Large national and multi-campus studies show substantial sexual-assault prevalence among college women; the problem is not a rare campus aberration.
Executive Summary
This report examines colleges and universities where federal agencies, independent investigations, appellate records, settlements or civil litigation documented or alleged failures in the institutional response to sexual assault or closely related sexual misconduct.
Core finding: unrelated institutions repeatedly broke the same kinds of information chain. Reports entered Athletics, health services, campus police, faculty offices, student affairs, Human Resources or Title IX and then failed to become usable institutional knowledge.
32
institutional matters in the current corpus
44
named officials or employees in the reporting or accountability chain
24
women-core / women-core-mixed sexual-assault matters
The practical implication is severe: an institution can technically possess multiple pieces of relevant information while behaving as if it knows nothing. When one department receives a report, another receives a second report, and no system connects them, the institution becomes structurally blind to a pattern that already exists inside its own records.
Corpus Scope
Different categories are kept separate so pattern evidence is not misrepresented as the same kind of victim-specific case.
| Category | Cases | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Women-core / women-core-mixed sexual-assault matters | 24 | Directly support the women-focused sexual-assault investigation. |
| Pattern-only cases involving male or predominantly male victims | 3 | Retained as pattern evidence, not counted as women-victim matters. |
| Adjacent harassment / system cases | 2 | Used as adjacent institutional-process evidence. |
| Assault / process cases where complainant sex is not established in the public source | 3 | Included without assigning a complainant sex not established by the source. |
| Total | 32 | Current institutional corpus. |
The investigation is built around the handoff, not the headline.
Each case is examined as an information chain. A break is coded only when the controlling record supports it.
Incident → disclosure → recipient → reporting duty → handoff → Title IX / police / Clery → case record → prior-report check → pattern detection → intervention → executive oversight → public reporting
Evidence standard: the report does not assume that every lawsuit allegation was proven, that every settlement was an admission, or that every institutional violation was criminal. The evidence posture travels with the claim.
Failure Architecture
Across the strongest documentary cases, the institution often had information. The failure was that the information did not travel, accumulate, trigger a sufficiently broad investigation, or reach a decision-maker with both authority and a complete picture.
1. Silo failure — Information remained inside Athletics, student health, an academic department, campus police, Human Resources or another unit instead of becoming institution-wide knowledge.
2. Handoff failure — A mandatory reporter, supervisor, investigator or department failed to forward information to the office responsible for Title IX, safety, investigation or discipline.
3. Recordkeeping failure — Records were absent, incomplete, fragmented or lacked identifying information needed to connect later complaints.
4. Pattern-detection failure — The institution failed to connect repeat respondents, common locations, recurring behavior or multiple complaints.
5. Investigation failure — Investigations were delayed, stopped, too narrow, omitted witnesses or failed to resolve all allegations.
6. Retaliation or discouragement — Complainants or internal reporters were allegedly discouraged, minimized or retaliated against after raising concerns.
7. Police / Clery disconnect — Campus safety, police, Clery reporting and Title IX systems did not reliably share or classify information.
8. Governance failure — Leadership lacked effective controls, independence, staffing, training or visibility into recurring risk.
Key Findings
Reports repeatedly failed to move from the employee or department that received them to the office responsible for Title IX, investigation, safety or pattern analysis.
Athletics, student health, campus police, academic departments, HR, housing and Title IX often possessed different pieces of the same risk picture.
Institutions sometimes failed to connect multiple complaints about the same respondent, location, behavior or program.
Federal and independent reviews repeatedly identified delayed investigations, omitted witnesses, narrow scope, or investigations stopped before the full record was developed.
The record identifies coaches, medical supervisors, athletic administrators, Title IX officials, investigators, executives and mandatory reporters at specific points where information stalled or was allegedly suppressed.
The Human Weak Links
Institutions do not lose information abstractly. People receive reports, make referral decisions, open or close investigations, decide whether to interview witnesses, decide whether to enter a respondent name into a case system, and decide whether to escalate risk.
Current named-actor roster: 44 people. The evidentiary status beside each name matters: direct finding, office-level responsibility, appellate evidence, or attributed allegation. A name in the report is not, by itself, a finding of sexual misconduct, criminal conduct or personal liability.
READ THE NAMING STANDARD →
Pre-Publication Response Process
Consonance sent requests for comment to institutions and named individuals where contact routes were available or could reasonably be identified.
What recipients were asked for
Factual corrections with supporting documentation, material context, clarification of role or authority, and statements for inclusion in the public record.
Current response deadline
5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 8, 2026. Timely substantive responses will be reviewed against the underlying source record and incorporated where warranted.
Dead or retired addresses are rerouted when a responsible current contact can be identified. Consonance does not request confidential survivor information merely to satisfy public curiosity.
Methodology & Evidence Standards
The methodology page documents the five evidence postures, case-scope rules, failure coding, naming standard, contradiction policy, response process, survivor-privacy rule and correction/version policy governing this investigation.
OPEN METHODOLOGY → SUBMIT EVIDENCE OR A CORRECTION