Making its way through Congress is the Safe Campus Act of 2015. This bill intends to create a significantly better “due process” system in the way that colleges deal with sexual assault on campus. Although this certainly is a noteworthy and important cause, the Safe Campus Act is not a favorable piece of legislation. The biggest criticism of the Safe Campus Act is that under the new guidelines, colleges will no longer be able to do any investigation in a sexual assault case until the victim has reported the act to the police.
Many victims of assault never contact the police because they feel it could make their experiences even more traumatic. Initial dealings with the police can be traumatizing, especially if victims feel dehumanized or otherwise degraded by the responding officers. This is something that leads many victims of sexual assault to decide against police involvement. Although the intent of the Safe Campus Act is to increase the rates of those victims who receive police intervention after an assault, it might have the opposite effect. If victims currently feel too distressed for the police and court system, knowing they will be forced into it might actually deter them from attempting to receive any support, even from their universities.
By the act, sexual assault cases will also be the only type of criminal case that officials will be required to report to law enforcement. Perpetrators of assaults and robberies will still be able to be investigated by school administrations as policy violations, even if those victims do not report to police. It’s unfair to force rape victims into a criminal proceeding while other crimes remain solely within the sphere of the academic code of conduct. Shaina Brown, communications manager for the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, says the biggest challenge of the Safe Campus Act is that it doesn’t allow universities and law enforcement to operate in the “separate spaces” they currently have. It is important to remember that colleges and law enforcement agencies have different objectives when investigating a sexual assault.
However, it is still vital for everyone involved in a college sexual assault case to have due process. That’s why the more preferable policy option would be the Fair Campus Act, which is also up for Congressional debate. The Fair Campus Act holds almost all of the same provisions as the Safe Campus Act, without the one that would require police intervention before colleges could begin their own investigations into the assault. The Fair Campus Act would, like the Safe Campus Act, require evidence to become available for review by both the accuser and the accused, as well as give both parties the right to lawyers. The Fair Campus Act would improve due process while preventing an undue burden on survivors of sexual assault.