The US Education Department has opened an investigation into Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, and Swarthmore College for violating Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination at schools, reports Bloomberg.
In May, Dartmouth students filed a complaint with testimonies from 30 students and alumni stating that the College had failed to report crimes such as sexual assault to the Education Department.
The Department is exploring Dartmouth’s procedures for responding to sexual assault claims and the College’s system of notifying a Title IX coordinator.
The voices crying in the wilderness have attracted the attention of the Department’s Office of Civil Rights. Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for the office, says that “compliance review sites are selected based on various sources of information, including information provided by parents, education groups, media, community organizations and the public, complaint information, and, in certain circumstances, on statistical and demographic data.”
The Daily D says that in May, the 30 students and alumni “alleged Clery violations of sexual assault, LGBT, racial and religious discrimination, hate crimes, bullying and hazing at the College.”
Earlier this year, Yale was fined $165,000 for failing to report four incidents of sexual assault and omitting crime statistics from the Yale-New Haven Hospital in the University’s annual report.
In 2007, Eastern Michigan University received the largest-ever Clery Act fine of $357,000 after it failed to adequately respond to the death of a female student.
Dartmouth spokesman Justin Anderson says the College “has worked intentionally and diligently in recent years to reduce incidents of sexual assault on campus, create a climate of reporting and support those who have come forward to report sexual harassment or sexual assault.”
The College on the hill is finding itself in another public relations and now legal nightmare as it must address the investigation from the Department of Education and institute measures on campus to tackle the problem of sexual assault.
–Will Duncan
** A previous version of this article mispelled “received” in the middle of the seventh paragraph. We regret the error and have made the appropriate correction. **
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