Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat preparing legislation to push colleges to go further in dealing with sexual assaults, said higher fines may be in order for schools that violate federal rules.
Maximum fines of $35,000 per violation aren’t enough to get wealthy universities’ attention on the matter, and threats of the loss of federal funding are so harsh that they’re unlikely to be imposed, McCaskill said in a roundtable discussion yesterday with victims’ rights advocates, along with campus safety and U.S. Education Department officials.
