American Association of University Women

Live Blog: Making New Campus Sexual Assault Regulations, Day 3

What You Need to Know

Analysis: Day 3 the of the negotiated rulemaking around the Violence Against Women Act amendments to the Clery Act (also known as Campus SaVE) proceeded a bit differently from the first two days – negotiators had a draft rule to work from, and consensus-building was clearly on their minds. If you’re just joining us and wondering what negotiated rulemaking is, you can learn more here: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/hea08/neg-reg-faq.html.

A few things came up:

Getting the definition of stalking correct is tough. How it interacts with Clery Geography came up several times and finding a way to ensure stalking is captured accurately in statistics is still in flux. Generally no sides on this, though — everyone around the table wants to get it right.
There was some hesitation about setting a definition of consent in this regulation, but that riff mostly stemmed from university counsel concerns. The Department of Education explained a desire to ensure statistics are consistent across schools.
The statistic reporting tool (a chart) is complicated and there’s still confusion (and resistance) around expanding it. The new law asks that we learn about more crimes on campus, specifically domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking– but this is being called “double counting” by some negotiators.
Finally, confusion lingers around reporting for Clery statistics purposes and confidentiality. The Department of Education made clear, however, that there’s a lot of room to improve the draft or provide additional info in a regulation preamble.