The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the US Department of Education has fined Washington State University in Pullman $82,500 for failing to disclose two sexual assaults that occurred on campus in 2007 and for having insufficient campus-safety policies.

The university's three violations of the main federal law on campus-crime reporting, the Clery Act, endangered Washington State students and employees who rely on campus-crime statistics and statements, a federal education official wrote in a letter to the college's president, Elson S. Floyd. [...]

In one case at Washington State, the letter said, a woman told a campus police official that she had been raped by her husband's friend. The incident was classified as a "domestics dispute" instead of a forcible sex offense, a mistake that the university later acknowledged, the letter said.

In a second incident, an employee reported a dormitory rape to the campus police that was omitted from campus reports because a records manager decided the case was unfounded. Under the Clery Act, only a law-enforcement official should make such a determination, the letter said.

The WSU case stems from a decision by the DOE to review colleges to ensure that they're complying with the Clery Act, which "came after a ton of recent reports on the sexual assault epidemic on college campuses — and more importantly, the subsequent lack of action taken by schools to address them."