--- title: Time to Call the Cops: Title IX Has Failed Campus Sexual Assault description: Though based in compassion, the reality is a system that encourages silence or the avoidance of law enforcement canonical: https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/ author: Robert Shibley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-01T21:01:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:27.136Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Time to Call the Cops: Title IX Has Failed Campus Sexual Assault og:description: Though based in compassion, the reality is a system that encourages silence or the avoidance of law enforcement og:url: https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte8328b68e9673ab7/698696e513c79f36a7192931/sexual-assault-college.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5616 og:image:height: 3159 og:image:alt: Demonstrators protest sexual assault on college campuses at the #YesAllWomen rally in solidarity with those affected by violence in Seattle on May 30, 2014. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Time to Call the Cops: Title IX Has Failed Campus Sexual Assault twitter:description: Though based in compassion, the reality is a system that encourages silence or the avoidance of law enforcement twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte8328b68e9673ab7/698696e513c79f36a7192931/sexual-assault-college.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Time to Call the Cops: Title IX Has Failed Campus Sexual Assault > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League [Watch (HLS stream): My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8) (6:50)  _Published 2014-05-14. In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases_ by [Robert Shibley](https://time.com/author/robert-shibley/) ## Robert Shibley Dec 1, 2014 9:01 PM UTC  Demonstrators protest sexual assault on college campuses at the #YesAllWomen rally in solidarity with those affected by violence in Seattle on May 30, 2014. Demonstrators protest sexual assault on college campuses at the #YesAllWomen rally in solidarity with those affected by violence in Seattle on May 30, 2014. Alex Garland—Demotix/Corbis by [Robert Shibley](https://time.com/author/robert-shibley/) ## Robert Shibley Dec 1, 2014 9:01 PM UTC [A recent article in ](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119)[_Rolling Stone_](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119) has related a horrifying account of an on-campus gang rape allegedly committed by University of Virginia students in 2012\. Third-year student “Jackie” told her story of how, as a freshman, she was brutally raped for three hours by seven men in a darkened, upstairs room at a fraternity party after being lured there by “Drew,” an upperclassman. Jackie’s account of her subsequent run-ins with Drew only add to the chilling nature of the crime: Weeks and months after the incident, Drew acted as though nothing unusual had happened, even thanking her for the “great time” he’d had. This is criminal, predatory, and sociopathic behavior. If Jackie’s account is accurate, the perpetrators deserve lengthy prison sentences. Yet they reportedly graduated from UVA and remain at large. Why? Did police and prosecutors drop the ball? No. Nobody ever even called the police. UVA handled the case internally, which is entirely normal on today’s college campuses. For everyone’s sake, this must stop—and the sooner the better. The cause and extent of the problem of sexual assault on campus is hotly debated. But there’s no dispute that the broken way colleges handle these cases is a result of the federal government’s current interpretation of Title IX, the civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs (including nearly all colleges, public or private). Regulations from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights encourage schools to allow victims to decide how and whether to go to police, while demanding that schools conduct what amount to rape trials in campus [kangaroo courts](http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303615304579157900127017212), even if the crime is never reported to law enforcement. This has proved to be a mistake. The motivation for this “police optional” approach is based in compassion. Advocates argue that law enforcement is skeptical or dismissive of accusers’ claims, that a police investigation will “revictimize” those who have already been through a traumatic experience they’d rather not revisit, and that the evidentiary standards maintained by the criminal justice system means that it’s likely their attackers will go free. Yet the huge costs of this approach are too often ignored. Foremost is the fact that many campus sex crimes are never subjected to professional forensic investigation, leaving perpetrators unpunished and free to commit further crimes. Part of the horror of Jackie’s story is the sense that this was not the perpetrators’ first crime—and probably not their last. One [oft-cited study](http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/10/28/serial-rapists-commit9of10campussexualassaultsresearchfinds.html) suggests that serial predators commit around 90% of campus rapes, with an average of nearly six rapes per perpetrator. If this number is anywhere near accurate, each rape not reported to law enforcement is a missed opportunity to protect future victims from harm. No rape victim, on campus or off, should be required to report what happened to them to the police or to anyone else. But designing a system that _encourages_ silence or the avoidance of law enforcement is unconscionable. As _Slate_’s Dahlia Lithwick [writes](http://www.slate.com/articles/news%5Fand%5Fpolitics/jurisprudence/2014/11/university%5Fof%5Fvirginia%5Fgang%5Frape%5Finvestigation%5Frolling%5Fstone%5Freveals%5Flimits.html), “How can a felony offense be kept out of the police’s hands, and how can victims be presented with a menu of choices that includes, and even encourages, doing nothing? We cannot reduce the incidence of rape by giving up on the only system that can actually remove dangerous people from society. If police have retained outmoded or simply uninformed attitudes towards victims of sexual violence, the solution is to educate and train them to properly handle victims and investigate these crimes, not to outsource the job to self-interested, underqualified campus administrators. For those concerned with issues of class and privilege, this should be an especially high priority. Nothing we do on campus can help people who don’t and won’t attend college—a cohort [disproportionately composed](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-college-enrollment-but-not-in-graduation/) of the poor and minorities. Improving police response to sexual crimes is the only way to help victims universally. Campuses have a role to play when their students are victimized. They can separate accusers and the accused, provide counseling and protective services, and help guide them to the resources they need, including resources to navigate and cope with the police and legal process. They can also maintain clear memoranda of understanding with local police departments that facilitate the quick, thorough, and professional investigation of all felony crimes committed on campus. Neither accusers nor the accused will get justice if Title IX continues to be interpreted to force colleges to investigate and adjudicate these crimes themselves. That system has failed. As the Rape, Incest, and Abuse National Network [wrote in a letter to the White House](http://www.thefire.org/rainn-asks-white-house-task-force-to-de-emphasize-internal-judicial-boards-in-sexual-assault-cases/) last February, “It