Author: saveadmin

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Chippewa Falls woman arrested in murder-for-hire scheme

CHIPPEWA FALLS — A Chippewa Falls woman who was arrested in an alleged murder-for-hire

scheme will remain in jail on a $250,000 cash bond.

Melanie S. Schrader, 47, 438 Olive St., appeared for a bond hearing Friday morning on a possible

charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

“Ms. Schrader and Derek Gerke are involved in a child custody matter,” Chippewa County District

Attorney Wade Newell explained at the hearing. “She reached out to a friend who she thought knew

bikers who could take care of Mr. Gerke.”

The friend initially ignored Schrader’s comments. But when she asked a second time, the friend

alerted law enforcement, Newell said.

An agent with the Department of Criminal Investigation posed as a hit man, he said.

“They had a telephone conversation set up, with details of the hit,” Newell said. “She went to make a

down payment of the hit, and she went and gave him a picture of the person.”

Newell requested the $250,000 cash bond, calling it a serious matter.

“The state has concerns about the safety of Mr. Gerke as well as his family, and the child in the

middle of the child custody issue,” Newell said. “The concern is if Ms. Schrader gets out of

custody, that she will flee with the child and we’ll never see her again. Obviously, something has

made her think this is the best way to deal with a child custody matter.”

Defense attorney Francesco Balistrieri pointed out that Schrader is a life-long area resident and has

no criminal record. Balisteri said he doesn’t consider her a flight risk. He requested she be released

on a signature bond.

However, Judge Steve Cray followed Newell’s recommendation and ordered the $250,000 cash bond,

with the requirement she have no contact with Gerke or his family if she is released. Cray set a return

date for Tuesday.

Schrader was taken into custody at 11 a.m. Thursday. She appeared in court via video from the jail,

looked down, never raising her head, throughout the hearing.

The Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation is assisting the Chippewa County Sheriff’s

Department and the Chippewa Falls Police Department in investigating the case.

 

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Domestic Violence Violence Against Women Act

Stop Treating Domestic Violence Differently From Other Crimes

All of a sudden, it seems like criminal justice reform is on everyone’s policy agenda. Politicians across the political spectrum in the United States are finally thinking about policies to reverse the decades-long expansion of the criminal system, and the mass incarceration that has resulted.

But legislators have been doubling down on the system when it comes to domestic violence. Concerns about intimate partner violence threatened the campaign for pretrial bail and discovery reform in New York State. Iowa abandoned some mandatory minimum sentences in 2016, but created new ones for intimate partner violence. Various federal reform proposals would have decreased mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes, but increased them for crimes of domestic violence.

The implication is obvious: Crimes of violence, and particularly domestic violence, should be exempt from criminal justice reform — and may even merit harsher treatment than they’re currently subject to.

These efforts are misguided. The effectiveness of the criminal legal response to domestic violence is a sensitive subject. Questioning it is a harder sell politically than reconsidering our responses to drug or property crimes. But intimate partner violence should be included in criminal justice reforms. This is not an argument for treating incidents of domestic violence differently than other crimes; rather, it’s an argument to stop treating them differently.

Assaults and threats of physical violence against intimate partners have been illegal for centuries. The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed wife abuse in 1641; by the late 1800s, a number of states had criminalized violence against a spouse. But by the second half of the 20th century, those laws were rarely enforced. Police made few arrests; prosecutors rarely brought charges. To be clear: This was a bad state of affairs.

But in 1984, three things happened. First, Attorney General William French Smith’s task force on family violence declared that intimate partner violence was a criminal justice problem that required a criminal justice solution — the first time that the federal government had taken that position.

Second, a woman from Connecticut named Tracey Thurman won a multimillion dollar judgment against the city of Torrington. Ms. Thurman sued after the police failed on numerous occasions to arrest her husband, despite her reports of violence; he eventually left her partly paralyzed. Jurisdictions around the country took notice, concerned that they too could be held liable for police inaction.

