May 20, 2014 01:59 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is leading a group of U.S. senators that wants to stiffen penalties on schools found responsible of mishandling sexual assault on campus.

According to Inside Higher Ed, the group of senators is planning to pass a bill that would require schools to complete a campus climate survey on their policies and practices. Monday was the first of three roundtable discussions on Capitol Hill meant to discuss the issue.

The bill, co-authored by Sens. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would be meant to un-complicate the process of adjudicating sexual violence. Contributing factors include state laws that define consent, the Clery Act and the federal anti-sexual discrimination law Title IX.

"We're looking at a variety of things, including larger fines," McCaskill said at Monday's meeting. "I feel very strongly that fines would need to be based on the size of the institution."

She said pulling a school's federal funding is unfair to the scores of students who did nothing wrong. She also said the maximum fine of $35,000 for a Clery Act violation is nothing more than "a slap on the wrist" for some schools.

One factor to consider in designing fines tailored to a school's size is how to define size. McCaskill said her group is considering measuring size in population, budget or it federal financial aid.

The first part of the legislation would be to distribute a survey to college campuses that would encourage students to express their opinion on how the school handles such issues. The Obama Administration has encouraged these climate surveys as soon as this upcoming academic year, but the White House also wants to mandate them by 2016.

McCaskill's bill has already been met with opposition from the American Council for Education, a powerful higher education lobbying group.

"We're going to look at the annual cost of doing an annual climate survey," McCaskill said, "but I think that with this problem and with the attention that it is finally receiving, I think many universities are going to be reluctant to shirk away from the responsibility of finding out the actual extent of the problem they have on their campus."

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