The University of Minnesota is going to participate in one of the largest ever climate surveys focused on sexual assault.

the Association of American Universities is organizing the survey, but more than two dozen of its member institutions declined to participate. Their reasons for opting out vary, and some said they’d design and administer their own surveys.

However, we think it’s best to have as many schools as possible participating in the same survey so there is school-by-school data to compare and help address the problem of campus sexual violence.

It seems odd that a campus would opt out of a survey that has such great potential to give insight to a national problem, and we applaud the University for joining the survey.

We look forward to seeing the AAU survey’s results and the action taken by campus and government agencies.