Finally, state and local governments latched on to research published in 1984 by the sociologists Lawrence Sherman and Richard Berk suggesting that arrest deterred intimate partner violence. Cities and states responded by putting in place mandatory arrest laws for such cases (laws that don’t apply in the case of non-domestic violence related assaults); Not surprisingly, arrest rates skyrocketed.

The push for more vigorous law enforcement gained additional momentum with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. The act dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars each year to funding courts, prosecutors and police and community-based agencies. As of 2013, about 85 percent of its funding was dedicated to law enforcement efforts.

Prioritizing criminal justice responses to intimate partner violence would make sense if there was reason to believe that it was working. But that’s not what the evidence shows.

It’s true that rates of domestic violence have been dropping in the United States for years. But so has the overall violent crime rate. From 1994 through 2000, those rates fell about the same amount — a 47 percent decline for violent crime generally, a 48 percent decline for intimate partner violence. For the decade following, however, total violent crime decreased much more than rates of intimate partner violence, which stayed essentially the same — even though during this period, the Violence Against Women Act continued to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to criminal justice responses. Domestic violence homicides actually increased 19 percent between 2014 and 2017; and gun-related domestic violence homicides were up 26 percent between 2010 and 2017.

In 1984, Drs. Sherman and Berk warned that their influential study should be replicated before the police followed its suggestions. That warning was prescient: Replication studies have shown that arrests have modest effects on deterrence in some places, no effect in others, and can actually spur violence. One study found that the likelihood of reoffending was entirely attributable to other factors — like a criminal history — rather than arrest. The impact of prosecution is similarly inconclusive: A conviction may have some effect on recidivism, but its deterrence largely disappears without continuous monitoring, such as intensive probation.

What we do know is that relying primarily on arrest and prosecution exacerbates conditions associated with intimate partner violence, which strongly correlates with poverty. Low-income women are more likely to be victims; under- and unemployed men are much more likely to be batterers. Having a conviction makes it much more difficult to find and keep employment — and employed former prisoners earn 40 percent less than people who have never been incarcerated.

Trauma also contributes. Childhood experiences like abuse, neglect or witnessing violence suggest whether a person will bring violence into his or her home. And incarceration is traumatic. We punish people for violence by putting them in places where they are likely to witness or experience violence, and then send them back into their communities and relationships.

Encouraging a larger role for law enforcement also had the unintended consequence of punishing victims. In the aftermath of the Sherman and Berk study, cities and states rushed to adopt mandatory arrest policies. But the largest increases were in arrests of women. In California, for example, arrests of women increased 156 percent; arrests of men increased by 21 percent. Mandatory arrest policies tend to lead to an increase in arrests of women particularly in “situationally ambiguous” cases, where police officers may be unclear about what exactly occurred before their arrival.

Even if victims avoid arrest, prosecutors, in their zeal to win convictions, sometimes confront them with a horrible choice: Testify against your partner or go to jail. Victims can be held for days or weeks until they testify. This can lead to absurd outcomes: In 2015, at the request of the Orleans Parish prosecutors, Renata Singleton was held in jail for five days to compel her testimony. The boyfriend she was called to testify against pleaded guilty, and served no jail time at all.

We have other options. Rather than continuing to rely primarily on the criminal legal system, we could provide economic support to low-income men and women. We could intervene to prevent the childhood traumas that lead to violence in adulthood. We could address the attitudes and beliefs among adolescents that drive intimate partner violence. We could use community accountability and restorative justice programs to meet the needs of victims who will never willingly turn to state systems. We could focus our efforts and resources on stopping violence before it starts, rather than intervening ineffectually after the fact.

Intimate partner violence has many of the same characteristics that have driven criminal justice reform across other areas. Increased reliance on the criminal justice system hasn’t lowered rates of domestic violence, and has worsened conditions that spur on that violence. In some cases, it harms some of the people it was meant to benefit.

