Mayor Moreno Leads New Orleans Campus Summit on Sexual Violence Prevention

Mayor Helena Moreno convened leaders from colleges and universities across Greater New Orleans at Gallier Hall on November 11 to launch a coordinated effort to strengthen campus sexual assault prevention and survivor protections.

The Campus Summit on Sexual Violence aims to establish consistent standards and improved accountability across local institutions. This initiative comes as universities nationally and locally struggle to address sexual assault and the treatment of survivors. Recent allegations involving Cornell University have renewed the national conversation regarding institutional accountability and how universities respond to student reports of assault.

“This is an issue I care deeply about and have worked on for many years,” Mayor Moreno said. “Bringing our universities, law enforcement, and community partners together is an important step toward making real progress.”

According to a report from nola.gov, the Mayor’s administration is pushing for several specific institutional changes to ensure student safety. The Mayor urged participating colleges and universities to conduct listening sessions with the broader campus community, as well as with student, faculty, and staff leaders involved in prevention and response.

New requirements for campus institutions

The summit outlined a series of mandates intended to close gaps in current university protocols. Participating institutions are being asked to review existing procedures, specifically focusing on prevention education, Title IX reporting, criminal investigations, and the services available to survivors.

To ensure transparency, the Mayor’s Office is requiring universities to submit detailed institutional reports. These documents must provide an overview of existing programs and sexual misconduct reports and outcomes spanning from 2020 through 2025. These reports will also include findings from the new listening sessions and proposed institutional improvements.

The administration is also calling for a shift in how prevention is taught. Rather than limiting education to freshman orientation, the Mayor is urging schools to expand training to include bystander intervention, healthy relationships, and sexual assault prevention throughout a student’s entire college career.

“Sexual violence on and off university campuses is a significant public health issue,” said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services. “A collective and comprehensive response is needed to keep our residents safe, starting with strong education and prevention efforts by our institutions of higher learning.”

The initiative is not limited to academic administrators. The roundtable included representatives from the New Orleans Police Department, the City’s Department of Health and Human Services, and the Mayor’s Office of Nighttime Economy to facilitate better coordination between campus security and city law enforcement.

A history of legislative reform

Mayor Moreno’s involvement in this issue is rooted in her previous work in the Louisiana Legislature. In 2015, while serving in the Louisiana House of Representatives, she authored legislation that overhauled how the state treats sexual assault victims. Those reforms ended the practice of billing survivors for forensic medical examinations and established coordinated regional response protocols to better protect survivors.

“No single institution can tackle sexual violence alone,” Moreno said. “We need to share what works, identify where we’re falling short, and commit to stronger protections for students across our city. My goal is for New Orleans to lead the way in preventing sexual assault, supporting survivors, and holding offenders accountable.”

The New Orleans Police Department is also looking toward standardized responses to these incidents. “Only through partnership can we make our campuses as safe for everyone as we would want them to be for our own loved ones,” said New Orleans Police Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon.

While the summit established the framework for these new expectations, the practical implementation remains a work in progress. The City plans to reconvene the participating institutions in Spring 2027 to review the findings from the campus listening sessions, assess the effectiveness of proposed improvements, and identify new opportunities for collaboration. Official updates from the City of New Orleans will track the progress of these institutional reviews.

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