ST. PAUL – Rep. Marion O’Neill (R-Maple Lake) and Rep. Debra Hilstrom (DFL-Brooklyn Center) have introduced legislation – House File 742 – to address the serious and devastating issue of sexual assault on college campuses.
“With a daughter and daughter-in-law on college campuses, the safety of our students is a top priority for me,” said O’Neill. “This legislation moves us in the right direction protecting, educating, and empowering survivors of sexual assault on campus as well as working to prevent it in the first place.”
“This legislation provides more tools to address sexual assault on college campuses. Minnesota must have a victim centered approach that ensures accountability for student safety,” said Hilstrom.
This bill creates a sexual assault policy for postsecondary institutions of Minnesota. Victims’ rights are expanded in order to protect them during the reporting process, disciplinary proceedings, and after. It also creates the option for online reporting.
Additionally, postsecondary institutions would be required to report summary data to the Office of Higher Education and creates a data audit trial. The required information would include: the number of incidents investigated, the number that were referred to disciplinary proceedings, the number of incidents referred to law enforcement, the number of alleged perpetrators that were found responsible by the disciplinary proceeding, the number of disciplinary proceedings that received more than a warning, the number of disciplinary proceedings that did not have a resolution, and the number of reports that were received from the online reporting data base. All information reported would be in a summary data format and would be none identifiable.
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