators so they both have the opportunity to meaningfully exercise their due process rights. This requirement will help provide transparency and fair representation for both parties in all cases.

The original bill had key provisions to establish campus resources and support services. It requires fairness in the disciplinary process; it ensures minimum training standards for on-campus personnel; it creates new transparency requirements (largely provided by the survey); it will require colleges and universities to have a cooperative agreement with local law enforcement that describes their responsibilities in reporting requirements between the two of them; and it requires the Department of Education to publish the names of schools with pending investigations, the final resolutions of those investigations and the voluntary resolution agreements in respect to Title IX sexual violence claims. The legislation also provides enforceable Title IX penalties and stiffer penalties for Clery Act violations.

McCaskill said this process began with an unprecedented survey on campuses throughout the country when she found that 40 percent of colleges and universities hadn't investigated a sexual assault in five years. This to me is amazing. The idea that 40 percent of colleges and universities didn't investigate one case of rape in five years is astonishing. Not one? How is that even possible?

In 2005, the National Institute of Justice reported that when projected over a now typical five-year college career, one in five young women experiences rape during college. That would mean that out of the 5,559 female undergraduate students that are currently enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University, nearly 1,112 of those women will be sexually assaulted at some point during their college career. That number only grows as we look at other larger institutions, and that's not even figuring in sexual assaults on men. The reality is astounding and disgusting.

With the amending of this bill, McCaskill and her co-sponsors have improved an already revolutionary piece of legislation that could better the lives of men and women on college campuses throughout the country, and I hope that President Barack Obama understands the major importance it holds.

As college students, we should be paying attention to this type of legislation as it could directly affect our lives and the university we attend positively in the future. To learn more about the proposed bill, click here.