But violence, and particularly intimate partner violence, has beenthe third rail of criminal justice reform. Violent crimes feel viscerally different from other forms of crime; the desire for retribution may be stronger. And in the case of intimate partner violence, concern that we will return to the bad old days when the police and prosecutors ignored it prevents policymakers from considering alternatives.

But the criminal justice system isn’t stopping intimate partner violence. And it might even be making it worse.

Leigh Goodmark is a professor of law at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the author of “Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/opinion/domestic-violence-criminal-justice-reform-too.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

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Title IX Equity Project

OCR Has Now Reached Favorable Resolutions in 10 Cases

The Office for Civil Rights publishes a listing of all resolutions issued since October 1, 2013. The OCR has concluded Title IX investigations affirming complaints by male students at the following institutions, which are listed in alphabetical order:

  1. Clemson University,  Clemson, SC (2019) (sex-specific programs)
  2. Jefferson Community and Technical College, Louisville, KY (2015) (disparate treatment)
  3. Jonesboro Community Consolidated School District 43, Jonesboro, IL (2015) (sexual harassment)
  4. Pasco County District School Board, Land O’Lakes, FL (2017) (disparate treatment)
  5. Seattle University, Seattle, WA (2015) (sex-specific programs)
  6. Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV (2014)
  7. Temple University, PA (2014) (athletics)
  8. Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (2018) (sex-specific programs)
  9. Wesley College, Dover, DE (due process)
  10. Yonkers Public Schools, Yonkers, NY (2016) (harassment)

Source: http://www.saveservices.org/equity/case-resolutions/

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Uncategorized

Universities should not reward gender

Editors Note: The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Tropolitan or its staff members. Address responses and critiques to opinion@tropnews.com

Last week, the L.A. Times reported that the U.S. Department of Education opened more than two dozen different investigations around gender discrimination in universities such as Rice and Yale. The basis of these investigations comes from studies that show gender inequality in scholarship offers. One such survey was recently released by the nonprofit organization Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE). The survey points out that most single gender scholarships are granted to women. 

The study examined more than 200 colleges across the United States and found that the total number of single gender scholarships vastly favored women over men. In our state of Alabama alone, there are 87 women-only scholarships compared to only three for men. Here at Troy, there are five scholarships only for women and one scholarship only for men. Auburn University has one of the most egregious gender scholarship gaps in the entire country. There, women are offered 67 scholarships compared to a measly one for men. 

Title IX, a federal law that applies to any school that receives federal money, makes discrimination based on sex in education programs illegal. Single gender scholarships are permitted under this rule if the “overall effect” of scholarships is equitable. In other words, the scholarships are legal if the opportunities offered to one gender are equal to the other. This recent study from SAVE shows that the overall effect of these gender-specific scholarships is not equitable. Therefore, the universities offering these scholarships in such lopsided proportions should be investigated, as they are quite possibly violating title IX rules. 

The reason for these possible violations isn’t the fact that universities offer only women or only men scholarships. Each individual scholarship on its own is and should be respected and uncontested. The problem is when the disproportionate numbers offered to women over men is taken into account. At Troy for instance, if the university offered five scholarships that were only to women and five that were only to men, that would have an overall equitable effect since both genders would be given the same number of exclusive opportunities. Instead, women are given a larger amount more than men, and thus the effect is not equitable. 

Now, if there are more men receiving gender neutral scholarships, that might change the balance enough for the existence of such a gender specific scholarship gap. However, I was unable to find specific numbers of distribution of general scholarships based on gender. I did find that more women attend and graduate college compared to their male counterparts. Women make up roughly 57% of college students and earn more bachelors and doctoral degrees annually than men. 

I think that men should have at least an equal amount of gender specific scholarships. 

