Much of the coverage of proposed new rules released last week on how schools should handle sexual harassment allegations has focused on how the rules expand the rights of those accused — and they do. But the most significant parts of the proposal have nothing to do with protecting students, accused or otherwise. Instead, if allowed to go into effect, the new rules would, above all, protect schools.
Schools don’t like getting in trouble with the law. Under the previous administration, the Education Department opened nearly 400 investigations into schools’ handling of sexual violence. Some colleges reportedly spent as much as $600,000 to avoid the reputational hit of being found in violation of Title IX and the theoretical threat of the department pulling their federal funding (which it has never done).
The education lobby made clear it wasn’t happy. The National School Boards Association repeatedly demanded that the department ease the standards by which it assessed schools’ liability. The American Council on Education and a group of university presidents complained to Congress that the department’s approach was too vigorous. A lucrative cottage industry arose to train college administrators on “Twenty Steps to OCR-Proof Your Campus on Title IX.” (O.C.R., or the Office for Civil Rights, is tasked with investigating schools.) Public lobbying disclosures reveal that universities like Yale, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M, and the Universities of Iowa and Colorado spent tens of thousands of dollars — in just the past year alone — lobbying the Trump Education Department for friendlier regulations, including on Title IX.
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