Joe Biden: It Would Be ‘Devastating’ if Trump Administration Ends School Sexual Assault Guidelines

Former Vice President Joe Biden has a strong message for new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about upholding protections for sexual assault survivors.

In an interview with Teen Vogue, Biden discussed his advocacy work on the issue of sexual assault prevention and addressed concerns that DeVos might weaken the guidelines put in place by the Obama Administration to protect survivors in schools. During DeVos’ confirmation hearing, she refused to say whether she would maintain Obama’s guidance to college and universities about how to handle and adjudicate the issue.

“Let me tell you, it bothers me most if Secretary DeVos is going to really dumb down Title IX enforcement. The real message, the real frightening message you’re going to send out is, our culture says it’s OK,” Biden told Teen Vogue. “You know, the major reason why women drop out of college when they’re a freshman is because of sexual assault. Not their grades, sexual assault. And so, it would be devastating.”

Biden also said that he wouldn’t consider his work on sexual assault a success young women stopped blaming themselves for being victims of violence. “We will have succeeded when no young woman in a high school or college campus who is sexually assaulted or raped ever ask[s] herself, ‘What did I do to deserve this?'” he said. “And it will be a success when no young man actually believes [it] when he says to himself, ‘Well, she deserved it’ or ‘I had a right to do that.'”

Read the full interview at Teen Vogue.