How Should Colleges and Universities Respond to Peer Sexual Violence on Campus? What the Current Legal Environment Tells Us

Over the last decade or so, various legal schemes such as the statutes and court or agency enforcement of Title IX and the Clery Act have increasingly recognized that certain institutional responses perpetuate a cycle of nonreporting and violence. This paper draws upon comprehensive legal research conducted on how the law now regulates school responses to campus peer sexual violence to show that schools face much greater liability from failing to protect the rights of campus peer sexual violence survivors than of any other group of students, including alleged assailants. By encouraging their institutions to develop more victim-centered responses to campus peer sexual violence, advocates for women in higher education can respond to the current legal environment, properly confront this problem, and help their schools avoid liability