Categories
Title IX Equity Project

Discriminating against men hasn’t solved gender disparities in STEM

Famed historian Carl Sandburg once remarked, “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.” Taking this aphorism to heart, the recent Baltimore Sun editorial railed against the SAVE study that found disturbing disparities in sex-specific scholarships in Maryland and across the country (“Women in STEM: The pendulum hasn’t swung nearly far enough,” Sept. 3).
If the Sun editorial had opted to argue the facts, it would have highlighted that Johns Hopkins University now offers zero scholarships designated for men, compared to five scholarships for women. At the Community College at Baltimore County, the shortfall is even worse — two scholarship programs for male students and 16 for female students. In Maryland, our study documented a stunning 16-1 disparity that disadvantages male students who now represent only 40% of the total U.S. college population.

Or if The Sun had decided to argue the law, it would have reported on the Title IX law that bans sex discriminatory programs. The law does allow for STEM scholarship programs exclusive to women, but only if the university provides off-setting scholarships for male students.

But lacking any plausible argument based on facts or on the law, the Sun editorial resorted to one-sided sarcasm and ridicule. The Sun readership surely expects better.

Everett Bartlett, Rockville

Source: https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-women-stem-letter-20190909-emlxvvq42zcg5lkamxsm4knogm-story.html

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Investigations Trauma Informed

‘Trauma-Informed’ Bulletin Is Replete with Misrepresentations and Mistakes: CPI Report

‘Trauma-Informed’ Bulletin Is Replete with Misrepresentations and Mistakes: CPI Report

WASHINGTON / September 3, 2019 – A new Center for Prosecutor Integrity report documents factual errors and faulty conclusions contained in a 2019 bulletin published by End Violence Against Women International. Titled, “Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims,” the EVAWI bulletin purports to summarize the research on the neurobiology of trauma and provide recommendations for law enforcement personnel who investigate allegations of sexual assault.

The new CPI report was researched and written by behavioral neuroscientists Sujeeta Bhatt, PhD and Susan Brandon, PhD.

“Trauma-informed” proponents claim that persons who experience sexual assault are unable to accurately recall the incident, and that inconsistencies in their accounts should be taken as proof that the assault occurred. But citing numerous studies, Bhatt and Brandon reject this theory, concluding, “The impacts of trauma on memories and recall are widely variable. The stress accompanying and resulting from trauma may produce strong memories, impair memories, have no effect on memories, or increase the possibility of false memories.”

Bhatt and Brandon argue that criminal investigators do not need to use special interview methods with purported trauma victims: “Examination of studies across these domains did not reveal any evidence to support the notion that victims of potentially traumatic events require interview methods that are different from those that have been shown to be most effective for accounts of events that are presumably not traumatic.”

Their critique is more fundamental, saying an “undue emphasis on brain science increases the likelihood of hindering an investigation” because it can promote confirmation bias and undue stereotypes. The new CPI report is available online (1).

Separately, the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) recently published a Position Paper on “Trauma-Informed Training and Neurobiology of Trauma” that sharply criticizes the assumptions, precepts, and methods of trauma-informed advocates (2).

Citations:

  1. http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Review-of-Neurobiology-of-Trauma-9.1.2019.docx
  2. https://cdn.atixa.org/website-media/atixa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20123741/2019-ATIXA-Trauma-Position-Statement-Final-Version.pdf

Press release is posted here: http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/pr/trauma-informed-bulletin-is-replete-with-misrepresentations-and-mistakes-cpi-report/

Categories
Domestic Violence False Allegations

Do False Allegations Represent a Form of Domestic Violence? A Delaware Judge Said ‘Yes.’

Ten years ago my marriage began to dissolve. My ex-wife soon discovered the “magic bullet” that would assure custody of our children. Her determination to “win at all costs” came very close to destroying my life.

From 2009 to 2012, I was subjected to five protection orders and nine arrests, resulting in a total of 21 criminal charges. Each and every one of those criminal charges eventually would be expunged from my record.

This onslaught of false accusations resulted in reliance on public transportation, homelessness, a Court-ordered GPS ankle bracelet, parental alienation, and incarceration. As a “victim” of domestic violence, she was entitled to receive free legal representation, rental assistance, and free furniture – all compliments of programs funded by the Violence Against Women Act. As a result, she was able to acquire de facto control over the course of the divorce and custody proceedings.

