The creation of — highly realistic but artificial images, audio and video — used to require high-powered equipment and considerable skill. Now, with in generative artificial intelligence, any kid with a smartphone can make one. 

Adolescents, mostly teenage boys, are exploiting readily accessible deepfake tools to create graphic images and videos of female classmates, causing profound distress and disruption in across the country, from , California, to , New Jersey. High school students outside Seattle were photographed by a classmate at a school dance who then “undressed” them on his phone and circulated supposedly .

The impact could be significant. Experts that so-called deepnudes can hurt victims’ mental health, physical and emotional safety, as well as college and job opportunities. Comprehensive data is lacking, but documented incidents indicate that this is a troubling trend that demands immediate attention. 

While anti-child pornography statutes, Title IX regulations regarding online harassment and revenge-porn laws already exist, these measures were not designed to handle the unique challenges posed by deepfake technology. 

Schools, educators and law enforcement are scrambling to respond to this new phenomenon. In some cases, students have been harshly disciplined, but 13- and 14 year-old boys for engaging in impulsive behavior on phones their parents have handed them is not an appropriate, just or sustainable solution. It is incumbent upon adults to make the technological world safe for children.

The Biden administration has rightly technology companies, financial institutions and other businesses to limit websites and mobile apps whose primary business is to create, facilitate, monetize or disseminate image-based sexual abuse. But these steps are largely symbolic and will result in voluntary commitments that are likely unenforceable. 

The U.S. Department of Education is to release guidance on this matter, but its track record of issuing timely — and, frankly, practical — information is underwhelming. 

It’s also impractical to rely on slow-moving legislative processes that get caught up in arguments about for offending images when students’ well-being is at stake. As any school leader can tell you, laws only go so far in , and the ambling through Congress don’t address how K-12 institutions should respond to these incidents. 

So, where does that leave us?

Educators need support and guidance. Schools have a critical role to play, but to expect them to invent policies and educational programs that combat the malicious use of deepfakes and protect students from this emerging threat — absent significant training, resources and expertise — is not only a fool’s errand, but an unfair burden to place on educators. 

Communities, districts and schools need statewide strategies to prevent and deter deepfakes. States must use this summer to bring together school administrators, educators, law enforcement, families, students, local technology companies, researchers, community groups and other nonprofit organizations to deliver comprehensive policies and implementation plans by Labor Day. These should, among other things:

• Recommend curriculum, instruction and training programs for school leaders and teachers about the potential misuses of artificial intelligence and deepfakes in school settings;

• Update school-based cyber harassment policies and codes of conduct to include deepfakes;
  
• Establish discipline policies to clarify accountability for students who create, solicit or distribute nonconsensual, sexual deepfake images of their peers;
  
• Update procurement policies to ensure that any technology provider has a plan to interrupt or handle a deepfake incident;
  
• Build or purchase education, curriculum and instruction for students and families on digital citizenship and the safe use of technology, including AI literacy and deepfakes;
  
• Issue guidance for community institutions, including religious programs, small businesses, libraries and youth sports leagues, to promote prevention by addressing this issue head-on with teens who need to understand the damage deepfakes cause;
  
• Issue detailed guidance about how schools must enforce, the federal law that bans sex discrimination, including sexual harassment, in schools.

Is this too ambitious for state government? Maybe. But there is no choice. As the grown-ups, and as citizens of a democracy, we have a collective responsibility to decide what kind of world we want our children to live in, and to take action, before it’s too late.

How many employees at the California State University system were accused of some kind of unwanted sexual conduct in recent years? 

Surprisingly, it’s a question no one can answer with confidence even as Cal State, the nation’s largest four-year public university, grapples .

A key takeaway from two hard-hitting sets of reports released late last month is that the 23-campus system collects insufficient data.

In one of the reports, the  that Cal State lacks “meaningful analysis” to “identify and respond to concerning trends.” The auditor’s report, which was requested by state lawmakers, found that the data on the number of unwanted sexual conduct reports — such as sexual harassment, misconduct, stalking, assault and violence — filed against employees is “unreliable.”

