The student complainants, with their legal representatives, announced the filing at a press conference Monday.
From the original 23 student complainants in April, the number grew over the summer as they waited for the Office for Civil Rights' decision on whether to open an investigation.
The university said if the student complainants would agree to waive their protections under federal privacy law, the school would discuss in further detail how officials responded in each case.
He talked with former students — some complainants, some not — who were in the classes where flagrant abuse, including sodomy, allegedly took place in front of the others; they told him they had never seen any of it and did not believe it had happened.
The federal investigation pointed to a number of concerns involving the adjudication process, such as the school putting too much emphasis on accused students and complainants to identify evidence and witnesses, rather than the university process performing those functions.
Kipnis mentions in the book that the graduate student was a complainant in six Title IX complaints; in the suit, the plaintiff acknowledges two, one against Ludlow and one against Kipnis.
Harvard's policy states that a "personal advisor" may accompany an accused student or a complainant to interviews with the Investigative Team, but forbids anyone from serving in that role who is not "an officer of the University who is affiliated with the School or unit in which the advisee is enrolled or employed".
OCR only requires universities to treat complainants properly, even when an institution has a documented record of violating both complainant and accused student rights.
More accurate numbers could force students and administrators alike to wake up to the issue of sexual violence at their school, said USC student Alexa Schwartz, one of the complainants against her university.
