Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A 2015 survey conducted by the Association of American Universities(AAU) reports that nearly 23% of college students report receiving some form of unwanted sexual contact (Cantor, Fisher, & Chibnall, 2015). The Department of Education (ED) is currently investigating over 150 colleges and universities for violations of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 in the handling of sexual assault investigations. Despite the sweeping instances of assault and federal investigations that have followed, few studies have attempted to understand the likelihood of inappropriate handling of sexual assault cases from an organizational level. The current study examines sexual assault through a lens of representative bureaucracy using data from the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and official documents of investigations by the Department of Education for violations of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. I perform a content analysis to discover if the gender make-up of the college or university may influence the likelihood and number of external investigations. I also estimate the likelihood of investigation using a fixed effects logistic regression and the number of investigations using a fixed effects negative binomial regression. Preliminary results suggest that higher proportions of women in senior faculty and administrative posts decrease the likelihood of external investigations. These findings suggest that bureaucratic representation influences the policies, programs and procedures that disproportionately affect a subgroup of clients or citizens of these organizations. Ultimately this demonstrates that representative organizations are more responsive to the clients whom they serve and less likely to experience externally imposed sanctions.