More than a dozen colleges and universities, when asked by The Huffington Post, declined to reveal how they've punished their students for committing sexual assault.
HuffPost requested information from 50 schools about the sanctions imposed on students found responsible by the colleges for sexual assault. A Huffington Post analysis of information provided by the nearly three dozen schools that did provide data on sexual violence cases showed fewer than a third of students found guilty of sexual assault are expelled.
Ten institutions, however, declined to provide any information, four did not respond to multiple requests and several others provided incomplete information.
Several cited the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as preventing them from disclosing such information. However, FERPA does not block an institution from providing these numbers. U.S. Department of Education guidance allows schools to release information, including specific sanctions, if a student is "an alleged perpetrator of a crime of violence or non-forcible sex offense" who violated university policy. While FERPA permits this disclosure, it does not require it, and a college is free to withhold such information.
"Defenders of the campus disciplinary process have always pointed fingers at the criminal process and said, 'Look how bad the criminal process is,' but they've never actually disclosed any numbers of the efficacy of the campus process," said Adam Goldstein, an attorney advocate at the Student Press Law Center.
But that may soon change.
Read more at The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/punish-sexual-assault_n_5894856.html