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For Immediate Release
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Brett Abrams, brett@unbendablemedia.com

Women's Group: DeVos' New Rules on Campus Sexual Assault Encourage Schools to Be Complicit in Sexual Violence

UltraViolet warns Trump Administration policies will keep rapists on campus

WASHINGTON

This morning, Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy Devos' new regulations on campus sexual misconduct were released. The new rules would weaken protections for sexual assault survivors and make schools more dangerous by reducing reporting requirements, allowing schools to ignore violence that happens at off campus bars and parties, even if a student must see their harasser every day at school, and setting up intimidating processes where survivors can be cross-examined. Religious schools would be exempted from following Title IX at all.

Shaunna Thomas, Executive Director and Co-Founder of UltraViolet, a leading national women's organization, issued the following statement:

"With one in five women sexually assaulted while in college, we are facing a national rape epidemic on our campuses, yet Betsy DeVos and the Trump Administration just put out new rules encouraging schools to be more complicit in sexual violence.

"These rules further protect abusers in a system that is already rigged in their favor and dramatically reduce requirements that schools protect their students. With sexual assaults already under reported and routinely ignored, these new rules will make campuses dramatically more dangerous.

"When survivors are unable to seek out the justice they deserve, they are denied the access to education Title IX was created to protect. DeVos and Trump must be stopped."

UltraViolet is a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.