Cozen O’Connor, a law firm the Cal State Chancellor’s Office  last year to publish more than two dozen reports, â€œthe current process for collecting data does not result in consistent, reliable data across the system.” 

The two sets of reports revealed a huge discrepancy in how many Cal State employees at the 23 campuses were accused of some kind of improper sexual conduct — 1,246 across five years according to the audit and 452 in four academic years according to Cozen.

The reasons for the discrepancy range from imprecise data collection to the addition of new categories of unwanted sexual conduct in the most recent year. Both sets of reports also state campuses don’t use the same software to track improper sexual conduct and don’t log cases the same way.

Buying better software and training more staff to track these reports of unwanted conduct are some of the reasons Cal State estimates it’ll spend  and unknown sums going forward to adopt all the reports’ recommendations.

“We agree with and will implement the recommendations provided in the audit report, as well as those identified in the Cozen assessment,” wrote Jolene Koester, Cal State’s interim chancellor, .

The importance of good data

Collecting good data is a common watchword of victims’ advocates. Both sets of reports make clear why students and staff will be safer if campuses have a more accurate count of sexual harassment, misconduct, violence, stalking and assault cases. 

Complaints against employees , which may  additional training, a reprimand or disciplinary action all the way to dismissal for those found to have violated Cal State policy.

But the campuses lack “a sufficient understanding of the volume” of sexual and gender-based harassment and violence, the Cozen systemwide report said. Nor can campuses spot trends in specific locations or academic programs, or even whether a single individual is the source of multiple complaints, the  and  reports noted. Cozen  â€œbecause the CSU is not tracking data across campuses, an employee who engages in conduct of concern at one CSU university can often seek employment at another CSU without the new university being aware of the misconduct.”

In multiple cases, the auditor’s report flagged issues with campuses that determined employees didn’t violate Cal State policy on unwanted sexual conduct. The auditor’s office wrote  â€œdeficiencies that caused us to question the investigative determination about sexual harassment.”

Across U.S. higher education, sexual harassment and assault are rampant. According to a , , more than 40% of all students reported experiencing a form of sexual harassment since entering college,  â€œinappropriate or offensive comments” about their bodies or sexual activities. A quarter of undergraduate women said  â€œnonconsensual sexual contact by physical force.”

Competing numbers and data problems

There are multiple reasons why the two sets of numbers of how many employees were accused of unwanted sexual conduct — 1,246 and 452 — are so different.

The first thing to know is that, according to Cozen and the state auditor, neither of their numbers is reliable. But they’re unreliable for different and overlapping reasons, ranging from the types of unwanted sexual conduct Cal State counted to which Cal State documents Cozen and the auditor relied on to finalize their tallies. 

One major reason the auditor’s count of 1,246 reports filed against employees is much higher than Cozen’s is because it included more types of unwanted sexual conduct over a longer period of time — 2018 to 2022.

Cozen based its numbers on the official reports campuses submitted to the Cal State’s Chancellor’s Office between 2018-19 and 2021-22. Campuses included the number of reports filed against employees that were limited to several types of unwanted sexual conduct — assault, stalking, misconduct and dating or domestic violence — for the first three academic years in the data set. 

Then, in 2021-22, the chancellor’s office  for instances of reports against employees — and students — that included two more categories: “” — a term that refers to sexual coercion, prostitution or recording sexual activity without consent — and a  of sexual harassment. That narrower definition includes “unwelcome verbal, nonverbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature” and offering favors in exchange for sexual acts.

The Cozen reports published the same numbers that campuses sent to the chancellor’s office.
But campuses also maintained physical and digital files on many other types of reports filed against employees that weren’t reflected in the tallies sent to the chancellor’s office — and by extension — weren’t reflected in Cozen’s figures.

The auditor’s office took a different approach. It reviewed all those physical and digital files and identified cases that alleged sexual assault, stalking, violence, exploitation, sexual harassment, and other unwelcome sexual conduct. It did this for five calendar years.

That’s how the auditor got to a much higher count than the Cozen reports — it just did the additional work of reviewing the raw data.

But even the auditor’s review of digital and physical files didn’t paint the full picture. , multiple complaints filed against an employee were counted as a single report. Other times, multiple complaints against a single employee were counted as multiple reports. Some campuses , which may have affected the precision of the auditor’s counts.

