President Obama has announced the formation of a high-level administration task force that has been given 90 days to come up with a plan to combat sexual assaults on the nation’s college campuses. The task force has been charged to formulate recommendations on how colleges should prevent and respond to incidents of sexual assault and to come up with a plan to accurately publicize educational institutions’ track records in dealing with sexual assaults on their campuses.
The new initiative is in response to a report from The White House Council on Women and Girls entitled Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action. The report states “The dynamics of college life appear to fuel the problem, as many victims are abused while they’re drunk, under the influence of drugs, passed out, or otherwise incapacitated. Most college victims are assaulted by someone they know – and parties are often the site of these crimes. Notably, campus assailants are often serial offenders: one study found that of the men who admitted to committing rape or attempted rape, some 63 percent said they committed an average of six rapes each.”
The report outlines the new steps that must be taken. “To make our campuses safer, change still needs to come from many quarters: schools must adopt better policies and practices to prevent these crimes and to more effectively respond when they happen. And federal agencies must ensure that schools are living up to their obligations. To accomplish these and other goals, the President today is establishing a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.
The Task Force will:
- Provide educational institutions with best practices for preventing and responding to rape and sexual assault.
- Build on the federal government’s enforcement efforts to ensure that educational institutions comply fully with their legal obligations.
- Improve transparency of the government’s enforcement activities.
- Increase the public’s awareness of an institution’s track record in addressing rape and sexual assault.
- Enhance coordination among federal agencies to hold schools accountable if they do not confront sexual violence on their campuses.
Watch President Obama and Vice President Biden’s remarks on preventing sexual assault below: