Catholic colleges are learning the right way to answer when a victim of sexual assault calls for help.

Student Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg committed suicide on September 10, 2010, 10 days after she’d claimed a University of Notre Dame football player fondled her against her will. The details leading up to her death rocked both campuses and devastated her parents.

Despite complaints from Seeberg’s family that they acted too slowly in investigating her complaint, Notre Dame officials have declined to comment on her case specifically, citing her privacy rights. The attorney of the accused student maintains his innocence. Whether Notre Dame’s mishandling of the situation factored in Lizzy’s suicide remains in dispute.

But one thing is clear: The high-profile case prompted the U.S. Department of Education to launch an investigation of how Notre Dame handles sexual assault cases.

Notre Dame isn’t alone. Colleges and universities nationwide are under growing pressure from the federal government and rape victim advocates to tighten up their sexual misconduct policies and practices.

Amid the sexual “hook-up culture” rampant on many of today’s campuses, experts say the atmosphere may be more conducive than ever for sexual assault. Catholic institutions must navigate this terrain while upholding church doctrine that prohibits premarital sex in the first place.

On notice

After a series of reports on the Seeberg case by the Chicago Tribune, ABC News, and prominent bloggers, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation of Notre Dame’s policies and procedures regarding sexual harassment, including sexual violence. The OCR in July announced it had reached a settlement agreement with Notre Dame. The agency found that Notre Dame already was doing many things right but could improve in some ways.

Specifically the agreement requires the university to ensure that students and the public know how to report sexual harassment and what to expect from the university and law enforcement after making such a report. Notre Dame agreed to make clear that it will use a “preponderance of evidence” standard to evaluate allegations of sexual harassment and assault, and to initiate and conclude investigations within 60 days.

The agreement also requires Notre Dame to create a separate room for complainants to appear before a disciplinary review panel so that they do not have to face their alleged perpetrators, and it gives complainants the same appeal rights that accused students enjoy.

When announcing the settlement, the Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights, Russlynn Ali, said, “We launched this investigation to ensure that college students have an educational environment free from sexual violence and other forms of sexual harassment.”

Notre Dame spokesperson Dennis Brown says the university needed to fine-tune what it already was doing to prevent, investigate, and sanction sexual misconduct by students.

“We needed to organize our programs and services we have and communicate them in a more organized way,” Brown says.

‘Dear Colleague’

Notre Dame’s settlement announcement came three months after the OCR sent colleges and universities another signal that the Barack Obama administration places a high priority on campus safety. In April the agency issued a letter to all institutions of higher education, known as the “Dear Colleague” letter, informing them of their responsibilities under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The law requires schools to provide an educational environment free of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Brett Sokolow, a Malvern, Pennsylvania-based attorney and consultant who helps colleges design and implement sexual misconduct policies and procedures, applauds the move.

“What OCR has done is finally to promulgate guidance that reflects the substance of its enforcement,” says Sokolow, managing partner at the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. “To date, that enforcement has been accomplished campus by campus, without public dissemination of the findings and compliance requirements. We’ve had to read tea leaves to discern OCR’s expectations. Now we have greater clarity on a number of key issues.”

For example, the Dear Colleague letter declares that disciplinary actions in sexual assault cases should hinge on a “preponderance” of the evidence—meaning the assault more than likely occurred—rather than the criminal justice system’s more stringent “clear and convincing evidence” standard many colleges had long used, which placed a heavy burden on the accuser.

Sokolow also notes a commonplace tendency to blame victims. “We don’t ask the victim of a purse robbery whether she tried to stop the robber, but we do ask victims of sexual assault questions that imply or impose a duty to resist, object, fight, or otherwise protest,” Sokolow says. “Good policy should be based on consent, and the presence of consent or sexual permission isn’t shown by the absence of resistance.”

At Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the school’s sexual assault policy clearly states its support for the church’s teaching against premarital sex. Still, a situation in which a student claims she consented to some level of sexual contact, but not the level that occurred, does not pose a challenge for upholding church doctrine, says Jonathan Sawyer, associate vice president for student life and dean of students.

“From the president on downward, the policy that is expressed is as follows: sexual relations are reserved for marriage between a man and a woman,” Sawyer says. “At the same time, there are no ‘levels of consent’ when it comes to sexual assault and rape. There either is explicit, ongoing, meaningful consent or there is not.”

Sawyer points to the university’s Catholic identity as the foundation for the community’s responsibility to prevent sexual assault. “Using a parable such as the Good Samaritan and highlighting various aspects of Catholic social teaching, we are able to engage in dialogue that connects our values as a Catholic community to our responsibility to act on behalf of those who are, or may become, victims,” he says.

Ounce of prevention

In her book Sex and the Soul (Oxford University Press), Donna Freitas, Hofstra University associate professor of religion, describes the hook-up culture now prevalent on many campuses. She has found that today’s students often are engaging in casual sex or making out at parties, not because they necessarily want to, but because they think they must participate in order to “make their way socially,” she says.

“Hook-up culture is not a culture of consent, so right there you have problems,” she says. “Often students don’t want to participate in hook-up culture in the first place, but they feel obligated because they don’t think anything else is available on campus. Consent in that sort of context is very complicated.”

Add alcohol to the scene, as is often the case, and consent is even more difficult to pinpoint, Freitas says.

“Colleges across the country are extremely concerned about sexual assaults on campus and the hook-up culture, but I’m not sure yet whether we’re doing a good job of putting those conversations together,” she says.

The key to addressing sexual assault proactively and creating a culture that is supportive of women and victims is to invest heavily in prevention, Sokolow says.

“In higher education, we are producing reams of research on what works, and it is catching on,” he says. “We can prevent victimization through a number of models of prevention, including the ecological model, social norming, bystander intervention, and anti-oppression work.”

The University of San Diego, a Catholic institution with an enrollment of 7,800, employs all four of those approaches, says Moisés Barón, assistant vice president for student affairs for student wellness. Barón says the university began focusing more intently on the issue in 2007, taking guidance from the American College Health Association’s toolkit, “Shifting the Paradigm: Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence.”

“That really helped inform the development of a comprehensive program,” Barón says. “There were things we were doing already . . . and a number of things we needed to start doing more.”

The “ecological model” involves three prongs: the individual, his or her physical environment, and the social environment. The school provides information the individual can use to guide his or her own behavior; explains the university’s expectations, policies, and protocols; and teaches students about creating social norms and a culture without sexism.

“Social norming” means giving students, especially incoming freshmen, more accurate information about how their peers behave. For example, many new students overestimate how much other students use alcohol and illegal drugs, Barón says. Because about 85 percent of sexual assaults involve alcohol or drug use by one or both individuals, the school strives to reduce that risk factor by reducing the social pressure to drink and use drugs.

With “anti-oppression work,” students learn how a culture of sexism, evidenced by things as seemingly innocuous as jokes that demean women, can create a “slippery slope” toward sexually aggressive behavior toward women, Barón says.