I’ve always been fascinated by the contradictions inherent to universities, which on the one hand work as bubble-like institutions concerned with their students’ futures and educations, and on the other act as vast corporations with a great deal of self-interest. Who they do or do not allow to remain on campus following a crime or incident has always seemed arbitrary and the ways they attempt to keep student or faculty conduct, which reflects poorly on the university, hush-hush suspect. This was something I wrote about regarding a hate crime that took place at Columbia University in spring 2006. But I’ve seen few things worse than gag orders imposed on rape victims at risk of punishment, as was the case with the University of Virginia. Happily the Department of Education has now ordered this gag order to be lifted ruling that it “violated federal law by threatening victims of sexual assault with punishment if they spoke about their cases.”

And on the larger implications:

The ruling has major implications for victims of sexual assault on college campuses across the country, according to the man who filed the complaint on behalf of then-UVA student Annie Hylton, now Annie Hylton McLaughlin.

“It means that victims can’t be silenced at UVA or anywhere else,” says S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security on Campus.

So in the midst of worries about how the Obama administration will pan out, whether we’ll go deeper into recession, and whether we’ll ever make it through the wind tunnels of New York City, we can give a little “Huzzah!” for this.