White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault

The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault was formed on January 22, 2014, after President Barack Obama directed the Office of the Vice President of the United States and the White House Council on Women and Girls to "strengthen and address compliance issues and provide institutions with additional tools to respond to and address rape and sexual assault".

[1][2][3] The Task Force is part of a wider federal move to bring awareness to sexual violence on American campuses, which also included the Office for Civil Rights release of a list of American higher education institutions with open Title IX sexual violence investigations and the It's On Us public awareness campaign.

[1][failed verification] While formed through an official government memorandum on January 22, 2014, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault exists as part of a lineage of government interventions against sexual violence, notably the White House Council on Women and Girls formed in 2009 and the Violence Against Women Act first drafted by Biden when he was a senator in 1994.

[5] Since the end of the Obama presidency, the Task Force has not issued any reports and has not been revived since under the Biden administration.

[1][2][3] By 2016, the Task Force, in collaboration with federal agencies, produced training, messaging and guidance materials "concerning sexual assault in educational spaces," which can be found in a public-facing Resource Guide Archived March 31, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.