Protecting Students on Campus Act of 2025
Protecting Students on Campus Act of 2025 would require colleges and universities that receive federal student aid to promote awareness of Title VI rights and provide easy access to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) complaint process. The bill creates a national Title VI public awareness campaign, mandates visible links to OCR complaint pages on each institution’s homepage, and requires annual posting of campaign materials on campus. It also imposes ongoing accountability measures: monthly congressional briefings with complaint data for the first year, regular written reports to Congress, annual reporting to the Department of Education’s Inspector General (IG) about discrimination complaints, and an IG audit of the institutions with the highest per-capita complaints. Additionally, OCR would be constrained from closing or dismissing complaints simply because another enforcement action or internal grievance process has resolved the issue. Overall, the bill aims to increase awareness, reporting, and oversight of discrimination cases under Title VI.
Key Points
- 1Title VI public awareness campaign
- 2- The Secretary of Education (via the OCR) must run a public awareness campaign about rights under Title VI, including engaging visuals and ongoing annual updates, distributed to higher education institutions and posted in high-visibility places and on campus websites.
- 3- The campaign can be executed directly by the Department or through a nonprofit specialized in public awareness.
- 4Higher education act amendments
- 5- Institutions must prominently display a homepage link to the OCR complaint webpage for discrimination based on race, color, or national origin under Title VI.
- 6- Institutions must annually display the public awareness campaign materials in high-traffic campus areas and on high-traffic institutional web pages.
- 7Congressional briefings
- 8- Within 30 days after enactment and for 1 year thereafter, the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights must provide monthly briefings to Congress with:
- 9- the number of complaints received (by basis for discrimination),
- 10- how the Office plans to address those complaints and related investigations,
- 11- data on how long complaints remain open.
- 12- A written report with the briefing data must be provided to Congress 48 hours before each briefing, protecting personal information.
- 13Audit and study requirements
- 14- Institutions receiving federal funds must annually report to the DOE Inspector General (IG) the number of Title VI complaints submitted to the institution, an analysis of those complaints, and actions taken.
- 15- The IG must annually audit the top 5% of institutions by per-capita complaints (adjusted for student population) to examine complaint handling and referrals to OCR.
- 16- The IG must study why there is a disparity between complaints submitted to institutions versus to OCR and quantify that gap.
- 17OCR process reforms
- 18- OCR may not close or dismiss a complaint simply because it has been resolved by another federal, state, or local civil rights agency or through an internal grievance procedure at the institution.