That wasn’t enough.

She then decided it was time for the Grand Finale, the proverbial “kill shot.” She scrawled these words on her body: “Bitch, I will kill you.” She added my initials, as if I were signing off on a calling card. She then used a sharp device to inflict scratch marks on her body.

She then drove to a side road, stripped to her underwear, and lay on the side of the road feigning a horrific attack. When the police and paramedics arrived, she told them that I and an accomplice had forced her off the road, beaten her, and attempted to rape her. An all-points-bulletin was issued to track me down, the evil man who had horrendously attacked his ex-wife.

But unbeknownst to her, the court had ordered me to wear a GPS ankle bracelet. The police soon located me at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Camden, Delaware. The officer ripped me from my vehicle, with another officer pointing his weapon at my center mass. I was handcuffed and transported to a holding cell at the Delaware State Police Troop 3.

Once detectives determined that I was nowhere in the vicinity of the staged attack, I was released. Four days later she was arrested.

She had intended for me to go away for a long time. Had I not been strapped with the GPS device, I would have been charged with horrific crimes and possibly forced to accept a “guilty” plea deal.

I subsequently filed for a Protection from Abuse (PFA) order based on the abuse that I had been subjected to from the false allegations I endured. This is the provision from the Delaware State Code tit. 10, § § 901, 1041 that defines an act of domestic violence: “engaging in a pattern of alarming or distressing conduct in a way likely to cause fear, emotional distress, or provoke a violent or disorderly response…unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, interference with custody, or coercion; or any other conduct that a reasonable person under the circumstances would find threatening or harmful.”

My experiences of being falsely accused and arrested obviously fell within this definition, and the judge determined these acts did constitute acts of domestic violence. A Protection from Abuse order was granted against my ex-wife, including a no-contact order.

To my knowledge, this PFA against my ex-wife established a precedent in the State of Delaware. I was designated a victim of domestic violence based upon the false allegations that I had been subjected to for three years.

My ex-wife was arrested on September 1, 2012 and charged with several counts of false police reports and lying to the police. This was a defining moment, the day my life would begin to change. I was finally vindicated and exonerated.

If you have gone through, or are currently going through the nightmare of false allegations, I hope you might find my experience to be a source of insight and inspiration, to know you can come out on top of this kind of rampant injustice.

 

Additional information about my experiences:

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Believe the Victim Trauma Informed

Highlights of New Special Report on the Neurobiology of Trauma

Recently the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) published a Position Paper on “Trauma-Informed Training and Neurobiology of Trauma” that sharply criticizes the assumptions, precepts, and methods of trauma-informed proponents. Now, the Center for Prosecutor Integrity has published a separate report that takes a deep-dive into the science behind trauma-informed theory, as expounded in a bulletin written by End Violence Against Women International titled, “Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims.”

Following are highlights from the CPI report titled, “A Review of ‘Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims:’ Are We Trading One Prejudice for Another?“, researched and written by behavioral neuroscientists Sujeeta Bhatt, PhD and Susan Brandon, PhD. A large part of their review, which contains 250 citations from the scientific literature, documents the “Over-Simplification and Errors in Descriptions of Brain Processes” of the EVAWI report:

  • “The impacts of trauma on memories and recall are widely variable. The stress accompanying and resulting from trauma may produce strong memories (McGaugh, 2000; McGaugh and Roozendaal, 2002), impair memories (Salehi, Cordero, and Sandi, 2010), have no effect on memories (Shermohammed, Davidow, Somerville, and Murty, 2019), or increase the possibility of false memories.” (p. 5)
  • “The  [EVAWI] authors describe one of the roles of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as being to integrate “memory data into narrative ‘stories’ (p. 9);” however, recent research shows that the neural networks involved in narrative formation are currently unknown.” (p. 5)
  • “The description of ‘attachment circuitry,’ defined as that “which allows us to connect emotionally with other human beings,”  does not appear to be based on current findings.” (p. 6)
  • “The authors incorrectly name and describe “habitual behaviors” demonstrated by sexual assault victims.” (p. 7)

