WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) released data on sexual violence complaints on college campuses.
The information was provided by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Since seeing the information the senators asked for $131 million in funding to go toward the OCR to help them with the uptick in cases.
Four years.
According to the OCR that was the average amount of time it took last year for a sexual violence claim to be solved.
“I’m surprised,” said Wendy Sumner-Winter with Christian Brothers University.
She called the timeline staggering.
“You think about how this interrupts people’s lives and how it interrupts someone’s educational history and what not,” she said.
Sumner-Winter said her University received on average one to two complaints of sexual assaults a semester and they tried to work quickly to resolve the problem.
“We try to get these things done within a month or so,” she said.
So what’s the reason for the lengthy results across the country?
The Civil Rights Office said they simply had more cases to investigate.
From 2009 to 2014, sexual violence complaints at college increased more than 1,000% from 9 to 102.
The average length of an investigation also increased from 379 days in 2009 to 1,469 days in 2014.
The average now: was more than two and a half years.
“If you have a backlog then the increase in resources would help mitigate that,” said one University of Memphis student.
Students WREG spoke with said the need for more help is real, especially because more women were coming forward when there’s a problem.
“I think we feel like we can be heard no that people take us seriously if we feel unsafe,” said freshman, Desiree Carter.
