In 2011, Katherine Rizzo was raped by a fellow student at Northeastern University, a private college in Boston. After a university police department investigation and hearing, her assailant was found “responsible” for sexual assault with penetration, but he appealed the decision based on a “procedural error.” Before the next hearing could take place, he swiftly withdrew and transferred to another college.

Rizzo, defeated after the more than 130-day-long hearing process, dropped out of school.
Two years later, as students across the country started to attract attention for filing federal complaints against their colleges for mishandling sexual assault, Rizzo became curious about what had happened to her case. After she pressed her former school for information, Northeastern told her that her assailant had successfully argued for his appeal by claiming that the “level of consent” the hearing board used to find him responsible was “too high.”

On Wednesday, Rizzo filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that Northeastern violated sexual assault survivors’ rights under gender equity law Title IX, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Clery Act, which mandates that schools accurately report campus violence.

Although Rizzo is no longer within the 180-day statute of limitations for filing a Title IX complaint, she and End Rape on Campus, the activist coalition that helped Rizzo write her complaint, hope her story will draw attention to the limitations of the statute, as well as the way schools define consent and allow guilty parties to transfer without consequence.