A year after changes to the College’s sexual assault policy raised widespread controversy on campus, the Faculty quietly received notice this week of a proposal to significantly soften the policy’s wording.

Last year’s change required that complainants in peer disputes provide “sufficient corroborating evidence” before the Administrative Board would agree to hear the case.

But under the policy proposed to Faculty this week, students involved in these cases would only be required to provide “as much information as possible to support their allegations.”

“Based on information obtained through investigation, the Board will decide whether to pursue the complaint,” the proposed language reads.

Though the suggested policy does not stipulate who would conduct such an investigation, a report released last week by the Leaning Committee—charged with examining sexual assault at the College—recommended that a “Single Fact Finder” should look into allegations of sexual assault brought before the Ad Board.

Last year, when he recommended the shift in the Ad Board’s policy, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said that the Board—which consists of Senior Tutors and other administrators—was not equipped to deal with “he-said-she-said” sexual assault cases.

“I want to encourage women to take cases to the criminal justice system where something can be done,” Lewis said in an interview last year. “We don’t have forensic laboratories, we don’t have subpoenas.”

According to Lewis, the Faculty is slated to vote on the change to the policy’s wording as part of an annual reapproval of the Handbook for Students on May 20.

While campus activists celebrated the proposed change as a shift towards a less-strict policy that would encourage more sexual assault victims to come forward, administrators yesterday portrayed the change to the Handbook as merely codifying a shift in policy that was posted on the Ad Board’s website last fall.

At that time, the wording of the peer dispute policy posted on the Ad Board’s website was changed from requiring “sufficient corroborating evidence” to “supporting information”—a shift which is formalized by the change to the Handbook, according to Lewis.

“The changes to the Handbook in this area are not substantial—they are intended to bring the Handbook language in line with the language that has been used since last summer (on our website, among other places), since we realized that the phraseology adopted last May and used in this year’s Handbook was interpreted by some too narrowly and legalistically,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail.

While Lewis downplayed the effect of the changes, Alexandra Neuhaus-Follini ’04-’06, a member of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV), said these changes outline a policy “pretty different than current Ad Board policy on the web.”

Last spring, an anonymous student, supported by CASV, filed a complaint with the United States Office for Civil Rights (OCR), claiming that the College’s sexual assault policy violated the civil rights granted to women by Title IX.

The OCR officially upheld Harvard’s policy, “as explained by College staff,” this winter.

Neuhaus-Follini credits the complaint to the OCR with prompting College administrators to change the policy’s wording.