May 25, 2015 11:36 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Conn. and Penn. are the latest states to introduce a "Yes Means Yes" sexual assault policy mandate for its colleges, but either would only be the second in the U.S. to officially adopt it.

According to the Hartford Courant, Connecticut's bill passed through its Senate with only one opposing vote and is now on its way to the House. If it passes there and is signed into law by Gov. Dannel Malloy, the state would be the second to adopt such a bill, after California did so last Sept.

Plans to bring a similar bill to fruition in Penn. are less developed, but a number of schools in Philadelphia have adopted the policy on their own. Earlier this month, USA Today College reported, representatives from those schools and the City Council's majority whip, Blondell Reynolds Brown held a hearing to discuss the policy.

"More and more - mostly women - are coming forward to find out that their schools don't have their back and in some instances they literally sweep it under the rug. That's unacceptable," she said at the hearing. "This issue is happening on university campuses - it behooves [universities] to come in and testify."

In Conn., Yale University and the University of Connecticut adopted a "yes means yes" sexual assault policy in response to such allegations, the CT Post reported. Both schools were placed under federal investigation for violating the gender equity Title IX law by improperly handling complaints of sexual assault.

If the state's bill, headed up by Sen. Mae Flexer (D-Killingly), is signed into law, all colleges in the state will be required to adopt the policy. Calif. was the first to make the "yes means yes" policy state-mandated.

The policy calls for affirmative consent before engaging in a sexual act. Consent can be defined in a number of ways, but it can be retracted during the act and it cannot be defined as the absence of dissent.

Similar policies have been introduced at several individual schools and school systems across the U.S. in an effort to combat campus rape, but Calif. has remained the only state to mandate it for all schools.

"This makes sure that all the students on our college campuses know that 'yes means yes' as opposed to 'no means no,'" the Post quoted Flexer saying during the floor debate for the bill. "That's a way of shifting the conversation around sexual assault so that it's no longer blaming the victim, asking the victim why she didn't fight back, but instead asking the accused assailant how he thought his behavior was acceptable."

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