The U.S. Department of Education says it has ordered Pennsylvania State University to make significant changes to the way it investigates complaints of sexual misconduct after an investigation found the school has continued to mishandle cases years after the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
The New York Times reports that under an agreement between the department and the university, Penn State must review and revise its policies and processes for handling complaints filed under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination, including sexual harassment. It also must provide remedies to individuals whose complaints were mishandled; and must revise its record-keeping practices.
The resolution concludes an investigation started in 2014, after the conviction of Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State who was found guilty of sexually assaulting 10 boys.
The Obama administration fined the university $2.4 million for failing to report the offenses as required by the federal crime disclosure law, known as the Clery Act. Education officials found during that investigation that the university “had significant information even before Sandusky’s indictment that he was a danger to the university community,” the department said.
In its latest review to determine compliance with civil rights laws, the Education Department examined the university’s policies and procedures for resolving allegations of sexual harassment from 2011 to 2019. The department said a review of hundreds of case files found violations dating to the 2016-17 academic year, when the school failed to properly respond to complaints. During the 2016-17 year, the department said the university also failed to maintain records that would have determined whether it had complied with federal law.
The department also found that between 2017 and 2019, the university violated accused students’ due process rights by imposing sanctions before the students had an opportunity to respond. Penn State conducted Title IX hearings in a way that “may have precluded relevant information,” the department said.
“Given all of the attention that Penn State has faced in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, it is disappointing that so many serious problems have remained at that university system,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department.
The university said in a statement that many of the department’s findings “relate to a number of past practices, which during the six-year time frame of the investigation have been addressed by Penn State leadership.”
