Michael Williams wants his young college students to feel they can come to him for help.

He’s eager to guide them while working on an assignment or offer a sympathetic ear when things go sour in their personal lives.

But if they confide something to the University of Kansas journalism professor about sexual harassment or worse?

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“I have said to the student, ‘I’m really sorry this happened, but if you tell me more details, I have to report this'” to others on campus, said Williams, president of KU’s University Senate. “Sometimes, the student goes ahead and tells you everything anyway. They’re seeking an adult they can trust. … But I’ve had students say, ‘I don’t want anyone else to know.’ They don’t tell you anything more. That’s when the situation gets a little gray.”

And, say faculty at a number of colleges, a student who can’t tell a professor something in confidence might not tell anybody.

Those same professors embrace the need to track sexual harassment and assaults, to better root out campus rapists and to get a student help in a time of crisis.

Yet some say a student looking for a familiar person to confide in might clam up if that means hearing from some other college official — no matter how kind that third party might be.

“I want to help that student,” Williams said. “But if the first thing out of their mouth is ‘I don’t really want to report this,’ what do you do?”

The federal government continues to pressure college campuses to make sure that women, in particular, can pursue their studies safe from sexual harassment and assault.

That’s long been enshrined in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibiting sex discrimination on campus. Title IX may be best known for how it remade college sports by demanding that women get the same chance at athletic scholarships as men.

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But increasingly it’s also grown as a tool to fight campus rape. Washington puts ever more exacting demands on schools to better document all manner of assault and harassment.

New federal requirements kicked in over the summer that demand schools beef up both training for students and efforts to report potential Title IX violations.

That followed a stern reminder issued by the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office in 2011 widely interpreted on campuses to mean that — with a few deliberate exceptions — virtually anyone working for a university must alert administrators about suspected cases.

That’s why Williams feels obligated to warn students that telling him about a date that turned violent or a relationship that’s become abusive means he must tell others.

Angela Speck, who teaches astrophysics at the University of Missouri, is an outspoken advocate for logging assault cases. Such reporting, after all, can reveal where and how problems happen. And she speaks enthusiastically about various caring and competent professionals on campus ready to help someone who’s been attacked.

Still, she said, few students already know those professionals.

“That’s great if you know about it, if you feel comfortable dealing with absolute strangers,” Speck said.

Maybe, she said, at least one professor in a department should be left off the hook on reporting so students can confide in a familiar face.

“Otherwise,” she said, “how can you have a conversation in confidence if you know that you’re talking to a mandatory reporter?”

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