We received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) that it will investigate a University of Rochester student’s complaint about the way that the university handled her charge of sexual assault. When OCR receives such a complaint, it undertakes a broader, comprehensive review of a university’s handling of sexual misconduct complaints for a period of years. We have told OCR that we will cooperate fully with its investigation.
We take our responsibilities on the issue of sexual assaults on campus very seriously. Nothing is more important than the welfare of our students. Our Title IX coordinator and the university will work closely with OCR to detail our prevention, training and education programs; review our policies and procedures for sexual misconduct investigations; and assess our conduct-hearing procedures.
In order to protect the privacy of the students involved in our sexual misconduct process, our policy is to maintain confidentiality to the fullest extent possible. We take this requirement seriously.
In its notification letter, OCR states that opening an investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination regarding the merits of the complaint. Rather, it is a neutral fact-finder in collecting and analyzing evidence and other sources of information.
In recent years, OCR has initiated these investigations at more than 100 schools. As a result of the volume of cases, the OCR investigations at other schools have been proceeding slowly so we may not have much additional information for some time.