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A complaint filed at Amherst College is throwing fuel on the fire that prestigious universities are mishandling student reports of sexual assault and allowing hostile sexual environments to continue.

A victim and former student who was raped at the Massachusetts school filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, after she was sent to the psychiatric ward while her attacker walked free.

The student said her case was transferred to a college psychiatrist, who asked her in a meeting on Nov. 15, 2012…”If you were to kill yourself, how would you do it?” The student said she had no desire to commit suicide and didn’t want to answer. The psychiatrist announced later in the meeting that an ambulance was on the way, according to the complaint. The student said she objected, stating she was depressed but in control.

The psychiatrist responded, according to the complaint, that she could not “retract” her decision, and said, “This is for the best. … Your parents would want this for you.”

“I told the counseling center team that surrounded me that I had zero intention of killing myself and pleaded with them to change this manipulative and extreme course of action, but they would not reverse their decision,” the anonymous student wrote. “I was told that if I did not cooperate that they would call the police to track me down.”

And the complaints against Amherst just keep getting worse.

The complaints against Amherst said the school fosters a sexually hostile environment and gave examples that include male students shouting from dorms, “Give us your virgins, but only the hot ones!” and an unsanctioned fraternity’s distribution of T-shirts that pictured a pig next to a keg while a hog-tied woman in a bikini was strung across an open fire. The shirt read, “Roasting Fat Ones Since 1847: Bavaria 2012.”

According to the Huffington Post, Amherst isn’t the only college under scrutiny.

Six current and former students at Vanderbilt University also filed Education Department complaints, saying the school in Nashville, Tenn., failed to properly respond to their reports of sex crimes or harassment. One said the university pressured her to allow the school to handle a stalking complaint, but failed to take action against the accused stalker.

The complaints accuse both schools of violating the federal Clery Act campus safety law by underreporting sexual assaults, and the federal gender equity law Title IX by not providing adequate resources for victims of campus assault and harassment.

And what do the schools have to say about the complaints? Apparently, they haven’t heard them yet.

Administrators at both schools said they had not yet seen the complaints. Amherst President Biddy Martin said in a statement to The Huffington Post that the college has “made significant improvements in policy, procedure, educational programming, and staffing,” and will add a new Title IX coordinator in December.

Oh? Read more about the mishandling of sexual assault cases at universities here.

SOURCE: Huffington Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty