Campus sexual assault tracker shows UMass Amherst has the longest unresolved investigation
The database is intended to track federal investigations of collegiate violations of Title IX.
A new database from The Chronicle of Higher Education that tracks the handling of campus sexual assault cases shows the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has the nation’s longest unresolved investigation.
The case has been open for four and a half years.
Only 19 percent of the 243 investigations opened since 2011 — when the federal Department of Education vowed to crack down on campus assaults — have been resolved. It takes an average of 14 months for the department to close a case, but some have remained open for much longer.
Ed Blaguszewski, a spokesman for the university, said the case was opened as part of a standard compliance review, not in response to a specific complaint from an individual about how their case was handled. The college also has another pending investigation that was opened in September 2015.
“Meanwhile, the university has been working on an ongoing basis to update and revise its Title IX grievance resolution policies and procedures, and we launched a comprehensive new Title IX resources website last fall,’’ Blaguszewski said. “We look forward to the Office of Civil Rights reaching a conclusion in its review of the UMass matter.’’
The Chronicle database, which is intended to track federal investigations of collegiate violations of Title IX, underscores the department’s struggle to keep up with the sheer volume of cases.
In May 2014, the department’s Office for Civil Rights announced that it would be investigating 55 colleges for possible violations of federal law over their handling of campus sexual assault cases.
As of this month, there are 197 open investigations at 161 institutions nationwide — including more than 10 in Massachusetts.
UMass isn’t the only local school being reviewed. Amherst College, Berklee College of Music, Boston College, Boston University, Emerson College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Tufts University, and UMass-Dartmouth are also being investigated.
Because the office has such an extreme backlog, the Obama administration’s 2016 budget request included $131 million for the office so it could hire an additional 200 full-time employees. The assistant secretary for civil rights told The Chronicle she could use 500 more.
Many colleges that are under investigation have put together task forces to develop recommendations for how to improve the climate on campus, especially after the Association of American Universities released the findings of what it called the largest-ever survey conducted on college sexual violence this past fall. The report showed that 23.1 percent of female undergraduates were victims of unwanted sexual conduct.
Association members Boston University, Brandeis, and MIT declined to participate in favor of conducting their own surveys specific to their campuses. Harvard opted to participate and found that 31 percent of female seniors said they had experienced some form of “nonconsensual sexual contact’’ since starting at the college. The university’s sexual assault task force is expected to release recommendations for improvement this month.
In the meantime, users can track developments on all open cases by signing up for updates on The Chronicle’s site.
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