Campus sexual assault data vastly undercounts incidents, experts warn

Over 45,000 students reported being raped or sexually assaulted to their college or university between 2019 and 2024, according to federal data compiled under the Jeane Clery Act. The number sounds substantial until you consider what researchers say it actually represents: a fraction of what is happening on American campuses.

Surveys consistently show that roughly one in five undergraduate students experience at least one incident of sexual violence during their time in college. Yet the vast majority of these incidents never reach a campus official. The gap between what surveys reveal and what federal data records is so wide that experts now describe the official numbers as a profound undercount of campus sexual assault.

Cornell University reported 238 incidents of rape or fondling between 2019 and 2024—an average of about 8 per 5,000 students each year, higher than the average of 4 per 5,000 across all large universities. One of those cases involved a student known as Jane Doe, who alleges she was drugged and raped by seven fraternity brothers in October 2024. She filed a civil lawsuit nearly two years later. Prosecutors initially did not charge anyone but have since reopened the criminal investigation. Of the seven accused, two were expelled, two suspended for at least two semesters, one had already graduated before any action could be taken, and two were found not responsible for sexual misconduct, according to Cornell President Michael I. Kotlikoff.

The reasons for the massive gap between actual incidents and reported ones are structural and deliberate. Universities have discretion over who qualifies as a "campus security authority" required to report incidents under the Clery Act, and the law mandates no formal training for those officials. Some schools exclude reports they deem unfounded or cases where victims choose not to pursue them. Corey Rayburn Yung, a law professor at the University of Kansas who studies sexual violence, found in a 2015 audit that rape and fondling reports jumped 44 percent during compliance reviews, only to decline again once the audit ended. Other crimes tracked in the same data showed no such pattern. "Schools view sexual violence as a public relations problem," Yung told CBS News. "They don't want to be the school that has the highest rape rate and they will do whatever they can to make it seem safer than it is."

Beyond institutional incentives to minimize numbers, students themselves face substantial barriers to reporting. Many lack knowledge of available resources. Research by Sara Wilf, an assistant professor of social work at George Mason University, found that about half of surveyed students in California did not know what the Title IX office did, and roughly a third said sexual assault trainings were ineffective or unmemorable. Survivors often struggle with whether their experience even qualifies as sexual violence, a question that can take years to resolve. Wilf's research found that survivors repeatedly used the word "counts" when describing their uncertainty about whether to report.

The absence of confidential advocates on most campuses compounds the problem. Survivors face what Wilf describes as a "dizzying constellation of decisions" in the aftermath of assault while still processing trauma—decisions about whether to report, to whom, and what to expect. The University of California system has begun installing confidential advocates to help guide victims through this process, but such resources remain rare.

The consequences of underreporting ripple through campus communities. At more than a third of large universities, students reported rapes or sexual assaults more than once a month on average. Yet few incidents result in meaningful institutional action. Across New York State, 246 people were expelled or dismissed between 2019 and 2024, and 464 were suspended—representing just one-fifth of all investigated cases and only 3 percent of all incidents initially reported. At Cornell specifically, two expulsions resulted from Jane Doe's case among five total expulsions from 171 sexual misconduct investigations over the six-year period.

Wilf notes that survivors hear from other students how the Title IX process failed them, making them far less likely to seek support on campus. The official data, then, does not merely undercount sexual violence—it obscures a system in which most assaults go unreported, most reports go uninvestigated, and most investigations result in no meaningful consequence. The 45,000 figure is not the problem; it is evidence of the problem.