“Because of these inconsistencies, we found the data to be unreliable for our purposes,” .

Importantly, the Cozen and auditor reports had different goals. For example, lawmakers  to count how many employees were accused of unwanted sexual conduct. By design, the Cozen reports focused on how Cal State addresses discrimination, harassment, and retaliation according to its own policies and federal rules, wrote the lawyers who shepherded the project, Leslie Gomez and Gina Maisto Smith, in a detailed email response to CalMatters. Cozen produced roughly 1,600 pages of analysis and recommendations for all 23 campuses and the system in the reports, “an arduous task,” Gomez and Smith wrote.

The latest data from the Cal State campuses also shows how the number of reports against employees can jump when the system tracks more unwanted sexual conduct. Since 2021-22 was the first year that the chancellor’s office sought data from campuses about sexual harassment and exploitation — not just violence, stalking and assault — the number increased in Cozen’s set of reports.

That year there were 255 reports against employees, according to a CalMatters review of Cozen data for all 23 campuses. The year before, Cozen counted 56 reports and about 70 each in 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Cozen’s much higher count for 2021-22 is also similar to the auditor’s counts for the 2021 and 2022 calendar years — 193 and 285 reports alleging unwanted sexual conduct by employees, respectively.

“I think it obviously shows the need for the school to have been collecting this data all along,” said Shiwali Patel, who leads policy and litigation on gender-based harassment at the Washington D.C.-based National Women’s Law Center.

More reports of mistreatment likely

The Biden administration  governing not just unwanted sexual conduct, but also gender-based discrimination. The predicted changes will expand the allegations colleges must respond to — which may increase the number of reports schools will eventually publish.

Gomez and Smith said that Cal State should compile annual reports that include all those data points.

The Biden rules will be the  since 2011 to federal rules about how colleges should handle violence and discrimination complaints on their campuses. The shifting rules amount to a legalistic whiplash for higher education that is also compounded by evolving state rules, including in California.

The Cozen report notes this constant change is , which must quickly adapt and hire or train more staff knowledgeable in the intricacies of discrimination and harassment prevention policies and enforcement. 

In an official statement, Cal State said its count of complaints against employees included violence and assault — and not harassment or exploitation — because federal guidance in 2011 and 2013 emphasized those types of unwanted sexual conduct and not others.

Adding harassment and exploitation to the data collection in 2021-22 “was important to better understanding the frequency and nature of sexual harassment reports, and due to sexual exploitation being newly added to the CSU Nondiscrimination Policy,” wrote Amy Bentley-Smith, spokesperson for the Cal State Chancellor’s Office, in an email to CalMatters.

She provided other possible reasons for an increase in reports that year. One is that students and staff returned to campus as the pandemic subsided. Another is the set of  cases of unwanted sexual conduct at Cal State that prompted more people to come forward with their own complaints.

If Cozen’s “recommendations are implemented with fidelity, we expect that campuses will have more effective practices and systems, and therefore, more reliable data,” wrote the Cozen lawyers to CalMatters.

But better data can only capture what’s reported.

At colleges and universities, “most incidents are not reported,” Patel said. And too often she hears of schools refusing to investigate a student’s or employee’s unwanted sexual conduct complaint. Or campuses might punish alleged victims because they violated school policy, such as drinking, disregarding the harassment or assault complaint.

A culture of intimidation may also prevent victims from filing complaints, especially if the alleged suspect holds considerable sway in a niche academic discipline. That’s according to Maha Ibrahim, a senior attorney who represents people alleging harassment, assault and gender-based discrimination at California-based Equal Rights Advocates.

If a student or employee is being abused by someone “who has power in that small space,” then the student or employee can lose their ability to complete their research, Ibrahim said. “We see that kind of reticence and under-reporting a lot.”

Paradoxically, Patel thinks “when we see more numbers reported, that’s actually a good sign,” because it shows more “victims feel comfortable coming forward.” It also means the school may take the steps to educate or discipline someone who’s harming students or staff, she added.

