The California State College system will probably be required to ascertain clear insurance policies and tips for a way sexual harassment instances are investigated and tracked beneath a invoice Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Monday.
The brand new regulation obligates the 23-campus community to implement suggestions from a 2023 state audit that examined how officers investigated and tracked complaints on the nation’s largest public four-year college system following outcry over the failure to correctly deal with sexual misconduct instances throughout a number of campuses.
Lawmakers requested the audit in 2022 after Los Angeles Instances investigations revealed inconsistencies and breakdowns in how officers responded to scholar and college sexual misconduct and retaliation complaints. The audit discovered a scarcity of oversight by the chancellor’s workplace, which oversees the system, and stated officers didn’t correctly doc or examine sexual harassment accusations. It additionally really helpful the chancellor’s workplace implement the roughly two dozen reforms by this July. Lawmakers questioned whether or not the CSU would make modifications with out the Legislature’s oversight throughout a listening to final yr.
The CSU will now be required to observe by means of on final yr’s suggestions that embrace the event of clear tips for investigations, a longtime coverage to trace complaints and a coverage to handle instances of wrongdoing that don’t meet the sexual harassment threshold. College officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Meeting Invoice 1790 was launched by Assemblymembers Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael) and Mike Fong (D-Alhambra).
“This laws will be sure that survivors are heard, perpetrators are held accountable, and our instructional establishments uphold the very best requirements of justice and assist,” Connolly stated in a press release. “By strengthening protections towards sexual assault and sexual harassment, we are able to make our California State Universities safer for college students and college by guaranteeing that allegations of sexual harassment should not wrongfully dismissed.”
A 2022 Instances investigation discovered that the CSU paid $600,000 to settle a declare with a Sonoma State provost who alleged retaliation by the campus president after she reported sexual harassment allegations towards the president’s husband. The chancellor’s workplace didn’t examine the claims. Each the president and the president’s husband, who’re not on the college, beforehand denied wrongdoing.
Different investigations discovered breakdowns in how the California Maritime Academy dealt with allegations of sexual harassment towards ladies and transgender college students on campus and at sea. Instances reporting additionally discovered inconsistencies in how the CSU documented complaints.
The invoice follows a regulation that went into impact this yr requiring CSU to publicly disclose the result of sexual harassment complaints and investigations.
