BATON ROUGE - Louisiana's Board of Regents announced Tuesday the adoption of a Uniform Policy on Power-Based Violence.

The policy is meant to address what the Board of Regents refers to as "significant system failures relating to addressing sexual misconduct on campuses."

A news release from the organization provided details related to the policy and further explained the reason for its development.

The Board of Regents said its decision to adopt the policy comes ahead of a series of statewide training sessions for postsecondary education stakeholders. The training will begin next week and its aim is to teach campus leaders how to implement federal Title IX laws in addition to recently passed state legislation.

Board of Regents Chair Blake David said, “While the law prescribed a January deadline, we will meet our obligation before the start of the semester through our vote today followed by training next week for higher education campus teams, board members, and system staff."

He continued, “Drafting of this policy began the minute legislation was passed directing Regents to update its Uniform Policy, and we called a special meeting to make sure the policy is in place ahead of the Fall semester. We all know the expectation to get this right, and as a higher education community, we must meet it.”

Highlights of the updated Uniform Policy on Power-Based Violence include:

-Expansion of the policy environment to encompass power-based violence, which includes but expands beyond sexual misconduct and Title IX conduct;

-Reporting requirements for employees, to include significant “up-the-chain” reporting of summarized power-based violence incidents by Title IX coordinators, chancellors, system presidents, and system management boards. Additionally, Regents will annually submit summarized higher education incident reports to the Governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate and House Education Committees;

-Termination of employees who knowingly fail to report or falsely report information;

-Requirement to withhold transcripts or transcript notations of pending investigations/violations for transferring students;

-Annual reporting of Campus Security Data, along with Sex Crime Data and Publishing of Power-Based Violence Survey results every three years;

-Withholding of State Bond Commission authorization to incur debt for a period of two years for failure to publish Campus Safety Reports; and

-Annual mandatory training for Title IX coordinators, confidential advisors, and responsible employees who could receive direct statements regarding incidents of power-based violence.

The draft uniform policy adopted by Regents included collaboration, input, and feedback from almost 60 postsecondary education stakeholders appointed by system presidents, including registrars, Title IX coordinators, campus police, deans of students, academic affairs staff, and systems’ counsel.

In addition to this, discussions were guided by the expertise of a nationally recognized Title IX/power-based violence specialist, Nelson Mullins, LLP.