Alyssa Milano mocks new DeVos policies on campus sexual assault with Dr. Seuss spoof

Actress and activist Alyssa Milano on Wednesday tore into Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s new guidelines for how schools handle sexual misconduct allegations by spoofing a Dr. Seuss tale.

“One ShIXtty Gift” was unveiled by It’s On Us, an anti-sexual assault organization founded during the Obama administration, to protest the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposed changes to Title IX. 

{mosads}The fake holiday tale reads like a Dr. Seuss book and tells the story of DeVos concocting the new rules changes.

“Late one evening at the Department of Ed, thoughts were bouncing around Betsy DeVos’s head,” Milano reads in a video. “ ‘She needed a gift,’ she started to think. ‘A gift for the people that would really stink.’ ”

DeVos stayed up all night with her “shitty ideas pouring onto the page,” Milano reads.

“No more investigation for off-campus rape — bars and house parties would totally be safe,” she continues. “The meaning of harassment, she would remove, squeeze and twist ’til it was hard to prove. Live hearings where attackers defend their own violence sounded like a good way to keep victims silent.”

The proposed plan from the DOE would requires schools to investigate allegations of sexual assault and harassment only if the alleged incident took place in areas under the jurisdiction of the school and was reported to campus officials.

It would also allow for those accused of wrongdoing to question their accusers in campus hearings.

Rape statistics would go down because of DeVos policies, Milano read.

“Not because things got better but because fewer would count,” she added. 

The video is meant to encourage viewers to submit a comment about the guidelines on the DOE’s website. The comment period will be open until Jan. 28.

The agency is legally required to consider all comments before making a final decision on the regulations.

The plan would be a rollback of Obama-era guidance for colleges and universities on how to handle sexual assault on campus.

DeVos has said she is seeking to offer students accused of sexual assaults their due process rights.

“Every survivor of sexual violence must be taken seriously, and every student accused of sexual misconduct must know that guilt is not predetermined,” DeVos said in a statement last month. “We can, and must, condemn sexual violence and punish those who perpetrate it, while ensuring a fair grievance process. Those are not mutually exclusive ideas.”

Democratic senators have called on DeVos to rescind her proposed policies, saying the bolstered rights for accused perpetrators could harm survivors of sexual assault.

“DeVos’s proposed rule will return us to a time when sexual assault survivors were ignored and felt they had nowhere to turn,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said.