Perhaps Yale should pay more attention to victims of sex crimes on campus and focus less on “sex week” celebrations.

Cynthia Hua of Yale Daily News reports.

Yale fined $165,000 for underreporting sex offenses

Following a seven-year investigation, the Department of Education has fined Yale $165,000 for failing to report four incidents of forcible sex offenses in 2001 and 2002, according to an April 19 letter to the Yale administration.

The DOE is imposing a $27,500 fine for each offense and two additional fines for failing to include seven required policy statements in its 2004 crime report and crime statistics from Yale-New Haven Hospital in its annual assessment. According to the DOE, these incidents are in violation of the Clery Act, which requires institutions to report sexual assault among other crimes in an annual compilation of crime data.

“The University believes that the Department’s imposition of maximum fines is not warranted based on the particular situations that resulted in findings of violations and, as a result, does not meaningfully advance the goals of the Clery Act,” University spokesman Tom Conroy told the News on Wednesday night. “The University has therefore requested that the Department reconsider and lower the fine.”

The DOE investigation was opened in 2004 after a July-August 2004 Yale Alumni Magazine article titled “Lux Veritas and Sexual Trepass” raised concerns regarding the University’s compliance with campus security requirements. The department first found Yale to be noncompliant with the Clery Act in a 2010 report to the University.