Bhatt and Brandon caution that an “undue emphasis on brain science increases the likelihood of hindering an investigation”  because it can promote confirmation bias and undue stereotypes, and create a false information effect (pp. 7-9) More fundamentally, the authors argue that criminal investigators do not need to use special interview methods with purported trauma victims:

“Examination of studies across these domains did not reveal any evidence to support the notion that victims of potentially traumatic events require interview methods that are different from those that have been shown to be most effective for accounts of events that are presumably not traumatic. In fact, one of the most robust – and most studied – methods of interviewing victims and witnesses, the Cognitive Interview, was constructed specifically for such interviews, as part of a request to the academic and scientific community by the U.S. Department of Justice to construct an interview protocol that was different from the accusatorial protocols common to American police departments (Kelly and Meissner, 2015; Meissner, et al., 2014). Previous reviews of interview protocols purported to be especially useful to trauma victims (e.g., the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview; Meissner, 2014) also have failed to support the assertion that memory processes (encoding, consolidation, or recall) are so unique in instances of trauma that special protocols are necessary or even useful.” (p. 9)

Bhatt and Brandon conclude their analysis with this stunning critique:

“Unfortunately, the neurobiology of trauma information provided in the Wilson et al. (2019) bulletin does not contribute in any meaningful way to justify the need for trauma-informed interviewing methods….research has indicated that resilience, use of psychopharmacologic substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol), and frequency and type of trauma all affect the subjective experience of trauma, however, none of these mitigating factors are described in the Wilson et al. (2019) bulletin.

“The meaning of our current understanding of the brain, as described above, for investigations of assault is difficult to ascertain because the impacts of traumatic experiences on memories and recall are variable, as noted. This means that an investigator who makes assumptions about the status of an alleged victim risks biasing the investigation in ways that increase the likelihood that either the innocent will be found guilty or the guilty will go free.

“In fact, assertions about brain processes in instances of trauma run the risk of leading an investigator to assume that he or she knows how the case should proceed, what the victim feels, or what should happen with respect to the suspect.” (p. 10)

In short, “Over-generalizations and assertions in the bulletin that cannot be supported by current science make some of these descriptions problematic for the intended audience(s)” (p. 5), and “As written, the bulletin does not provide sufficient evidence to support conclusions reached on the basis of the anecdotes” (p. 3).

Categories
Uncategorized

Study finds more than half of colleges ‘facially violate’ Title IX with women-only scholarships

Arizona has more scholarships for women than 36 states combined have for men

 

Men who want more scholarship money might try a novel tactic: Identify themselves as women.

A review of more than 200 American colleges and universities reveals that they favor women over men by a wide margin in sex-specific scholarships.

The most stark disparities are found at the University of Phoenix (106 female scholarships to 2 male), Auburn University (67 to 1) and Oregon State (51 to 5).

The actual disparities could be higher: The study by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, best known for defending students accused of sexual misconduct, only covered 36 states.

Erin Buzuvis, a Title IX expert and law professor at Western New England University, recently told the Los Angeles Times that sex-specific programs should be reviewed as “segregation projects” that may promote stereotypes.

But she also wants to increase the number of men in female-heavy fields such as nursing and K-12 education.

Buzuvis told The College Fix in an email that she doesn’t “have any examples” of academic programs that are mainly geared toward male students, despite spending her academic career studying sex-based discrimination and blogging on Title IX.

Another law professor told The Fix that students excluded from scholarships because of their sex should consider suing, citing the plain language of Title IX itself.

Women get $641 more at Kent State

The top three states for female-only scholarships among the 36 reviewed by SAVE: Arizona (161), California (117) and Florida (112). The male-only numbers: 3, 4 and 7.

Five of the next seven are reliably red states: Oregon (93), Utah (90), Alabama (87), Indiana and Wyoming (86 each), Wisconsin (77) and Texas (73). The only one of those with double-digit male scholarships was Texas.