Both the  and  reports proposed dozens of recommendations, including better data collection. The auditor wrote that Cal State’s central office should collect and analyze unwanted sexual conduct reports from all campuses no later than July 2024. The point is to “identify any concerning patterns or trends, such as those involving repeat subjects, particular academic departments, or specific student or employee populations,” the auditor wrote. 

But other data overhauls may take more time. The audit said Cal State  every campus to use the same software to track unwanted sexual conduct and ensure all campuses are logging the cases the same way. The auditor states that should be done by July 2026.

This story was originally published at

On Dec. 3,  a Loudon County public school student attempted to take his life after school staff failed to take reports of sexual harassment seriously, a lawsuit alleges.

The male student, identified as “John Doe,” was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt and his parents have filed a lawsuit against the Loudon County Board of Education. Their son would not have attempted suicide had staff members at Fort Loudon Middle School followed the county board of education’s sexual harassment policy.

The day before trying to shoot himself with his father’s handgun, the then-8th grade student told his parents that he had been continuously sexually harassed since the school year began. His parents immediately informed school staff, who scheduled a meeting the next day.

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But despite discussing preventative measures, such as stationing a teacher near the student for his safety, the boy reported another assault the same day as the meeting. School staff corroborated the incident through video footage but failed to take the matter seriously, according to the lawsuit.

After meeting with both the victim and the harassers, who admitted to the behavior as “just joking around,” the principal minimized the impact of the behavior. The harassing students “do not have good home lives,” the principal, who is unnamed in the suit,  told Doe.

Later that day, the victim wrote a note to his family, intending to take his own life.

“I love all of you all. I will be by the gas tank,” he wrote.

The Loudon County Board of Education has not responded to requests for comment.

The procedures listed under the Loudon County Title IX and Sexual Harassment policy were not followed at all, said the plaintiff’s lawyer, Justin S. Gilbert from Gilbert Law, PLLC.

The Loudon County Board of Education’s policy for handling sexual harassment  includes disseminating information about what constitutes harassment to school staff, students and parents. Under the policy, anyone with knowledge of sexual harassment needed to report immediately to the appropriate staff member, listed as Matthew Tinker.

Tinker never received a report, according to the lawsuit. Parents were also not informed of the sexual harassment policy, which details how to file a formal complaint.

The school’s sexual harassment policy also allows for an investigation and procedure to allow all involved parties due process. None of this occurred after the initial report of sexual harassment, according to the lawsuit.

Gilbert also believes the male student’s distress was not taken seriously because of discrimination.

“Being male, the assaults were treated too casually. (Doe) felt helpless, thus attempting to take his own life,” he said.

The student’s parents are seeking damages up to the statutory maximum available, or $300,000, under Tennessee law against Loudon County Board of Education. They are also seeking $50,000 for emotional distress.

Lawyers for the student’s parents are not aware the student alleged to have harassed Doe have been reported to the police. The plaintiff has since returned to Fort Loudon Middle School for ninth grade.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on and .

Under the proposed changes, announced Thursday, the law would protect victims against discrimination based not just on sex but on sexual orientation and gender identity, in effect adding transgender students as a protected class. Current regulations are silent on these students’ rights.

But the proposal sidesteps the question of transgender athletes’ rights to compete in girls’ sports, an explosive issue administration officials said will get its own set of regulations at a later date.

“This is personal to me as an educator and as a father,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during the announcement. “I want the same opportunities afforded to my daughter and my son — and my transgender cousin — so they can achieve their potential and reach their dreams.”

The changes come 50 years to the day after President Richard Nixon signed the federal civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in education.

Cardona on Thursday noted that LGBTQ youth “face bullying and harassment, experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, and too often grow up feeling that they don’t belong.”

The proposed regulations, he said, “send a loud message to these students and all our students: You belong in our schools. You have worthy dreams and incredible talents. You deserve the opportunity to shine authentically and unapologetically. The Biden-Harris administration has your back.”

Education and civil rights groups welcomed the proposed rules, with Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the saying they “greatly strengthen principals’ abilities to ensure schools provide what students need.” 

