Daily Progress
7.16.15 | Derek Quizon
Legislation that would require schools to provide education on “safe relationship” behavior to receive federal funding passed the U.S. Senate on Thursday afternoon.
Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, who first introduced the legislation, said it grew out of a closed-door session with student sexual assault advocates at the University of Virginia. Kaine said he met with the students in December, in the aftermath of the now-debunked article in Rolling Stone magazine detailing a gang rape in a UVa
Despite the article unraveling under scrutiny, Kaine said “the facts and statistics [on campus sexual assault] are basically problematic all across the country.”
Kaine met with members of One Less, an all-female group at UVa, for a frank discussion on sexual assault, harassment, stalking and other forms of inappropriate behavior in college that advocates call “gender-based violence.” There were no university officials, faculty members or reporters present, he said.
“I wanted to give them a forum where they could be comfortable sharing their experiences being in college in 2015 and talk about how we could reduce sexual assaults,” Kaine said in a teleconference shortly after the vote.
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