Huffington Post
7.25.15 | Tyler Kingkade
The Education Department's backlog of cases keeps growing.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is investigating 124 colleges and universities and 40 elementary and secondary schools over how they have handled sexual assault among students.
As of July 22, the federal agency was conducting 140 investigations at 124 higher education institutions for possible violations of Title IX in their handling of sexual assault, according to information the Education Department provided to The Huffington Post. Meanwhile, 41 similar investigations are taking place at 40 local K-12 schools and school districts.
Some of the latest additions to the tally of Title IX inquiries include Full Sail University in Florida, the first for-profit college to come under an investigation since the department began disclosing the list in May 2014, when only 55 schools were under review. New York University School of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Oglethorpe University in Georgia and the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus were also added in recent weeks.
The University of Iowa came under investigation in April, but the department is only now disclosing the inquiry. The university told HuffPost on Friday it was notified about the investigation in April and it is based on a complaint filed against the school.
Title IX is a federal gender equity law that prohibits discrimination or a hostile environment based on an individual's sex. Courts and the Education Department have held that Title IX requires any school receiving federal funding to address sexual harassment among students, and the most extreme form of harassment, courts say, is sexual assault.