would never occur to anyone to leave the adjudication of a murder in the hands of a school’s internal judicial process. Why, then, is it not only common, but expected, for them to do so when it comes to sexual assault?” _Robert Shibley, an attorney, is Senior Vice President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)._ ## Transcript My name is Emma [ UNKNOWN ]. I am a junior at Columbia college. I am a visual arts major. On the first day of my sophomore year, I was raped by a fellow classmate. I didn't report at first because. It's a big emotional trauma, and I didn't feel like dealing with it at first, until I met at that time, two other women who told me the same person who had assaulted me, had assaulted them. The school found a way to dismiss each of our three cases separately. [ MUSIC ] My rapist, it still goes to my school, and still is on campus. [ MUSIC ]. This is not a single campus issue. This is not an individual issue. This is a cultural problem. We have a huge issue with rape culture on all college campuses. There was a study that was done that shows that men on college campuses who are perpetrators. Are more often than not repeat offenders. The average number of people a perpetrator will sexually assault is six, according to this study. So this isn't a random phenomenon. This isn't this happens in an alley, this happens when everyone's incredibly drunk at a party. There is a certain profile for what sexual assault looks like on a college campus. And that is why we need administrators to be open, and transparent, about that. Right now, their approach seems to be to ignore the problem, to try to deny students access to resources, to deny that that's happening at all when it fact they really should be getting in front of the issue. Our hearing took place seven months after I reported the incident. The investigator in my case didn't take down many important things such as the position I was in when he raped me. My hearing panelists weren't even trained, one woman kept asking me how it was physically possible for anal rape to happen. Why Columbia didn't find him responsible? I don't actually get to write a statement of what happened. It's all the investigator's statement that they read. There's an office called the Office of Gender Based and Sexual Misconduct. You go in there and at that time a woman was working there so I told her what had happened. She was the one who took erroneous notes, and missed really important that I said. Since her statement didn't make any sense, my case didn't make any sense. I think another reason that the school didn't find him guilty was that they, they really didn't want to treat it as a serial rape case because we, all three of us reported, and then they would say you are not allowed to mention each others' cases, we are going to treat them separately. I think that. If the hearing panel have had known that this was a serial offender, they might have believed us more maybe? They also said that there was not enough evidence to determine that it was more likely than not. That the respondent engaged in behavior that met the de, definition of sexual assault. So the charge was dismissed. [ MUSIC ] There are many reasons why a student would choose to not go to the police, and go to, you know, a campus adjudication process. Many people don't want the outcome to be the person that attacked them to go to jail. If you're a person of color. Or if you're ****, the process of going to the police can also be one that is not necessarily competent or great to deal with. Some people seek out resources from their school in order to make sure they're not living in the same dorm as a person who assaulted them, which is very different from making sure that someone goes to jail. And I also think that improving processes on campus across the board. Including you know, therapy for survivors, adequate rape crisis centers, and adequate academic interim measures, are things that are important for everyone to have the police absolutely cannot give you when you're a student. Everyday I'm afraid of leaving my room. Even seeing people who remotely look like my rapist is a scary thing for me. Last semester, I was working in the dark room in the photography department. Which is a small dark room. He asked permission from his teacher to come and work in the darkroom during my class. I started crying and hyperventilating and. As long as he's on campus with me he can continue to harass me. They're setting up for graduation for all of the seniors and all of the bleachers are coming up on campus. And, I was just thinking about the fact that. Because of what the administration did, I'm going to have to be sitting on those bleachers with my rapist and a serial rapist at that. Knowing that he's going to get the same education as me and I'll be feeling horrible on my graduation day. A lot of students think that when they go to a campus, if they see that there are zero sexual assaults reported that that's a really positive thing, that, that must mean that campus is incredibly safe, it's going to be a great place. But actually when you consider the fact that the overall rates of sexual assaults on campus are as high as one in four, if you see a campus reporting zero sexual assaults that should actually be a red flag. [ MUSIC ] I feel like it's taken over my entire, entire college experience. This happened on the first day of my sophomore year. And here I am. I just finished my last day of school for my junior year. And I'm still talking about it and still thinking about it. And I know that I'm going to look back on my entire Columbia experience and see that's how the administration has failed me. and. It's, it's like a cloud that will always hang over me. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/"},"headline":"Time to Call the Cops: Title IX Has Failed Campus Sexual Assault","datePublished":"2014-12-01T21:01:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:05:27.136Z","description":"Though based in compassion, the reality is a system that encourages silence or the avoidance of law enforcement","url":"https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/","keywords":["Education","Rape","Sexual Assault","Rape Culture","campus rape","campus sexual assault","University of Virginia"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte8328b68e9673ab7/698696e513c79f36a7192931/sexual-assault-college.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Robert Shibley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/robert-shibley/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte8328b68e9673ab7/698696e513c79f36a7192931/sexual-assault-college.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Demonstrators protest sexual assault on college campuses at the #YesAllWomen rally in solidarity with those affected by violence in Seattle on May 30, 2014.","caption":"Demonstrators protest sexual assault on college campuses at the #YesAllWomen rally in solidarity with those affected by violence in Seattle on May 30, 2014.","creditText":"Alex Garland—Demotix/Corbis","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/education/","name":"Education"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/","name":"Time to Call the Cops: Title IX Has Failed Campus Sexual Assault"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League","description":"In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/o8izpqKu/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-05-14T14:51:05.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/","duration":"PT6M50S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3612667/campus-sexual-assault-uva-rape-title-ix/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```