One week ago, we met with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candice Jackson, along with survivors of sexual assault and other advocates, about the violence that too often goes unaddressed by schools. In that meeting, we urged DeVos to embark on a nationwide tour to meet with survivors and listen deeply to their experiences. We also urged them both to loudly reject myths about sexual assault.

Both of these urgent requests were made all the more critical after The New York Times published Jackson’s now-infamous comments disregarding the seriousness and prevalence of campus rape. She later apologized for being “flippant” about such a serious subject, but her comments reveal deep and troubling misunderstandings about campus sexual assault. Indeed, The Washington Post and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) have since called for Jackson’s resignation, citing her comments as further evidence that she lacks critical knowledge necessary to carry out one of her key job responsibilities: to hold schools accountable for protecting survivors’ civil rights.

These comments also left us worried about whether these stereotypes will drive actual policy decisions. And the choices in whom they’ve met with have not provided great comfort — they even welcomed anti-victim extremist groups into the department.

It’s abundantly clear that DeVos and her team have a lot of listening and learning to do in order to meet their moral and legal obligations to protect survivors by enforcing Title IX, the federal law the bans sex discrimination in federally funded schools.

Tell Betsy DeVos: Listen to more student survivors, and commit to preserving the Title IX guidance they need in order to stay in school.

We all have a responsibility to address (and eventually, eliminate) sexual violence by supporting survivors and holding perpetrators accountable, and the U.S. Department of Education has an especially critical role in that process. But a department led by people who seem to believe most survivors are lying is ill-equipped to carry out such an important task.

At a minimum, DeVos and her team need to spend more time listening to survivors, to make up for the time they have spent absorbing rape myths spread by the anti-survivor organizations they’ve consulted. They should go on a listening tour, hearing from survivors of all school levels and types, from various towns, cities, and states, of diverse backgrounds. Meeting with survivors isn’t all they need to do, of course, but it’s an important first step toward developing a real understanding of their role in ensuring that student survivors get what they need in order to stay and succeed in school, and in ensuring that schools are safe places for all.

Tell Betsy DeVos to listen to more survivors and commit to enforcing Title IX.

Thanks for standing up for survivors,
Fatima Goss Graves
President and CEO
National Women’s Law Center

P.S. We and 57 other organizations have sent a joint letter calling on Assistant Secretary Candice Jackson to reject rape myths and meet with more survivors as well. You can read that letter here.

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