What Does Law Require of Colleges to Prevent Sexual Assault?

College students across the country are once again demanding their institutions do more to prevent sexual assault on campus.

During a planned day of action Thursday, students on campuses around the country marched to stop sexual violence and show solidarity with survivors, vowing to take their fight “from the frat house to the White House.”

Earlier in the week, University of Oregon students called on the university to reform how it handles campus sexual violence after the institution issued a crime warning about five sexual assaults that had taken place less than week into the fall semester. Emory University students are asking their university to overhaul Title IX education and “improve the ways it conveys information about sexual assault resources.” At Stanford University, students are seeking the return of recently discontinued sexual assault–prevention programs.

And it’s not just students calling for change; at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s first Faculty Senate meeting of the year, faculty urged Interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots to do more to address sexual assault on campus.

Many of these conversations have been driven by the news out of Cornell University, where an anonymous former student, Jane Doe, alleged she was raped at a campus fraternity house in 2024. Cornell students are also demanding a slew of reforms, including a review of the online sexual assault–prevention training that new students see during orientation.

Josh Moody/Inside Higher Ed

Institutions’ replies to these demands repeat familiar refrains: Administrators take sexual assault seriously and have followed university policies and the law in their responses. In a statement responding to Doe’s lawsuit, Cornell officials said the university “investigated and adjudicated the allegations [in her complaint] consistent with university policies” and noted they “take sexual violence extremely seriously.” Oregon President Karl Scholz said in a statement Wednesday that officials would “examine our efforts closely to ensure we are doing all we can, employing best practices, and remaining proactive in creating a safe campus.”

As college leaders grapple with students’ demands and re-evaluate their own policies, it’s worth asking: What sexual assault–prevention training are institutions required to provide students under the law?

Not much, according to experts.

Title IX

The 2020 Title IX rule—which the Trump administration officially reinstated last week—requires colleges to provide “literally zero” training to students, said Andrea Stagg, director of consulting services at Grand River Solutions, a firm that advises colleges and universities on Title IX, Title VI and other federal laws. This comes as a surprise to some clients, Stagg said.

“Title IX regs only say you must train the people who are implementing your procedures. So you have to train your Title IX coordinator, your investigator, your hearing officer … also any appeals officers that you have,” she said. “There is no requirement that all of your employees are trained just because they might learn about sexual harassment in the scope of their work, or that someone might report to them. There is no requirement that your students receive training.”

In 2011, the Obama administration did encourage colleges and universities to “take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence,” including providing preventative education during new student orientation and training for student residence hall advisers, athletes and coaches. Still, it was only a recommendation, not a legal requirement, and the Trump administration later rescinded the guidance.

When the first Trump administration initially proposed the 2020 regulations, some wanted the Department of Education to legally require colleges to “monitor drinking, teach about interpersonal boundaries, sexuality, bystander intervention, and sexual consent communication, and provide counseling and mental health resources to students.” None of those recommendations made it into the final version, but ED noted that “nothing in the final regulations impedes recipients’ discretion to provide students (or employees) with educational information. While these final regulations are concerned with setting forth requirements for recipients’ responses to sexual harassment, the Department agrees with commenters that educators, experts, students, and employees should also endeavor to prevent sexual harassment from occurring in the first place.”

The Clery Act

While Title IX is mum on prevention education, another federal law requires some such training—the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act. The law—named for Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University student who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986—requires colleges and universities to report crime data and issue timely emergency warnings of threats on campus. Since 2013, the law also requires that colleges offer new and current students “prevention and awareness programs” on domestic violence and sexual assault. These programs must address bystander intervention and “risk reduction aimed at recognizing the warning signs of these crimes and addressing root causes in order to prevent recurrence,” according to the Clery Center.

“Offer” is the key word here, Stagg said. Clery does not say that colleges must require students to complete or attend the prevention programs.

Prevention and awareness programs must be ongoing, the law states.

“If you’re wondering why [colleges] do a sexual assault awareness month, or a ‘Denim Day’—all of those events and those education programs … count as your ongoing prevention and awareness,” Stagg said.

The Clery Act also states that college officials working on Title IX—such as the Title IX coordinator, investigators and hearing and appeals officers—must be trained annually, she said. (Title IX does not otherwise dictate the frequency of training).

State Laws

While federal student training requirements are minimal, some states have implemented additional rules for colleges.

In Cornell’s home state, the 2015 New York “Enough Is Enough” law states that all new and transfer college and university students must receive training on consent, bystander intervention, risk reduction, available victim resources and university Title IX policies, among other topics. The format, length and modality of the training is left up to each institution. Student organization leaders must demonstrate that they completed the training before their group can be recognized, and student athletes must do so before they can play, the law states.

In Texas, students are required to attend a training on the institution’s sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking policies before or during their first semester. Illinois and Vermont require institutions to offer annual training for students, but do not seek proof of completion.

California’s law, enacted in 2022, requires most state colleges and private institutions that receive state financial assistance to provide annual student trainings on what counts as sexual violence and harassment, facts and myths about the causes of such crimes, resources for victims, consequences for perpetrators, and other topics. (The law only “requests” that the University of California, which has constitutional autonomy, do so).

“You can’t look at a school in a vacuum of federal law—Title IX and Clery. You have to remember there’s state law that they’re living in,” Stagg said. “It’s a really important piece of that puzzle.”

Cornell, Oregon and other institutions have promised students they’ll work to improve campus safety and combat cultures of sexual violence on campus. Scholz’s statement directed to students to an upcoming mandatory sexual assault–prevention training. But successful sexual violence prevention requires more than online modules and following the meager requirements codified in the law, survivor advocates say.

The best prevention programs include regular training across multiple sessions, research has shown. In-person events, including peer-to-peer conversations, role-playing for bystander intervention and bringing survivors to campus to speak to students, are all important strategies, said Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit dedicated to ending campus sexual assault.

“Since the first Trump administration, we’ve seen a divestment in primary prevention programming at institutions, and rather a focus on pushing what we would define as risk-mitigation programs that enable schools to say, ‘We’re checking the box, 100 percent of our students went through an online course that covers the topics that are required under the Campus SaVE Act,’” Vitchers said.

But, she added, this kind of divestment and “cascading institutional failures ultimately result in horrific incidents like what happened at Cornell.”