Colleges Rarely Apologize for Mishandling Rape Cases, and Survivors are Sick of It

On Monday morning, activist Wagatwe Wanjuki lit a Tufts University sweatshirt on fire, and broadcast it on Facebook Live. She did so in protest, calling on schools like Tufts to apologize for mishandling sexual assault cases.

“If they care about ending rape on campus, if they care about justice, then they should be able to do the very bare minimum of apologizing for not doing their jobs,” Wanjuki said in her livestream.

Wanjuki used to go to Tufts, but she never graduated from there. In 2008, she tried to report a fellow student for sexual assault, but said the school told her it didn’t have to take action. Wanjuki said school officials pressured her to withdraw from Tufts a year later when her grades began to slip.

In 2014, Tufts was found in violation Title IX on its handling of sexual assault cases by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, after the review of a separate case and the university’s overall polices. The school conceded at the time that “more could have been done to address the student complainant’s concerns,” but did not issue an apology of any kind.

In fact, no school that the federal government has found violated Title IX has apologized.

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