Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is asking every college and university in the state to conduct a rigorous review of its sexual-assault and harassment policies within the next 90 days, a request that lands as a high-profile lawsuit against Cornell University keeps campus safety practices nationwide under a harsh spotlight.
Beshear’s letter, addressed to Kentucky colleges and universities, calls on administrators to examine awareness campaigns, access to resources, reporting steps, victim services, due process, bystander prevention and retaliation education, according to The Courier-Journal. The governor said the request was prompted by recent reports about campuses across the United States, and he urged institutions to release their review results once the work is complete.
As reported by Kentucky Lantern, Beshear wants the reviews to cover awareness campaigns, access to resources, reporting steps and more, and he’s asking the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education to make sure university board members are educated on policies and procedures against sexual harassment, including best practices for reporting and conducting investigations. The governor was careful to frame the request as forward-looking rather than accusatory. “My request is not suggesting any Kentucky institution has failed in this area,” he said, according to the same outlet.
Why the Timing Matters
Beshear said conversations over the past month demonstrated the importance of stronger college policies and protocols to combat sexual violence and protect students, per the Courier-Journal’s reporting. He added that every Kentuckian, including college students, has the right to feel safe, and that institutions should continually seek to improve student safety rather than treat the issue as settled.
The backdrop is a lawsuit filed in September by a former Cornell University student who says she was gang raped after being coerced into consuming drugs at a fraternity house in 2024. The woman, identified as Jane Doe, alleges she was sexually assaulted by members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity chapter and that she was pressured into taking ketamine and was too intoxicated to consent, per the Courier-Journal. Her lawsuit names seven then-fraternity members along with Cornell, Chi Phi and other entities; no fraternity members have been criminally charged in connection with the case.
Cornell and the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office have faced scrutiny over how they handled the case, and the New York criminal inquiry into the matter has since been reopened. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James to lead an independent investigation after calling the initial investigation deeply flawed, according to the Courier-Journal’s reporting.
Cornell Brings In a Former Acting Attorney General
Cornell has responded by hiring former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates to lead an independent review of its response to Jane Doe’s allegations and its broader sexual-misconduct policies, NBC News reports. The university had already launched a Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault in early 2025 and said it was implementing recommendations to improve how it responds to sexual misconduct, per NBC News.
Cornell’s Board of Trustees has said it plans to publicly release the findings and recommendations from the Yates review once complete, according to CNY Central. Kentucky isn’t alone in reacting to the national moment, either — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore asked a state agency there to review policies against sexual assault on campuses the week before Beshear’s own request became public, per Kentucky Lantern.
What UK’s Own Numbers Show
Closer to home, the University of Kentucky Police Department’s 2026 Annual Campus Safety and Security Report, covering crime statistics from 2023 through 2025, shows the scale of what administrators are being asked to confront. On UK’s main campus, 2025 saw 24 reported rapes, including 22 in student housing facilities, according to the Kentucky Kernel.
That housing figure marks a decrease from 30 in 2024, the student newspaper’s report notes. The University of Kentucky has said the decline in reported rapes on its main campus may reflect the impact of its sustained prevention, education, survivor-support and reporting-resource efforts, according to a statement cited by Yahoo News. UK self-reported 36 on-campus rape accusations in 2024, compared with 24 in 2025 — though those figures reflect reported incidents rather than any definitive measure of how much sexual violence is actually occurring on campus. For broader context, the University of Utah had the most reported rape accusations among colleges reviewed for 2024, with 146 cases, per the same Yahoo News report.
Whether Kentucky’s colleges and universities will all complete reviews within Beshear’s requested 90-day timeframe, and what becomes of the reviews once finished, remains to be seen. For now, the governor’s message to Kentucky’s higher-education institutions is one of continuous vigilance rather than crisis: in his telling, the request is less about diagnosing a problem on any single campus than about making sure every school keeps pace with what students need to feel safe.
