College students across the country are once again demanding their institutions do more to prevent sexual assault on campus. During a planned day of action Thursday, students on campuses around the country marched to stop sexual violence and show solidarity with survivors, vowing to take their fight “from the frat house to the White House.” Earlier in the week, University of Oregon students called on the university to reform how it handles campus sexual violence after the institution issued a crime warning about five sexual assaults that had taken place less than week into the fall semester. Emory University students are asking their university to overhaul Title IX education and “improve the ways it conveys information about sexual assault resources.” At Stanford University, students are seeking the return of recently discontinued sexual assault–prevention programs.
And it’s not just students calling for change; at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s first Faculty Senate meeting of the year, faculty urged Interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots to do more to address sexual assault on campus. Many of these conversations have been driven by the news out of Cornell University, where an anonymous former student, Jane Doe, alleged she was raped at a campus fraternity house in 2024. Cornell students are also demanding a slew of reforms, including a review of the online sexual assault–prevention training that new students see during orientation.
At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., more than 100 students gathered Thursday to show solidarity with survivors of sexual assault. Institutions’ replies to these demands repeat familiar refrains: Administrators take sexual assault seriously and have followed university policies and the law in their responses. In a statement responding to Doe’s lawsuit, Cornell officials said the university “investigated and adjudicated the allegations [in her complaint] consistent with university policies” and noted they “take sexual violence extremely seriously.” Oregon President Karl Scholz said in a statement Wednesday that officials would “examine our efforts closely to ensure we are doing all we can, employing best practices, and remaining proactive in creating a safe campus.” As college leaders grapple with students’ demands and re-evaluate their own policies, it’s worth asking: What sexual assault–prevention training are institutions required to provide students under the law?
The 2020 Title IX rule—which the Trump administration officially reinstated last week—requires colleges to provide “literally zero” training to students, said Andrea Stagg, director of consulting services at Grand River Solutions, a firm that advises colleges and universities on Title IX, Title VI and other federal laws. This comes as a surprise to some clients, Stagg said. So you have to train your Title IX coordinator, your investigator, your hearing officer… also any appeals officers that you have,” she said.
There is no requirement that your students receive training.” In 2011, the Obama administration did encourage colleges and universities to “take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence,” including providing preventative education during new student orientation and training for student residence hall advisers, athletes and coaches. Still, it was only a recommendation, not a legal requirement, and the Trump administration later rescinded the guidance. When the first Trump administration initially proposed the 2020 regulations, some wanted the Department of Education to legally require colleges to “monitor drinking, teach about interpersonal boundaries, sexuality, bystander intervention, and sexual consent communication, and provide counseling and mental health resources to students.” None of those recommendations made it into the final version, but ED noted that “nothing in the final regulations impedes recipients’ discretion to provide students (or employees) with educational information.
While these final regulations are concerned with setting forth requirements for recipients’ responses to sexual harassment, the Department agrees with commenters that educators, experts, students, and employees should also endeavor to prevent sexual harassment from occurring in the first place.” While Title IX is mum on prevention education, another federal law requires some such training—the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act. The law—named for Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University student who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986—requires colleges and universities to report crime data and issue timely emergency warnings of threats on campus. Since 2013, the law also requires that colleges offer new and current students “prevention and awareness programs” on domestic violence and sexual assault.
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