Arizona has more women-only scholarships than the 36 states combined have for men, according to the tally, which is based on SAVE’s review of college websites.

Male students thinking of applying to Kent State University in Ohio can quantify the difference in scholarship money.

SAVE said the public university’s associate counsel told the group this month that it offers 11 scholarships for women and two for men. The average women-only scholarship in the prior academic year was $2,208, compared to $1,567 for the average men-only scholarship.

This was a direct violation of Title IX’s implementing regulations, according to SAVE, which limit sex-restricted financial assistance to those forms whose “overall effect” does not discriminate on the basis of sex.

The study found “widespread discriminatory practices” against men: 57 percent of reviewed colleges “facially violate” Title IX with their array of scholarships (a difference of five or more between the sexes), while 27 percent are “borderline” (2-4) and 16 are “non-discriminatory” (0-1).

Female professor files complaint to protest unfair treatment of men

It’s not just scholarships that overwhelmingly favor women. SAVE said more than two dozen schools are already under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for limiting programs to women, such as women-only engineering, science and technology programs.

They include Brown, Yale and Princeton, plus several prominent public universities, including UCLA, the University of California-Berkeley and University of Michigan.

UCLA can thank one of its female professors for its federal investigation.

She told the Los Angeles Times that she filed a Title IX complaint because she objected to the gender-exclusive nature of two workshops hosted by the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The feds told her it was investigating the workshops, which received federal funds.

Fliers for the January workshop on “Women in Mathematics and Public Policy” were frank: “only women will be invited to participate,” according to the Times. A flier for the “Collaborative Workshop for Women in Mathematical Biology,” hosted this June, only welcomed female grad students, PhDs, and researchers.

The female professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she was motivated to complain by increasing favoritism toward women in the sciences and resulting disillusionment among male students.

MORE: Schools offering woman-only scholarships may be in violation of Title IX

A UCLA spokesperson told the Times that it “did not exclude men from participating in the two workshops despite the focus on women,” but did not specify whether any males attended the events. It is also unclear if any transgender women attended either workshop.

Regulatory complaints about the exclusion of men have gotten results in the past few years.

Most recently, Clemson University opened its female-only programs to everyone to end a federal investigation. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan-Flint, helped kick off the trend three years ago with a successful complaint against the University of Michigan’s 91-year-old women-only lounge.

Perry has since filed gender discrimination complaints against against more than 50 institutions, including the University of California-Davis for its STEM programs for middle and high school girls, according to the Times.

Last week he gave an update of his efforts on his American Enterprise Institute blog, after Clemson revised its programs.

“Given the fact that most universities have large and growing diversity staffs (150 at Yale, nearly 100 at Michigan),” he wrote, it’s disappointing that “external complainants like myself” have to file complaints against sex-discrimination practices. This “really should be done internally by universities’ own Title IX and diversity offices.”

‘We cannot have Female Economics 101 and Male Economics 101’

John Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor who has fought for “potty parity” for women in public restrooms, goes even further than his peer Erin Buzuvis at Western New England University.

Regardless of the initial motivation for female-only opportunities in the academy – to reverse gender inequity, “male privilege” and a pattern of higher male enrollment in STEM fields – the practice is not legal, he said in an email.

While male-only opportunities are vastly disproportionate to those for women on campus, the imbalance is less relevant than the sheer separation of educational opportunity by sex, according to Banzhaf.

Title IX language provides that students cannot “be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination” in federally funded education “on the basis of sex.”

Banzhaf concludes that the “words certainly suggest that any person excluded from a program solely because of gender would have a legal cause of action, even if offered a program arguably ‘equivalent.’”

This is the gender equivalent of the Supreme Court’s rejection of “separate but equal” facilities by race in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Without considering Title IX regulatory exceptions for athletic competition and facilities where students disrobe, even equal footing for sex-restricted programs would violate the law under this theory.

