There was one big trending topic heading into this year’s state legislative session, thanks largely to events that unfolded in Charlottesville. The death of UVA second-year Hannah Graham, allegedly at the hands of a man who left two Virginia schools under suspicion of sexual assault, and the explosive if now discredited Rolling Stone story on a fraternity house rape here made the city and the University campus safety’s ground zero last fall. One result was at least 10 bills proposed in the House of Delegates and the State Senate aimed at increasing reporting of and lasting consequences for student-on-student sexual violence.
The focus of most of them: requiring university employees who hear about assault to pass the report on to somebody who can take action. The “mandatory reporting” bills have taken a variety of approaches, with local reps spearheading several of them. A few bills have ended up on top, but not everybody’s happy about the measures that may carry the day.
Delegate Rob Bell (R-58th), who represents part of Albemarle, sponsored HB1930, which would require any faculty member or administrator at a Commonwealth school who learns of a violent felony to report it, names included, to the school’s Title IX coordinator—the administrator in charge of ensuring compliance with the federal regulations on college sexual assault prevention and other equal-access issues. That coordinator would then have to call a meeting of a special team to determine whether the incident posed enough of a public safety threat to report it to police.
Even if the team decided it didn’t, they’d have to pass along a “de-identified” report to law enforcement, who would review the case with the local Commonwealth’s attorney. That “ensures that the issue will always be considered by at least one person who is not a member of the university staff,” Bell said.
His original bill would have required faculty and staff to report directly to police. He’s not the only one who dialed down demands for mandatory reporting to law enforcement after the start of the session. House Minority Leader and Charlottesville Delegate David Toscano (D-57th) had initially proposed a go-directly-to-police bill as well, but a later draft instead pushed for “enhanced encouragement” of reporting. That bill was tabled in committee earlier this month.
Why the walkback? Both local legislators said they’d talked to a lot of stakeholders as they drew up the measures, and one group in particular has been vehement in its opposition to requiring police involvement in all cases of campus assault: survivors of such assaults.
Over in the Senate, a harder line prevails. Senator Dick Black (R-13th) is pushing a bill that not only requires professors and administrators to report information on a “criminal sexual assault” to police within 48 hours, it makes failing to do so a Class 1 misdemeanor, which is punishable by a $2,500 fine and up to a year in jail. A slew of other Senate bills were absorbed by Black’s in the Senate Standing Committee on Education and Health, on which Black serves.
Laura Dunn, founder and director of Washington, D.C.-based sexual assault advocacy organization SurvJustice and a rape survivor, said saddling all school employees with a mandate to turn over information on assaults to police is a terrible move, and Bell’s edited take isn’t much better.
Professors are often among the only people students feel comfortable turning to in confidence, Dunn said, which is why the Department of Education recommends they not be made “responsible employees” who are required to report.
Mandatory reporting laws have been shown to have a chilling effect on students reporting rape at all, said SurvJustice legal intern Carly Mees. Many are well aware of the difficulty in prosecuting sexual assault and want to avoid cops and courts, “and if those professors are required to go to the police, survivors are not going to go to them anymore.”
What doesn’t bother them is requiring responsible employees to turn over information to a Title IX coordinator for review by a threat assessment team. But, Dunn pointed out, federal law already requires that, and the last thing the issue of campus sexual assault needs is redundant and confusing legislation. Instead, she said, lawmakers should be focused on fixing a justice system that too often fails sexual assault victims.
In their speed to throw together solutions, Dunn said, Virginia legislators may do more damage than good. “They’re just kind of running with an idea and doing it for the headlines,” she said. “That’s the unfortunate nature of a legislative cycle like that.”