University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler says his school needs to do a better job of training its student-athletes on sexual assault and harassment issues because something isn’t getting through.
In an interview published Saturday in the St. Paul Pioneer Press (http://bit.ly/2jkbVdq) in the wake of the football team’s sexual assault scandal, Kaler said student-athletes are already getting strong guidance on dealing with those issues.
“I think clearly we need to do both more and different (training), because our student-athletes get an exceptional amount of training around sexual assault and harassment issues, and yet we didn’t seem to make the point,” Kaler said.
All University of Minnesota students go through sexual assault-awareness education after enrolling that includes an online assessment and interactive presentations. The school’s roughly 750 student-athletes are also exposed to additional training and education conducted internally and through visiting presenters every year. All programs include a bystander education and intervention program developed by assistant athletics director Peyton Owens III.