Reunion Online

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers are positioned to devote $45 million in the 2016 fiscal year to combat the nation’s accumulation of untested sexual assault kits.

The funding, included as part of the omnibus spending bill Congress released Wednesday, is aimed at helping local law enforcement agencies test backlogged sexual assault evidence kits and perform related activities as part of a U.S. Justice Department initiative.

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In 2011, students from a fraternity at the University of Vermont circulated an email asking members whom they wanted to rape. In 2010, Delta Kappa Epsilon members at Yale paraded around campus chanting what The Yale Daily News would later deem “an active call for sexual violence.”

Greek life has often found itself at the center of the sexual assault discussion nationwide. Although this issue is not isolated to Greek life, media and society often buy into a negative stigma of frequent sexual assault in the Greek community, often painting Greek life in a negative light.

TV show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit may help educate television viewers about rape and importance of sexual consent, study suggests.

The numbers might seem alarming: more than 3,000 rape kits sitting on shelves, untested, at law enforcement agencies across the state. And for more than 9 percent of those cases, the reason for not testing is "unknown."

But police are quick to explain that a reasonable explanation often exists for not testing evidence collected after a sex assault is reported: Sometimes victims do not want to move forward with a case. Sometimes the suspect's identity is not in question. Sometimes prosecutors decline to file charges.

At least 16 states have no statute of limitations for rape cases in face of rape kit backlog, delays in reporting crimes.

Police chief Chris Allgood says he doesn’t want to put DNA into database if crime not committed.

Advocates, legislators and law enforcement discuss current rape kit testing laws and what, if anything, should be done to change them.

When 11 corpses were discovered in and around the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell in the fall of 2009, there were some 4,000 untested rape kits being neglected by local cops. The deranged rapist and murderer was stopped, but his case exposed the stunning mishandling of missing persons and sexual assault cases in the city,  a problem advocates argue has festered nationwide as the war on drugs has sucked up public safety dollars that might otherwise have gone toward putting rapists and killers behind bars.

Bloomberg Tradebook’s fourth annual Charity Day took place on November 4, and this year it was bigger and more global than ever.

Two weeks ago on Oct. 1, Jake Comito gathered about 60 blue 3-by-2-foot poster boards with “NO MORE” printed at the top to Quad Circle on Livingston campus, where students were walking through and asked what the boards were all about.

The Rutgers Business School junior and resident assistant would then explain that he and a few close friends have taken the initiative to align with the Joyful Heart Foundation’s campaign against sexual violence and domestic abuse, "NO MORE."