Feb 27, 2014 11:44 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

31 current and former students have filed a federal complaint against the University of California - Berkeley alleging administrators violated the Title IX gender equity law.

The group's complaint with the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) alleges administrators dismissed rape claims as a joke, did not take seriously reports of a serial rapist and either took months to being an investigation or never started one at all.

Speaking exclusively to the Huffington Post, UC - Berkeley junior Sofie Karasek, one of the complainants, said she was one of four women to meet with the school's Title IX administrator in April 2012. After they said the same man had raped them all, the administrator told them to submit a written statement.

"There was no investigation," Karasek told the HP. "None of us were ever contacted."

After submitting her statement in the spring, she did not find out until Sept. that the man had been punished with probation and mandatory counseling. He also was allowed to graduate despite being found responsible.

"In terms of how long cases take, our aim is to conclude cases as quickly as possible but individual cases can vary based on issues such as the number of individuals involved, complexity of the case, availability of witnesses (who may be out of the country), and other issues," a UC-Berkeley spokeswoman Janet Gilmore, who could not discuss details of the complaint, told the HP.

UC - Berkeley already has seen a Clery Act complaint lodged against them in May 2013 alleging the school was underreporting campus crime, sex crimes in particular. Title IX requires fair treatment to both men and women, while the Clery Act requires schools to be completely transparent about crimes committed on campus.

The same group of former and current students filing the most recent complaint previously filed a Clery complaint against Cal. There are currently more than a dozen schools under federal investigation from complaints filed with the OCR alleging administration mishandled their sex crime claims.

The President has even taken notice and launched an initiative to force schools to address the issue and create better polices and practices for reports of sexual assault.

Diva Kass said UC - Berkeley acted with "deliberate indifference" after she was attacked by the same man in April 2009 and faced harassment from him and his fraternity brothers in the time it took the school to adjudicate the matter. She said the school did not allow her to have witnesses testify at the hearing and other victims who said the man also raped them could not appear as well.

"It was viewed from this lens that, because it happened more than once, it couldn't have been rape," Kass told the HP. "It was very clear people on the panel did not understand sexual assault... or the law."

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