Minnesota has passed legislation that will require all colleges to publicly reveal the number of sexual assault complaints they investigate each year. Furthermore, the colleges will also have to publish how many of those investigations lead to perpetrator punishment, and what those punishments entail.
The law went into effect with a number of other laws on August 1, and it requires all Minnesota colleges in October to start sending yearly reports on campus sexual assault investigations to the state. By the end of the year, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education expects to make the data public, but details including names and other identifying characteristics will be kept confidential.
In addition to the data publication, students will also be able to report a sexual assault through an anonymous online tool.
“The big impetus (for the law) was to make reporting go better for students,” said Yvonne Cournoyer of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “The reporting process doesn’t go nearly as well as it could.”
Sexual Assault Prevention Training Added
Cutting down on campus sexual assaults doesn’t stop there. Minnesota will also require all college students to complete sexual assault prevention training within their first 10 days at school. The law doesn’t detail exactly what the training will entail, or what penalties a student could face should they fail to attend the training seminar, but the groundwork is in place to help raise awareness about the problem of sexual violence on campus.
Students won’t be the only ones undergoing assault prevention training. School security officers will be required to undergo additional training to learn more techniques for responding to and investigating sexual assaults. Prior to the passage of the law, many campuses, including the University of Minnesota, did not require security officers to undergo any sexual assault training. The new training will come in the form of a one-day course taught by the Minnesota Sex Crimes Investigators Association titled “Basic Sexual Assault Investigations.”
