News and Commentary

Categories
Campus Title IX

ATIXA Puts Members into Legal Jeopardy Regarding Requirement to Publicly Post Training Materials

SAVE May 13, 2020 The new Title IX regulation affirms, “A recipient must make these training materials publicly available on its website.” (1) SAVE believes this is one of the most important provisions in the new regulation into order to bring an end to the pernicious sex stereotypes and gender discrimination that have emerged in

Sharing is caring!

The new Title IX regulation affirms, “A recipient must make these training materials publicly available on its website.” (1) SAVE believes this is one of the most important provisions in the new regulation into order to bring an end to the pernicious sex stereotypes and gender discrimination that have emerged in recent years.

So what part of “A recipient must make these training materials publicly available on its website” does the Association for Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) not understand?

The ATIXA website boasts that it “brings campus and district Title IX Coordinators and administrators into professional collaboration to explore best practices, share resources, and advance the worthy goal of gender equity in education.” (2) This makes it all the more important to “get it right” for the vast number of members who look to ATIXA to interpret and apply the law, or else put their members at legal and financial risk.

On Monday, May 11, ATIXA sponsored a webinar titled, “Ten Things to Know About the New Title IX Regulations.” (3) Brett Sokolow, president of ATIXA, told over 4,200 webinar attendees that they are not to follow the Department of Education regulation, but instead follow ATIXA’s legally dubious guidance. Making the claim that the ATIXA training materials are “proprietary,” Sokolow admonished the group:

“And so for materials that are proprietary, our suggestion is that you do the following: that you list those on your website by the type of document, or webinar, or training video, or whatever the materials are, by its title and authorship; but that you don’t include the contents.  You just include the title and then you allow members of the public to request access, which will probably be in your office.”

Emphasizing the point, Sokolow continued,

They are not permitted to have a copy….and are not allowed to take photos or screenshots….they are allowed to take notes on what they see.”

Hmmm. This sounds eerily similar to the extremely limited access that accused students were afforded by Title IX administrators to view crucial witness statements, documents, and evidence during the nine-year “Kangaroo Court” era following issuance of the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter on sexual violence.  The Department of Education put a stop to that nonsense with the issuance of the new Title IX Regulation.

It appears the Department of Education will need to do the same to address ATIXA’s misguided instruction to its members.

Citations:

  1. Section 106.45(10)(i)(D)
  2. https://atixa.org/
  3. https://cdn.atixa.org/website-media/atixa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/11155019/ATIXA-R3-Webinar-Slides_5.11.20.pdf