Finally, Murphy emphasized that because of the OCR investigation, Harvard has clarified its policy to include all forms of discrimination, including racial, ethnic and sexuality-based forms of discrimination and harassment.

“The original policy was announced as applying only to sexual assault victims. We’ve made Harvard backpedal on that,” she said.

Members of CASV, who filed a statement of support for the student complainant in the OCR case, expressed guarded optimism last night about the new wording but worried about its implementation.

“We hope that this means that Harvard will now fully investigate every case of sexual assault that has been brought forward, because that is what must happen if we are to have a safe community,” said Alisha C. Johnson ’04, a member of CASV. “And CASV will be watching to make sure that the apparent change that OCR points to is actually a meaningful change, not just one of semantics.”

Last spring, the Faculty’s approval of the new policy requiring “sufficient independent corroboration,” came under fire from students and professors alike. Members of CASV held a protest outside of University Hall.

In response, the University convened a committee, the Leaning Committee, to review Harvard’s sexual assault policy.

Johnson said that CASV anticipates that the committee’s proposals, which will be released this month, will set a more positive precedent for other universities than OCR’s current ruling does.

“CASV still believes that requiring corroboration, no matter what it is called, is bad and prevents survivors from coming forward and having investigations,” she said.

“We hope that other colleges will also be paying attention to the Leaning Committee report that will come out later this month, which will recommend a total revamping of how sexual assault is dealt with at Harvard.”

—Staff writer Sarah M. Seltzer can be reached at sseltzer@fas.harvard.edu.