President Obama and top administration officials will no longer visit colleges that aren’t taking campus sexual assault seriously enough, The Washington Post reports.
White House officials told the Post that Obama, Vice President Biden, first lady Michelle Obama and others won’t visit if they believe university leadership is “insufficiently serious about pursing sexual-assault allegations and punishing perpetrators.”
{mosads}The government should “take away their money,” Biden told newspaper, if a school doesn’t change their policies.
“Now’s the time to put the pedal to the metal,” the vice president added, referring to the administration’s efforts to combat campus sexual assault.
The announcement comes after Biden wrote a letter — published on BuzzFeed — to a survivor of sexual assault at Stanford University.
“I do not know your name—but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed,” the vice president wrote in the letter. “It must have been wrenching—to relive what he did to you all over again. But you did it anyway, in the hope that your strength might prevent this crime from happening to someone else.”
The victim read a message to her assailant in court detailing the effects of the rape on her life. The attacker in her case, Brock Turner, was sentenced to six months in prison. Turner could have received up to 14 years.
The administration previously launched a Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault in 2014 and established a website, NotAlone.gov, with information on preventing and responding to sexual assaults.
The Education Department currently has 235 ongoing investigations at nearly 200 schools over the handling of sexual assault, according to the Post.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
