The state’s higher education commissioner and attorney general blasted a set proposed changes to Title IX which protects students and faculty from sexual harassment on college campuses.
Attorney General Maura Healey condemned the changes, filed by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, calling them “an attack on the civil rights of young people in schools across Massachusetts and the country.”
“The proposed rule is designed to silence survivors of sexual harassment and assault,” Healey wrote in her letter. “Secretary DeVos has again betrayed American students.”
DeVos made the changes to revoke Obama-era policies she said didn’t provide adequate due process rights to students accused of sexual assault or harassment.
Mass. Department of Higher Ed Commissioner Carlos Santiago said in his comments that he feared the new definition of harassment was so narrow, particularly regarding language requiring “pervasive” harassment that it “implies that one or two incidents are insufficient to trigger Title IX protections, unless they actually cross the line into sexual assault.”