US pushed to protect student-athletes from sexual abuse

US colleges and universities don’t appear to be doing enough to protect their student-athletes from sexual harassment and violence, often because complainants aren’t made to feel sure that they’ll be protected from retaliation, a federal government audit concludes.

The nation’s 500,000-plus student-athletes seem to be having especially difficult struggles with sexual harassment, the US Government Accountability Office says in its study, because of factors that include expectations of close-knit team cultures and paralysing fears of losing scholarships.

The GAO analysis follows a related report by the agency last month that looked more broadly at gender-related problems in US college sports and more clearly put blame on the federal government, saying that the US Department of Education often takes months to resolve complaints that are brought to it.

Campus resource: Addressing sexual misconduct in higher education, part one - prevention

The department doesn’t fully use the data it collects on colleges to inform its oversight work, doesn’t keep close track on due dates in the process, and doesn’t communicate well with colleges and universities on the overall status, the GAO says.

Even as college sports have multiplied in wealth and influence, such inequities have persisted for generations, the nonpartisan GAO tells the two members of Congress – both House Democrats – who requested the two reviews.

“Fifty years after the passage of Title IX,” the GAO says, referring to the 1972 federal law that generally forbids sex discrimination in educational institutions, “women continue to participate in college athletics at lower rates than men despite enrolling in college at higher rates.”

The GAO issued the findings at moments of rising public attention across several related areas: college sports generally, which is undergoing a rapid overhaul toward greater professionalisation and the establishment of student-athlete pay; women’s sports in particular, which is enjoying a nationwide surge in popular interest; and the federal role in enforcing campus equity and safety, which has encountered months of controversy over the education department’s parallel responsibilities to ensure that institutions protect their students from speech and protests they might not like.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights handles the investigations in both areas – gender equity and campus climate. That office, according to the new GAO report, reached 361 agreements with US colleges and universities to resolve sex discrimination complaints between 2013 and 2022. Of those, the GAO says, only eight involved college athletes. Yet much higher shares – about 6.5 per cent of male students, and nearly 4 per cent of female students – participate in intercollegiate sports at US four-year institutions.

The Democrats requesting the GAO probe – Bobby Scott and Suzanne Bonamici, both members of the House education committee – cited the audit agency’s findings as a reason for Congress to pass a bill known as the Fair Play for Women Act. That measure’s proposed changes include increasing publicly available data and educational resources concerning Title IX violations, and increasing the range of penalties for institutions. That latter element is essential, advocates said, because the federal government’s only current punitive option involves withholding from an institution all of its federal funding – a response so damaging that it never actually gets used.

The bill also would give students the legal right to bring their own lawsuits against college officials for Title IX violations.

The GAO’s analysis involved interviews with officials from 10 colleges in four states, and it credited some of them with making improvements that include the establishment of reporting mechanisms for taking anonymous complaints.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com