Proposed sexual assault bill affects USC campus

Southern California Assemblyman Mike Gatto recently proposed a bill that would change the rules for reporting sexual assaults on college campuses.

AB 1433 would require that all instances of sexual assault reported to collegiate administrators or organizations be subsequently reported to the police unless the victim specifically requests a report not be filed.

Gatto said he was inspired to draft the bill after seeing numerous media reports concerning colleges across the country underreporting cases of sexual assault.

Last May, USC gained national attention when 16 students and alumni submitted a Title IX complaint to the Office for Civil Rights within the Dept.of Education regarding the university’s treatment of sexual assault victims and errors in its reporting and adjudication process. The University of California, Berkeley and Occidental College are under similar investigations.

“It appeared that university administrations were not investigating these crimes and instead trying to cover them up,” Gatto said. “Whenever you have something like that occur, you lessen the chance of the victim ever seeing justice, and you also leave the perpetrator out in the community to victimize somebody else. For both those reasons I think a law is necessary to treat victims with the dignity they deserve.”

Gatto said he and his staff spoke with sexual assault survivors throughout the state while drafting the bill. The reaction to the bill among his colleagues and among the community has been largely positive, and many people were shocked to learn about the loopholes and lack of continuity in the reporting process.

Alexa Schwartz, a senior majoring in theatre, is one of three students whose complaints are currently under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. Schwartz speculated that she is skeptical that the mandate for police involvement comes more as a result of media pressure rather than a survivor request.

“It seems a little bit like this has been a recurring issue in the news,” Schwartz said. “People are always asking, ‘Why aren’t the police involved?’ That leads to this action of making sure the police are included when it’s not a survivor initiative.”

Schwartz cautions that the option to involve police should always be framed as a choice. Requiring the victim to specifically request police to not be involved puts pressure on the victim to do something that could be viewed as going against the norm.

“I think there can be specific language about how to go about it because so much power is being taken away from the survivor already,” Schwartz said. “If people know going forth and reporting is essentially the same thing as reporting to the police, it might deter people from reporting at all.”

Before AB 1433 is voted on, Gatto said it will likely appear before two policy committees: the Higher Education Committee and the Criminal Justice Committee. The bill contains an urgency clause, which stipulates the proposal must receive 67 percent of votes to pass rather than the majority. Unlike a typical bill, which could take up to a year to go into effect, if AB 1433 passes it would become law following the governor’s signature.

“It’s my hope that this bill will be the law of the land by next fall,” Gatto said. “I’m in the camp that something needed to be done yesterday. There is no such thing as too soon.”

Kaya Masler, executive co-director of the USC Women’s Assembly and a member of the Safer Campus Initiative, a group within the Women’s Assembly, said that Gatto’s office should continue its efforts to ensure that the bill can address all facets of the issue.

“I’m very impressed and appreciative of all of Assemblymember Gatto’s efforts on this issue,” she said. “He has made it a priority issue and I really appreciate that, but I don’t think that this bill gets to the heart of the problem. As long as his office keeps doing their research and reaching out to survivors and getting their perspectives, he’ll find the answers that he’s looking for.”

Gatto said he hopes the provisions in the bill will also address discrepancies in what is considered official reporting.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act requires college campuses to release crime statistics. Gatto believes the annual report, which encompasses three years of crime data, helps prospective and current students as well as their parents. But in many cases the reported Clery numbers did not accurately reflect campus crime.

In September, the USC Dept. of Public Safety made adjustments in its Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report for forcible sex offenses not noted in the previous year’s report.

Effective Oct. 1 of last year, staff for the Center for Women and Men, which provides counseling for victims of sexual assault, are no longer designated as Campus Security Authorities, the title given to establishments that can file official reports of sexual assault. Gatto’s office said the new bill will likely require the Center for Women and Men to report sexual assaults to the police unless the victim requests otherwise.

Masler said discrepancies in Clery reporting can be avoided by providing victims with reporting forms and information about their rights.

“Issues of Clery can be resolved without mandating police involvement,” Masler said. “Victims should know their Clery rights and that all representatives that are required to report to Clery are reporting and that those are being reported correctly. There is a way to enforce Clery without making this extra provision that necessitates police involvement.”

As a rape survivor, Francesca Bessey, a junior majoring in international relations, said that the investigative process is both stressful and disrespectful to the person going through it but that she hopes the bill will help politicians begin to think about how the issue can be legally addressed.

“Having the option of an investigation of a rape in itself does not always represent justice,” Bessey said. “It unfortunately does not always end in justice and it can also lead to a series of obstacles and problems that investigations on college campuses don’t lead to; however, the effort to hold colleges and universities more accountable in the aftermath of an investigation is definitely commendable and I’m heartened by the efforts of Assemblymember Gatto to work directly with survivors.”

The bill itself applies to reporting willful homicide and robberies as well as hate crimes and sexual assaults. Gatto said the bill targets many areas of campus crime but improving the sexual assault reporting process is, at the moment, his main priority.

“I think we have a broad consensus among victims that this bill is a good balance, that it leaves everything up to the victim. It gives them some control back and it will also result in more perpetrators being pulled out of the community,” Gatto said. “There are already far too many sexual assaults on campuses. One is one too many and, generally, I think it’s going to take a lot of approaches. It’s going to take attitudinal shifts. It’s going to take educational efforts but this is one piece that the California legislature can do to change our laws to reflect better values.”

The University could not be reached for comment in time for print.