Sponsors (2)
Official title: Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act to combat campus sexual assault, and for other purposes.
Introduced October 8, 2025 by Kirsten Gillibrand · Last progress October 8, 2025
The bill increases transparency, survivor support, and accountability on campus but does so at the cost of added administrative burdens, privacy and reputational risks, potential deterrence of reporting, and new expenses or penalties that may strain smaller institutions and taxpayers.
Students, families, and the public will have easier access to standardized, incident-level campus crime and Title IX information (searchable contact lists, complaint procedures, and outcomes), improving transparency and helping people find who to contact and what to expect.
Survivors and students will get better on‑campus support: mandated trained, confidential sexual/interpersonal-violence specialists, clear online disclosures of resources and accommodations, and standardized trauma‑informed training for covered employees, improving access to services and consistency of responses.
Campus disciplinary fairness improves through uniform campus-wide disciplinary processes and anti-retaliation protections, reducing unequal treatment and promoting more consistent handling of interpersonal violence claims.
Students, complainants, respondents, and named staff face increased privacy and reputational risks from more detailed public reporting and posted investigation information (risk of imperfect redaction or de‑identification, and reputational harm prior to final findings).
Colleges and universities will incur significant new administrative and compliance costs (data collection/standardization, staffing specialists, systems changes) and face civil penalties for failures, which could raise costs for students or lead institutions—especially small, resource‑constrained ones—to cut other services.
More detailed institutional reporting and mandatory employee notification requirements may deter survivors from reporting or seeking confidential help, reducing use of services and undermining survivor trust in campus processes.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens Clery Act reporting and definitions, requires campus survivor specialists and training, creates a public Education Department campus-safety website, modifies DOJ grant statute, and tasks GAO with a grant effectiveness study.
Requires colleges and universities that receive federal higher-education funds to strengthen campus safety transparency, reporting, and survivor supports for sexual and interpersonal violence. It expands Clery Act crime definitions and incident-level reporting, directs the Department of Education to run a public searchable campus-safety website with Department investigations and institution contact data, sets mandatory campus policies and trained specialist roles for survivor support, updates DOJ grant statute language related to campus violent-crime grants, and orders a GAO study on the effectiveness of those DOJ campus grants.