URBANA — From 2017 to 2019, 331 University of Illinois employees were accused of sexual misconduct, 67 cases were formally investigated and 10 resulted in findings of violations of the UI’s sexual-misconduct policy.

That’s according to data provided this week to the academic Senate after it was requested in the fall.

Law Professor Rob Kar, who led the UI’s committee on faculty sexual misconduct, said the data shows why the UI needs to use a broader definition of sexual harassment that’s tied less to legal standards, as his committee recommended last year.

“The problems around sexual misconduct are a complex interwoven network of issues, but to resolve them, we found that arguably the most important and most difficult step to take is to identify and define a broader class of sexual misconduct than is captured in the legal definition of sexual harassment and to clearly prohibit it in internal campus policies,” Kar said.

He said that would lead to more findings of sexual misconduct violations and more people willing to go through formal investigations.

“The number of people reporting is a very small percentage of the people who experience it,” Kar said. “More people will report if they think they can get a solution or remedy.”

The formal investigations are speeding up, lasting an average of 118 days in 2017 and 90 days last year.

Of the 246 cases where no action was taken, 65 were because the complainant was reluctant or didn’t participate and 84 were closed through administrative processes, such as educational conversations or training.

The vast majority of the cases involved sexual harassment, according to the report from the UI’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, which did not respond to questions about the data.

There were 21 cases involving sexual assault, 15 involving stalking, two involving dating or domestic violence, 20 involving retaliation, six involving sexual exploitation and 246 involving sexual harassment.

Some cases involved more than one category.

And the number of accused employees has increased: 72 were accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, 110 in 2018 and 149 in 2019.

“There’s probably a number of different things happening,” Kar said. “With the #MeToo movement and changes in cultural norms, there may have been more people willing to come forward and file reports.”

And he said the data indicates the fear of being falsely accused is overblown.

“When you add up the vast amount of under-reporting, then add up the number that do not go to a formal investigation, then add the number found not to be sexual harassment, you’re talking about an extraordinarily small amount of sexual harassment ever found and sanctioned as sexual harassment,” Kar said. “While, of course, it’s not impossible for a false claim to be brought against someone, that, statistically, is going to be such a minor problem in comparison to the false negatives.”

The academic Senate passed a resolution in November for aggregate sexual-misconduct data after graduate student Senator John Bambenek introduced a resolution for it.

“The numbers were higher than I expected. … This shows there are more cases the University has known about than is public, which is concerning,” Bambenek said. “It is good they have started to report information and (that) more is forthcoming.”

He also asked for a breakdown of what happened in cases that resulted in formal findings of misconduct, such as whether they led to negotiated settlements, letters of expectations, suspensions or terminations.

And he asked for details on the results of cases that were handled informally.

The report said the coroanvirus pandemic caused a delay and that more information on these questions would be coming from the human-resources department and legal counsel.

The Senate also asked for five years of data, but only three years were available.

The campus didn’t start collecting sexual-misconduct cases in a database until 2014; before that, records were in paper files.

And until 2016, the database didn’t include information such as whether the case was investigated, The News-Gazette found in a 2018 report.

“Before 2017, data would need to be reviewed case by case to determine the categories for the below questions,” according to the report’s introduction.

The introduction also noted that the data is subject to change, as more information becomes available or is corrected.