An audit of four campuses in the state, including UCLA and Berkeley, found faculty and staff are not properly trained in responding to and reporting incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Eu Ran Kwak, contributor to the Daily Bruin, compiled this report for UCLA.

UCLA fails to sufficiently educate its faculty and staff in handling sexual assault incidents, according to a state audit of four universities released Tuesday morning.

The audit found that while the four universities do provide resources and educational information on how to address incidents of sexual violence, some resources and information are either not thorough or not distributed effectively.

In particular, some university employees who are likely to be the first point of contact after incidents of sexual assault – such as residential student staff, athletic coaches and campus police – do not receive adequate training on how to respond to them, the audit stated.

At the four universities evaluated in the audit, 48 percent of students who sought assistance from campus resources after experiencing an incident of sexual assault said they were discouraged from filing a Title IX complaint or received inconsistent messages in the filing process, the audit found. UC Berkeley, California State University, Chico and San Diego State University were reviewed in addition to UCLA as part of the recent state audit.

UCLA also does not adequately distribute information to all members of the campus community about relevant sexual assault policies, according to the report. For instance, the university fails to distribute copies of its sexual assault policies to all employees at the start of each academic year, which state law requires.

The report also cited a concern that the university does not post copies of its sexual harassment policy in residence halls on a year-round basis. By not having the policy available at residence halls, the university risks students’ being uninformed of their rights in case of a sexual assault, such as the right to file a Title IX complaint, the report said.

Current state law mandates that universities post copies of their sexual harassment policies in prominent areas of the university.

The Daily Californian report for UC Berkely is here.