Recent Announcements

Safe Place to Learn is an online, interactive resource package, funded by the Department of Education, to support efforts to create a positive school climate and healthy learning environment. This package highlights strategies and instruments with which many schools are already working to create a school community committed to preventing discrimination based on sex and its most extreme corollary, sexual violence. The materials in the package aim to help three primary staff groups: administrative leadership; all building staff; and staff responsible for interceding and responding to students. The resource package contains guidance, e-learning training modules, and information about trauma sensitivity, resources to support current and ongoing conversations and efforts to prevent bullying, sexual harassment and violence, and provide safe, supportive learning environments for all students, in age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate ways.

Considerations for School District Sexual Misconduct Policies highlights issues for K-12 districts to consider when bringing together a multi-disciplinary team to develop sexual misconduct policies as part of their overall response to sexual misconduct. By using this document as a guide, it will enable K-12 teams to include all the essential components of a comprehensive sexual misconduct plan. The document covers reporting options, support services for victims, definitions, confidentiality, the grievance process, and other critical areas. It also provides links to Federal government resources for those wanting further detail on a particular topic.

The recently released Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting was developed by the U.S. Department of Education to present step-by-step procedures, examples, and references for higher education institutions to follow in meeting the campus safety and security requirements of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended. This handbook replaces the 2011 version and includes information on how institutions can comply with the changes the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 made to the Clery Act.

A unique collaboration at the University of Texas has produced a science-based, victim-centered blueprint for law enforcement to respond to sexual assault cases. This work, developed by UT Austin’s Institute on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault with UT System Police has resulted in The Blueprint for Campus Police: Responding to Sexual Assault, a comprehensive guide for campus police officers to better engage with an understand victims as well as improve their handling of sexual assault cases, based on the integration of science, philosophy and protocols.

On January 20, 2016, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released the Campus Climate Survey Validation Study, which reports the results of a nine-school pilot test that was conducted to develop a campus climate survey that collects school-level data on sexual victimization of undergraduate students. BJS also provided a revised, modular survey instrument that schools can use to create their own climate surveys. The groundbreaking report describes survey methodology; presents estimates of the prevalence and incidence of sexual assault during the 2014–15 academic year and since entering college; examines the relationship between measures of campus climate and rates of sexual victimization; and makes recommendations for conducting campus climate surveys. These powerpoint slides highlight key findings from the Campus Climate Survey Validation Study, with useful charts and graphs illustrating the rates of sexual assault of college students, to whom students report assaults, when assaults occur, and what aspects of campus “climate” are correlated with higher rates of sexual assault. The charts in these slides are all pulled from the Campus Climate Survey Validation Study.

2014 Clery Act Data is now available here from the Department of Education. It includes, for the first time, the name and contact information for each institution’s lead Title IX coordinator.

Valerie Jarrett wrote a blog for Yahoo! Parenting on October 9, 2015 to help prospective students and parents, as they visit colleges, to navigate the sexual assault policies, procedures, and resources available on campus. Read the blog post, “Four Critical Questions for the College Search.”

On September 17, 2015, we released a Resource Guide to support the efforts of students, faculty, administrators, and communities around the country to prevent and improve the response to sexual violence at colleges and universities. This guide includes links to documents, guidance, and tools from the task force and other advocacy groups.

About Notalone.gov

NotAlone.gov includes information for students, schools, and anyone interested in finding resources on how to respond to and prevent sexual assault.

Click below to find a crisis service, learn more about students’ rights, identify schools’ obligations to protect students from sexual assault, understand how to file a complaint with the federal government, and view a map of resolved school-level enforcement activities.

Throughout this website the term, “school” refers to all public educational institutions and all schools that receive federal funds, including elementary and secondary schools (both traditional and charter), school districts, colleges, and universities. Sections of the website that are only applicable at the postsecondary or elementary and secondary school level add clarifying information.

NotAlone was launched in connection with the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. The Task Force was established on January 22, 2014 – and since then, thousands of people have shared their stories and ideas about how best to eliminate sexual assault in schools. On April 29, 2014, we released our first report, which can be viewed here.