Hasta La Gadget!

Dozens of colleges around the country are not investigating sexual assault cases on campus, and a significant number are giving oversight of incidents involving athletes to school athletic departments, according to a major survey released Wednesday.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight, commissioned the report, which is the first of its kind. The survey was distributed to 350 colleges and universities, and the subcommittee received 236 responses from a variety of schools across the country.

More than 40 percent of the schools surveyed said they have not conducted a single sexual assault investigation in the past five years. That total includes 6 percent of the large public universities that participated in the survey.

The national sampling also found that more than 20 percent of schools give oversight of sexual violence cases involving athletes to their university’s athletic department. This method of oversight was higher at Division II and III schools than Division I.

Nine percent of schools in the sample reported conducting fewer investigations of sex offenses in the past five years than the total number of incidents they reported to the U.S. Department of Education in annual Clery Act disclosures. The Clery Act requires colleges to document and disclose all reported sexual assaults and other crimes on campus, and the gender equity law Title IX requires schools to respond to instances of sexual violence on campus.

The survey found that 21 percent of the nation’s largest private institutions conducted fewer investigations than the number of incidents reported, “with some institutions reporting as many as seven times more incidents of sexual violence than they have investigated.”

S. Daniel Carter, the director of the 32 National Campus Safety Initiative at VTV Family Outreach Foundation, a campus safety group started by the families of the victims and survivors in the Virginia Tech shooting, said this discrepancy could depend on whether victims feel they can pursue their case.

“Previous research has shown that there are significant barriers for the survivors of campus community sexual violence to make an official complaint or pursue an investigation, so that there are fewer investigations than statistics is not surprising,” Carter told The Huffington Post.

Carter said the Campus SaVE Act, a portion of the Violence Against Women Act that adds new requirements on how colleges must conduct campus disciplinary proceedings for sexual violence cases, will help “empower more survivors to get justice if they elect to pursue it.” Congress passed the latest reauthorization of VAWA in February 2013.

McCaskill’s office is declining to release individual university responses “in order to obtain candid feedback from each school.” Instead, she is opting to release responses based on institution size and athletic division, and compare answers from public and private schools.

The questionnaire, which faced some backlash from higher education groups, was comprised of 28 questions. The questions came from a 2002 National Institute of Justice report on how colleges were handling sexual assault cases on campus.

The schools sampled vary in size, and include private and public institutions. They collectively educate more than 3 million students, the report said.

Here are some additional highlights from the survey’s findings:

• Just 44 percent of institutions in the national sample provide the option to report sexual assaults online. Approximately 8 percent of institutions still do not allow confidential reporting, down from 16 percent identified in the 2002 NIJ report.
• More than 30 percent of schools do not provide any sexual assault training for students. At institutions with fewer than 1,000 students, 53 percent provide no training at all.
• “Most institutions also fail to provide access to a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), a specially trained nurse who can provide medical and other services to survivors of sexual assault. Only 15 percent of institutions in the national sample have a SANE available on campus. Approximately 42 percent of the nation’s largest public schools and 21 percent of the largest private schools have a SANE.”
• “Law enforcement officials at 30 percent of institutions in the national sample receive no training on how to respond to reports of sexual violence.”
• “More than 30 percent of institutions in the national sample failed to provide training regarding ‘rape myths’ to the persons who adjudicate sexual assault claims.” (For example, it can still be rape if the perpetrator is an acquaintance or someone the victim had sex with previously.)
• Fifteen percent of schools are using a higher standard of proof than what the U.S. Department of Education recommends for adjudicating sexual assaults, which is the preponderance of evidence.
• “Approximately 19 percent of institutions in the national sample reported that they do not impose orders that would require the perpetrator to avoid contact with the survivor of the assault.”

McCaskill is planning to unveil legislation to address campus sexual assault later this summer, along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). The senators told reporters last month they expect the bill to have bipartisan support.

What makes a penis lose its pizzazz somewhere north of 55? Are reliable erections the province of youth only? Can medicine or mojo fix an otherwise healthy man’s broken hydraulics? And how can you, a woman with a healthy libido, help your man recover his?

When Bob Dole went public about his Erectile Dysfunction (ED) in the late 1990s, memorably appearing in ads for Viagra, the first oral medication to help with ED, a formerly hush-hush subject became part of a national conversation. Sort of.

The Republican National Committee has selected Cleveland to host its 2016 convention, Chairman Reince Priebus announced on Tuesday.

Joan Rivers has once again proved she’s a queen of comedy … and of awkward interviews.

The comedian made headlines recently when she told CNN reporter Fredericka Whitfield to “shut up” and stormed off set. Then on Tuesday, July 8, after questioning Rivers about the walk out, David Letterman did the same thing to her.

