Professor Michele Dauber comments on a new California law aimed at protecting students from sexual assault for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Students at the University of California at Berkeley said they hoped that the first state law requiring students to signal their assent before sex would set a nationwide example for college relationships.

“It’s really important that mutuality is discussed, and it’s not something that is assumed,” Allyn Benintendi, 18, a Berkeley freshman from Millbrae, said Monday in an interview at the school, which already has been operating under a similar policy. “It’s very California to do it first, but it’s very important that other states start adopting the same model.”

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Yet the law provides important protections for victims, such as the ability to have attackers removed from school, a step that the criminal justice system doesn’t do, said Michele Landis Dauber, a professor at Stanford Law School in Stanford, Calif. “Even in the best of circumstances, if charges are brought, the case isn’t coming to trial until everyone has graduated,” she said.

“Does the student who is a victim have to go to school every day with her attacker? The U.S. government and now the state of California have said no,” Ms. Dauber said, adding that this law “could be transformative.”