After over seven years of investigation into Yale University's sexual assault policy, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has fined the university $165,000 for failing to accurately report the number of sexual crimes on campus.
DOE initiated its investigation in 2004, after its Alumni Magazine's July-August edition published an article, 'Lux, Veritas and Sexual Trespass,' that elaborated on the mishandled sexual assault cases.
Upon reading the article, S. Daniel Carter, who was the then senior vice president of the non-profit Clery Center for Security On Campus, filed the original complaint with the DOE regarding the university's negligence of campus security requirements.
The immediate probe revealed that the university undocumented four cases of sex crimes on its campus in 2001 and 2002.
Yale is being penalised $27,500 for each of the unrecorded offenses. Plus, two additional fines have been slapped for not including crime figures from Yale-New Haven Hospital in the University's annual report and neglecting to include required policy statements in its 2004 assessment.
"This is a serious violation because current and prospective students/employees must be able to rely on accurate and complete crime information," Mary Gust, the director of the Department of Educations's Administrative Actions and Appeals Service Group, said. "Yale's correction of the crime statistics only after the department alerted the University of its Obligations in 2004 does not excuse its earlier failure to comply with its legal obligations."
By under-reporting rape cases, the university violated Clery Act, which requires colleges to release the exact crime statistics to the U.S. government.
The university is now being punished for violations that took place over a decade ago. But students allege that there have been more such cases since then, the most recent one being in 2011.
Yale is not the only university heavily criticized for the way it handled sexual crimes on campus. Other universities such as University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Amherst College, University of Texas , Swarthmore College, Occidental College, Dartmouth College, and Harvard University faced federal fines for publishing false crime statistics, failing to report sexual assaults and creating a hostile environment for survivors of sexual assault.
