The strongest punishment schools can deliver is to expel a rapist from campus. That’s an appropriate punishment for cheating on a physics final, not for a felony on par with murder and armed robbery. Campus judicial systems aren’t designed to address that sort of offense.
So they are failing. The Department of Education is investigating 55 schools on possible violations of female students’ civil rights by mishandling sexual assault cases. Schools are accused of pushing victims not to report their crimes to police, dragging cases on for months without resolution and failing to investigate serious allegations.
When the system fails, college rapists are free to strike again. According to research cited by the White House, the vast majority of campus sexual assaults are carried out by serial predators. The typical college rapist has six victims. But even when sexual assault investigations succeed, correctly identifying the perpetrator and delivering the maximum sentence, the result is the same. College rapists are free to strike again. They’ll just have to choose from a different set of potential victims.
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