Legislators will introduce a bill to establish state-wide policies around sexual assault across state-funded college campuses in New Mexico.
The William Benjamin College Sexual Violence Prevention and Intervention Act is in response to the hazing and sexual assault that took place on New Mexico State University’s basketball team in late 2022 and early 2023, bill sponsor state Rep. Liz Thomson, D-Albuquerque, told NM Political Report. A previous version of the bill, which failed in the 2023 Senate Judiciary Committee after passing the House, focused on educating youth and college students on affirmative consent.
This year, Thomson said she wanted to more narrowly focus the bill to establish statewide policies and procedures so another incident like the one that happened at NMSU about a year ago will not happen again.
In late 2022 and early 2023, a group of three NMSU basketball students allegedly began hazing and sexually harassing two basketball players on the team. William Benjamin, who the bill is named after, is the father of one of the players who was victimized.
The families of the two victims sued New Mexico State University last year. NMSU settled the lawsuit for $8 million last summer.
Separately, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced last year that he is pursuing charges against the three players, all of whom are no longer students at NMSU. A grand jury indicted the three players in November. Torrez’s office said through spokesperson Ashley Sterling that Torrez supports stronger anti-hazing laws on college campuses in New Mexico.
“The New Mexico Department of Justice will continue to work with legislators on any proposed legislation to meaningfully address this issue and protect our students,” she said through email.
NMSU, through spokesperson Minerva Baumann, said the university welcomes the bill and the safeguards it will put into place if enacted.
“We’re pleased to report that many of the provisions outlined so far have already been put in place by New Mexico State University in recent months as a result of our own reviews. This includes additional trainings for personnel and the creation of a permanent working group to address these kinds of issues. We welcome the opportunity to collaborate whenever possible to further protect our students,” Baumann wrote in an email.
Thomson said the bill, if enacted, will affect all institutions of higher education in New Mexico that receive any state money, either through grants or scholarships or through other funding.
Alexandria Taylor, executive director of New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, said the coalition considers the bill urgent because incidents that happened last year on college campuses in the state. She said the bill will contain a requirement for college campuses to establish a memorandum of understanding with a local rape crisis center to ensure comprehensive services for students who have been harmed.
Marshall Martinez, executive director of Equality New Mexico, said the bill will also contain language that will grant immunity to a victim reporting sexual violence on campus. The immunity for other campus rules that might have been broken, will encourage victims of sexual violence to report.
Martinez said that often, victims on college campuses don’t report sexual violence when it occurs because drugs or drinking were taking place at the time of the incident and the victim fears punishment. Martinez said there have been incidents where the victim’s rule breaking becomes the center of the investigation, rather than the sexual violence that occurred.
Martinez said that because of the victims’ fear of punishment for rule breaking, sexual violence on college campuses is “wildly underreported.”
Martinez said that because LGBTQ individuals are disproportionately the victims of sexual assault and harassment on college campuses, the William Benjamin College Sexual Violence Prevention and Intervention bill is of particular importance to the organization.
Thomson said she has not given up on the idea of educating the youth of New Mexico about affirmative consent through sexual education in the public school system, which was the primary focus of the 2023 version of the bill, but that she hopes a more narrowly focused bill will pass this year. She said the William Benjamin College Sexual Violence Prevention and Intervention bill will contain language about college students receiving training about what to do about sexual harassment and sexual assault and how to report incidents, which will provide an educational component to the bill.
But the main focus this year is to ensure that New Mexico college campuses have clear guidelines going forward, she said.
“This is just to get something passed to start the conversation and protect students. It’s a way to get things rolling,” Thomson said.
