WORCESTER — After a student at Frostburg State University alleged that a campus police officer had sexually assaulted her in 2014, the school in Maryland declined to conduct an investigation.
In fact, the person in charge of such investigations at Frostburg reviewed only five of 43 reported instances of sexual misconduct, the U.S. Department of Education found in a four-year investigation.
“That’s pretty much the lowest of the low,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. She said recent investigations of the nation’s colleges and universities revealed those and many more “egregious departures from our civil rights promises” that prompted increased federal oversight at institutions.
Lhamon was the keynote speaker at “Securing Our Future,” a conference in Worcester on Wednesday focusing on campus safety and violence prevention. Some 350 campus officials from public and private institutions around the state gathered to discuss those topics during the daylong event.
The conference comes after consultants and the state’s task force on campus safety and violence prevention in May released a report recommending the best ways to approach what University of Massachusetts President Martin T. Meehan called a nationwide “epidemic of sexual violence” and other campus safety problems.
Colleges and universities are required to have sexual misconduct investigation procedures in place under the federal Title IX statute. Passed in 1972, the law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender by institutions that accept federal funding.
While officials dating back to the administration of President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s have understood that the gender discrimination provision covers sexual assaults, it wasn’t until 2011 that the Department of Education spelled out sexual harassment and assault as a civil rights issue in a public bulletin.
In recent years the issue of sexual assault on college campuses has captured national attention, and part of that higher visibility has resulted in an increase in reporting. During President Barack Obama’s first fiscal year in office, the Department of Education received nine sexual misconduct complaints. This fiscal year, it has received 157, according to Lhamon.
But, she said, incidents of sexual violence are still underreported.
Two studies conducted in the last decade found that about one in five female undergraduates will be sexually assaulted before they graduate. Rates are higher among LGBTQ students and those who are disabled.
Lhamon said institutions in Massachusetts have been among the leaders in meeting Title IX requirements. Among them is designating a coordinator to investigate matters covered under Title IX.
Department of Education investigations too often reveal that universities have no Title IX coordinator, or that person does not realize that he or she has been designated as such. Additionally, coordinators often have insufficient powers to adequately meet their responsibilities or have limited training, Lhamon said.
Training is crucially important to the effectiveness of an institution’s Title IX compliance and its ability to conduct fair and equitable investigations, Lhamon said.
As a success story, Lhamon pointed to Occidental College in Los Angeles. The education department’s investigation found the liberal arts college had a fully compliant Title IX policy and was responding in a prompt and equitable way to sexual misconduct complaints.
Occidental is a college that has been plagued by “serial misconduct,” Lhamon said, and with that came an understanding by students that administrators were not doing enough to address the issue.
“That belief was so out of step with what we actually found,” she said. “I think that comes from a culture of silence about what they were doing and a lack of transparency about what they were doing.”
Lhamon said it is important that administrators think of ways to share appropriate information with the campus community, such as the fact that Occidental has expelled eight out of the 16 students who had been found responsible for sexual misconduct in recent years to avoid what she said was a “misstep” by the college.
Fernando M. Reimers, a Harvard education professor and member of the state task force, said it is the duty of college leaders to work to prevent sexual misconduct.
“It is difficult to learn in fear of violence,” he said.
Beginning in January, the task force and a team of consultants conducted a national study of campus safety policies, surveyed 28 of the 29 public institutions of higher education in Massachusetts and visited several state universities and colleges.
The result is a set of 55 recommendations involving campus shooter response and sexual violence prevention, education and investigation policies for the UMass system and the state’s community colleges and state universities. Officials hope private schools in the state and public universities in other states will take note of the report.
Regarding responses to active shooters, among the chief suggestions is increasing educational and training initiatives, because the likelihood of survival by someone in an active shooter situation increases if they have been trained in what to do, said consultant Matthew Rushton, managing partner of Campus Safety Associates in Bridgewater.
The report also recommends that universities coordinate their public notification systems. While adoption of such emergency alert systems is widespread, the task force recommends a “one-button” solution by which one person can send an alert on all platforms: phone call, text message, loudspeaker and social media.
The state last commissioned a report in 2008 in response to the mass killing of 32 people at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg the previous year. That report focused on mass-shooting response and preparation.
Rushton said a lot has changed since then. For example, the study in 2008 found that 46 percent of higher education institutions in the state had video surveillance. Today, 89 percent use such technology.
Regarding sexual assault, consultant Jennifer Davis said it is important that institutions gather and use data about sexual misconduct on campus as part of prevention efforts, which can be achieved by conducting campus climate surveys. The report recommends that those be performed annually or at least every two to three years.
Efforts are underway at UMass Amherst for a comprehensive campus climate survey.
Those surveys are important because they allow officials to understand exactly what’s happening at a school regarding a number of factors that may be involved in sexual assault, such as binge drinking, Davis said.
Communication about sexual assault resources is another key recommendation, Davis said, because often students do not know about available confidential resources. Davis said schools should expand their on-campus resources or partner with community organizations.
Meehan said the five-campus UMass system is already carrying out the 55 recommendations outlined in the campus safety study. In December, university officials will submit a systemwide progress report to trustees.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettnet.com.