Amit Paley, CEO of, a suicide prevention and mental health organization for LGBTQ youth, applauded the administration’s bid to extend Title IX protections to sexual orientation and gender identity, saying, “School should be a place where students learn and are comfortable being themselves, not a source of bullying and discrimination.”

But the proposed rules irked some conservative groups. In a, Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, called the move a “federal overreach” and dubbed the proposed regulations “The Biden administration’s ‘Must Say They’ rewrite of Title IX,” refering to the preferred pronoun of some who are transgender. 

“American families should be deeply concerned by the proposed rewrite of Title IX,” Neily said. “From rolling back due process protections, to stomping on the First Amendment, to adding ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ into a statute that can only be so changed by Congressional action, the Biden Administration has shown that they place the demands of a small group of political activists above the concerns of millions of families across the country.”

Taken together, the proposed regulations would create a sharp contrast to Trump administration rules adopted in 2020 under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Under DeVos, for instance, schools were prohibited from opening Title IX cases if an alleged assault took place away from school grounds. Under the new rules, schools would be required to address “hostile environments” in programs and activities, even if the conduct that contributed to the hostile environment “occurred off-campus or outside the United States,” a senior official told reporters.

“Our view now is that the existing regulations do not best fulfill Congress’ mandate in Title IX,” the official said. “There is more we can do to ensure that students do not experience sex discrimination in school.”

Cardona’s proposed changes both expand the definition of sexual harassment and potentially limit opportunities for students accused of sexual assault or harassment to confront their accusers. Administration officials said the new regulations would require schools to take “prompt and effective” action on campus sex discrimination.

But they also said the regulations in effect loosen requirements on schools’ sex assault investigations: The proposed rules, for instance, would “permit but not require” schools to hold live hearings in which accused students can directly confront survivors.

A senior department official, who briefed reporters Thursday on background, said the administration has concluded that a live hearing, which resembles a courtroom procedure, “is one, but not the only way, to address investigation and to determine what has occurred.” The official noted that the vast majority of schools were not conducting live hearings before the Trump administration began requiring them in 2020. “And it was clear to us that a live hearing was not essential to determination of outcomes and a fair process,” the official said.

In a statement, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), said the move “returns to the deeply flawed campus disciplinary process of the Obama Administration, which led to hundreds of inconsistent judgements and more than 300 legal challenges. The existing rule struck a balance that follows the law and is fair to both parties.”

Notably absent from Thursday’s announcement was any mention of Title IX’s application to athletics, which has caused a furor due to a handful of transgender athletes’ bids to compete in girls’ sporting events.

The administration said it will engage in a separate rulemaking process to address the law’s application to athletics and gender, but offered no immediate timeline for the process. A senior department official said the topic “deserves its own separate rule-making process.”

Administration officials have previously said Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination and harassment in programs receiving federal funds, will echo the in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which extended protections against sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace to LGBTQ employees.

While the department’s interpretation of the Bostock ruling doesn’t mention sports, the Biden administration last year filed in a West Virginia case in which a transgender girl who wants to compete with girls on her middle school cross country team is challenging the state’s 2021 law banning students born as male from participating in girls’ sports. 

A group of 15 Republican-led states, led by Montana Attorney General, has threatened to challenge the regulations in court,. Since last year, a dozen states have passed legislation prohibiting trans females from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. 

Last week, the , the world governing body for swimming, voted to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in high-level women’s competitions unless they began medical treatments to suppress testosterone production early in their lives.  

The group, known internationally as FĂ©dĂ©ration internationale de natation, or FINA, said it would also a new, “open” category for athletes who identify as women but do not meet the requirement to compete against people who were female at birth.

By contrast, World Cup and Olympic soccer star Megan Rapinoe last week that she is “100 percent supportive of trans inclusion” in sports, noting that what most people know about the topic comes from “relentless” conservative talking points that don’t reflect reality. 

“Show me the evidence that trans women are taking everyone’s scholarships, are dominating in every sport, are winning every title,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just not happening. So we need to start from inclusion, period. And as things arise, I have confidence that we can figure it out. But we can’t start at the opposite. That is cruel. And frankly, it’s just disgusting.”

The public has 60 days to send comments on the new proposal, which could take several months to finalize.