Kaine bill would push high school instruction on safe relationships
Private conversations last December between University of Virginia students and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine led to the Senate passing legislation Thursday that would spur high schools to teach students how to deal with sexual harassment or violence.
It also asks that schools discuss the meaning of consent.
Kaine said he sought a closed-door meeting with U.Va. students in the weeks following the November 2014 publication of a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about a supposed gang rape at the school.
While the magazine story eventually was proven false, the uproar provoked criticism that Virginia and many other universities and colleges weren't doing enough to address sexual assaults and coercion.
Kaine, a Democrat, recalled in a phone call with reporters Thursday that many U.Va. students told him they wished they had been better prepared to deal with the social pressures and unwanted sexual advances when they arrived at college.
"I kind of naively said to them: 'I'm sure most of you had health or sex ed classes in high school.' " Kaine said. "One student responded, 'Yep. But it was a lot of reproductive biology... not much about relationships and behavior.' That kind of turned a light bulb on in my head."
Working with Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, Kaine and their staffs began to see a common thread in the rising concerns about sexual assaults in colleges, the military and other places: the ages 16 to 24 years old.
So they drafted legislation that would require every school district receiving federal Title IV funds - money used for social programs such as mental health and drug prevention - to tell federal officials how they are educating students about "safe relationship behavior."
Schools would be free to develop their own techniques, but the legislation urges districts to have plans that teach high schoolers about "recognizing and preventing coercion, violence or abuse, including teen and dating violence, stalking, domestic abuse, and sexual violence and harassment."
Kaine noted that the focus isn't just on educating potential victims but also on reaching immature teens who without the proper education can become perpetrators.
Kaine and McCaskill's bill, introduced earlier this year, was added to the Senate's broad rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law that passed the chamber, 81-17, Thursday.
The House passed similar legislation, but with a few differences, including the absence of the Kaine-McCaskill amendment. Those changes have to be approved by House and Senate negotiators before the legislation can become law.
