7 Women File Complaint Saying UConn Failed to Protect Them Against Assaults

Seven students and former students at the University of Connecticut filed a federal discrimination complaint on Monday, alleging that the university had failed to protect them from sexual assault on the campus and to respond adequately after they reported the assaults, The Courant, a newspaper in Hartford, Conn., reported.

The complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Speaking at a news conference in Hartford, the lawyer Gloria Allred said said the women were filing the complaint because they believed university administrators had shown “deliberate indifference” to sexual assaults on the campus.

Stephanie Reitz, a spokeswoman for UConn, said in an e-mail that the university “takes allegations of this nature extremely seriously.” She said that the university could not discuss specifics of the women’s cases because of federal privacy laws but that officials were confident the cases had been handled “thoroughly, swiftly, and appropriately.” She also said the university would welcome any additional information on the cases.

At the news conference, Ms. Allred said the complainants had “joined the ranks of women at many universities across the country that have chosen to fight back” and force colleges to change how they handle reports of rape.