Broadly speaking, “we cannot have Female Economics 101 and Male Economics 101 because we can teach both genders in one class,” Banzhaf wrote.

MORE: 92% of sex-specific scholarships are for women

MORE: Did Tulane agree to ‘stop discriminating against men’ to satisfy OCR?

Categories
Title IX

Women-Only STEM Programs Target the Gender Gap. Now the Education Dept. Is Investigating Them for Bias.

By Steven Johnson  
AUGUST 22, 2019    

Women have long been underrepresented across science, technology, engineering, and math majors, leading colleges to start hundreds of programs — scholarships, summer camps, and societies — to draw them in.

But in recent years, a handful of activists have complained that those programs, and gender-specific programs more broadly, discriminate against men. And they’ve grabbed the attention of the U.S. Department of Education.

The department has started more than 24 investigations of colleges, including the Universities of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles, Yale University, and many others, the Los Angeles Times reported this week, following complaints that their single-sex programs and scholarships discriminate against men.

“They enforce any kind of discrimination against women, but they allow discrimination against men, in violation of Title IX’s clear prohibition of sex discrimination.”

Women earn less than a third of all degrees in STEM, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, and remain underrepresented in many of the fields after graduation.

Part of the movement against the programs originated with Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan at Flint. He has documented much of his fight against what he calls “gender apartheid” in online posts at the American Enterprise Institute.

Perry said he began filing complaints with civil-rights offices in 2016, when he noticed that Michigan State University had a women-only lounge. The university shut it down and reopened it to all genders (a move it said was already planned following other complaints from men, and concerns about welcoming transgender students).

Perry believes he is responsible for many of the Education Department’s outstanding investigations. His work has inspired Kursat C. Pekgoz, a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Southern California, to file complaints of his own. (Pekgoz had been the subject of a Title IX sexual-harassment investigation, but has denied the accusations and said the investigation was unrelated to his complaints.)

Perry, as well as the Maryland-based organization Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, argues that single-sex programs violate Title IX, which bars institutions that receive federal funds from discriminating based on gender. In a report released this week, the organization said that 57 percent of the more than 200 colleges it studied offer gender-specific scholarships in a way that is “facially discriminatory.”

“They enforce any kind of discrimination against women, but they allow discrimination against men, in violation of Title IX’s clear prohibition of sex discrimination,” Perry said.

An Education Department spokesman confirmed that the Office for Civil Rights is investigating colleges including Princeton, Rice, and Yale Universities, and the University of Southern California, for possible discrimination against males on the basis of sex, and declined to provide further details because the investigations are active.

Distorting Title IX

Experts and advocates have argued that pressuring these programs into closure would flout the Education Department’s own regulations and distort the purpose of Title IX protections. Department regulations allow for affirmative-action programs “to overcome the effects of conditions which resulted in limited participation” in the past.

The American Association of University Women has pointed out the need for Title IX protections in many areas, including STEM fields, where women remain underrepresented.

Advocates for the programs also say there are real consequences for dropping them.

“In states where affirmative-action bans have been implemented for race-conscious admissions, we’ve seen enrollment for people of color drop,” Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, director of educational equity at the National Women’s Law Center, told NBC News. “And so we’re really concerned that doing away with gender-inclusive programs would see the same thing for women across the board.” (The university women’s group and the women’s law center did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.)

When it comes to encouraging women to pursue STEM fields, the research is clearer in some areas than in others, said Shulamit B. Khan, a faculty member at Boston University who studies women and STEM.

Literature shows that having a role model who is knowledgeable in science or math, for instance, makes a young woman more likely to pursue those fields, Khan said. Data on single-sex programs are less clear. But she said they serve a valuable role in exposing women to fields they may not otherwise see themselves in.

“If your goal is to get more women in STEM, if you crack down on the programs, yes, you will harm it,” Khan said. “If they only have mixed-gender programs, it will probably end up with fewer women going into STEM.”

Source: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Women-Only-STEM-Programs/246996