In 2022, a significant legislative milestone was reached when Congress passed a law requiring the U.S. Department of Education to begin tracking incidents of sexual violence across all institutions of higher education that receive federal student aid. The mandate was hailed by advocates as a critical step toward understanding the true scale of sexual misconduct on American campuses and developing more effective prevention strategies. However, years after the law’s inception, the federal government has yet to collect this comprehensive national data, and it remains deeply uncertain when—or if—the agency will ever fulfill this requirement.
The urgency of this data collection has been thrust back into the public consciousness following a high-profile gang-rape allegation at Cornell University. The incident has sparked renewed outcry and put a spotlight on the persistent gaps in the information the American government gathers regarding campus safety. While individual tragedies often dominate the headlines, advocates argue that the lack of a standardized, nationwide dataset prevents a holistic understanding of the problem, leaving policymakers and university administrators to fly blind in their efforts to protect students.
The legislative push for a national campus climate survey was born out of a recognition that existing reporting mechanisms were insufficient. Yet, the ambition of the law has been hampered by a stark lack of resources. While the mandate is vast, Congress allocated only $1 million toward the nationwide initiative. Experts in data collection and higher education policy point out that this sum is a mere fraction of what would be required to execute a survey of such magnitude, leading to a stalemate between legislative intent and administrative reality.
A Growing Vacuum in Sexual Misconduct Data
The delay in the federal survey comes at a time when other major efforts to document sexual misconduct in higher education have been significantly scaled back or discontinued entirely. For years, the Association of American Universities (AAU) conducted one of the most influential multicampus studies on sexual assault. At its peak, the survey included 33 prestigious institutions and provided a vital, if limited, look at the prevalence of misconduct.
However, the last edition of the AAU survey was released in 2019. The organization has since ceased the project, explicitly stating that it ended the initiative because of the impending federal survey. With the AAU bowing out to make room for a government-led effort that has yet to materialize, a massive void has been left in the research landscape. Other recent attempts to fill this gap have been much smaller in scope; a 2024 survey conducted by the research firm Westat included only 10 institutions, hardly enough to provide a representative national picture.
In the absence of a federal standard, the responsibility has fallen on individual colleges and a handful of states. Currently, at least nine states—including New York, where Cornell University is located—require institutions to conduct their own campus climate surveys. These localized efforts continue to show that sexual violence remains a pervasive issue.
Cornell’s own 2025 campus climate survey, for example, revealed a disturbing trend: the percentage of undergraduate women reporting nonconsensual sexual contact rose from 23 percent in 2023 to 35 percent in 2025. While these figures are alarming, they are also difficult to interpret in a vacuum; the same survey saw its response rate drop by more than half, complicating the statistical analysis. Without national benchmarks, it is nearly impossible to determine whether such a rise reflects a genuine increase in violence, an increase in the willingness of students to report, or a statistical anomaly.
“Outside of institutions that are electing to continue to do campus climate surveys and publish that data for the general public’s consumption, it’s unclear exactly what the incidence rates are across campuses nationwide,” said Tracey Vitchers, the executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit dedicated to ending campus sexual assault. “It’s essentially just keeping with the status quo.”
The Limitations of the Clery Act
The federal government does currently require colleges to report certain statistics under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security and Campus Crime Statistics Act. However, advocates and policy experts have long argued that Clery Act data provides a fundamentally incomplete picture of the student experience.