Impressively, Rivers remained unfazed through it all, even finishing the segment by interviewing herself.

“Late Show with David Letterman” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on CBS.

Summers start with the best intentions. We fantasize about long, peaceful days at the beach building sand castles with our toddlers or playing tennis with our teens. Casting off a busy school year, we’re excited to finally relax the rules. Yes to the ice cream cones with insanely sugary toppings just before bedtime (heck, what bedtime?). Yes to the car keys (so what if it’s three late nights in a row?). Breakfast brownies? Why not? Another TV show? Sure, go ahead. It’s summer vacation, right?

Then, in Week Three, reality sets in: the bedtime routine now takes twice as long, everything has become a negotiation, and those idyllic days at the beach — well, they’ve become the setting of the sunscreen wars. How did these relaxing summer days get so… stressful?

Whether your kids are having a throwback 1970s summer, a Free-Range or a Hovering Helicopter summer, beware of the ever-tempting “summer slide.” The summer slide is the parenting equivalent of the “summer brain drain,” where what we know as parents slides, well, down the drain. In an effort to keep our summer fantasy alive, we sometimes bend our rules just a little too much and then suddenly… SNAP.

Before things get totally out of control, let’s get back to the basics, kindergarten-style — and start digging our way out of this sand pit to avoid getting buried alive. It’s worth reminding ourselves that summer is a break from routine, after all, not a break from parenting.

Here are 11 things you can do now to reclaim your relaxing summer:

1. Stop with all the choices.
Teachers offer “choice” in small doses. They don’t offer a range of snacks and they don’t ask kids if they’d rather go to art class or gym class. Giving too many choices gives up too much control, and teachers know to do that sparingly.

2. Go ahead, disappoint.
You-Get-What-You-Get-And-You-Don’t-Get-Upset. Don’t be afraid to disappoint. Resilience, learning how to bounce back, is a skill that can be taught, but not if we’re smoothing over every conflict just to avoid a momentary tantrum or mommy guilt. We need to learn to live with the short-term discomfort and concentrate on the long-term gain.

3. Sloooow down.
Seeds grow slowly; chicks hatch when they are ready; important things take time. Children and teens don’t understand time — they want what they want when they want it. We too often react by jumping on their timeline. When we contort ourselves to suit their whims, we not only upend our lives, we give away the opportunity to teach them about patience.

4. Stop asking permission, OK?
“Mommy just has to run this quick errand, OK?” Teachers don’t ask permission. Ending declarative sentences with question marks is giving power to a little person who doesn’t actually want it. What children want is the security of limits and parents who know when to say no, even in the summer.

5. Let them clean up.
Overscheduled children don’t have time to clean their rooms or do their chores. Teens with summer jobs and SAT prep are just too busy to pick up their clothes off the floor. In school, if you haven’t cleaned up your mess, then you cannot move on to your next activity. By failing to insist upon this at home, we let our kids control the disorder in our houses and in our lives.

6. Revisit Oz.
The single most exciting thing that happens in kindergarten is that children take their first steps on the way to reading — starting on a yellow brick road that leads to a vast magical world they can now visit on their own. And then we and our kids get busy and forget about the Emerald City because life is too rushed and there is already too much reading assigned at school. Take back Oz; remember how lucky our kids felt when they first decoded the printed page.

7. Circle time.
It’s important to ask our kids about their day, every day. Create your own version of “circle time” at home. Tell the kids about your day, your challenges and triumphs, and ask them about theirs. This becomes even more important with teens, who will know that sharing what they are up to with their parents is just part of the deal.

8. Teachers, not friends or fairy godmothers.
When we try to be our child’s friend, we not only cede authority, we actually cheat them out of a more important relationship. We are there to teach and love and guide, not to grant their every wish.

9. Rest time.
Teachers know the importance of rest. Regular and adequate sleep is essential for kids at every age. Even tweens and teens should have a regular bedtime right up through high school. The end of summer should not be like a bad bout of jet lag, with no one able to get to sleep at night or up in the morning.

10. Mind their manners.
Manners never stop mattering. As parents, we all too often rush, cut corners, forget to be as polite as we could and let our kids get away with the glib manners of the 21st century. Nothing has changed; manners are still magical and it is within our power to teach them.

11. Summer doesn’t equal spoiling.
At every age, kids think getting everything they want will make them happy, and it will be a very long time before they learn this isn’t true. We know the truth, and if we don’t teach this lesson early and often, the unbridled greed inspired by media can soon overwhelm our family’s true values. Days at the beach are a treat. A family vacation is something special. Summer doesn’t have to equal spoiling.

Summer is just a different season, not a different childhood. It can be so easy to confuse the two.

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