The Department of Education officially revoked the Obama administration’s guidance on college sexual assault, offering interim guidelines on how universities should handle the issue. Democratic Senator Patty Murray said in a statement the decision could send sexual assault survivors “back into the shadows.”

When [Betsy] DeVos gestured at these upcoming plans in a speech [last month], many Democrats made similar statements. All 56 Democratic members of Congress who tweeted about the speech criticized it. Democratic Senators Bob Casey and Kristen Gillibrand called DeVos’ decision “an insult to survivors of sexual assault” and “[a betrayal of] our students, plain and simple,” respectively.

Victims advocates have argued they favor the rights of the accused by, for example, making it easier for such students to appeal a decision, while others have described the interim rules as sensible and necessary. Ultimately, though, they are only temporary—the Education Department will adopt binding regulations after it consults with the public—and they allow universities to maintain many of their existing policies.

Today, most issues that garner national attention are at least somewhat partisan. But college-sexual-assault policy is a particularly dangerous issue to divide along party lines.

Read the full article by Caroline Kitchener about campus sexual assault on The Atlantic