Category: Title IX

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

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 23, 2019

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

Discrimination Title IX Title IX Equity Project

PR: Federal Office for Civil Rights Launches Investigations of Title IX Discrimination Complaints by Male Students

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 9, 2019

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Federal Office for Civil Rights Launches Investigations of Title IX Discrimination Complaints by Male Students

WASHINGTON / July 9, 2019 – Following hundreds of lawsuits by male students alleging disparate and unfair treatment by institutions of higher education (1), the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has begun to open investigations into some of these cases. The OCR is known to be conducting 24 investigations at universities in the following states: CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, IN, MA, MI, NC, NJ, RI, SC, TN TX, and WI. The cases have been opened by the OCR Regional Offices located in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, District of Columbia, New York, and San Francisco (2).

The most common complaint involves allegations of denial of benefits. One of these investigations is targeting the University of Michigan, which sponsors 11 scholarships, support groups, and medical treatment programs that exclude male students, in direct violation of Title IX sex-discrimination mandates (3).

A smaller number of complaints involves due process infractions. Two weeks ago, for example, it was announced that the OCR opened an investigation against Northwestern University for failing to provide due process protections for two men accused of sexual misconduct. One student accused the university of engaging in the sex-biased practice of “believe the victim.” (4)

The OCR already has closed investigations that found in favor of male students at Wesley College, Delaware, and Tulane University. In August 2018, OCR opened an investigation of Tulane’s six scholarships reserved for women. Four months later, Tulane entered into a resolution agreement with the OCR, agreeing to ensure that financial assistance is fairly distributed to both male and female students (5).

A recent analysis of scholarships at 115 of the nation’s largest universities revealed widespread discriminatory policies. Among 1,161 sex-specific scholarships, 91.6% were reserved for female students, with only 8.4% designated for male students (6).

Title IX is the federal law designed to prevent sex-based discrimination in educational institutions that received federal financial assistance. Information on how to file an OCR complaint is available on the SAVE website (7).

Citations:

The SAVE Title IX Equity Project is working to assure that the Title IX law is fairly and consistently applied and enforced: www.saveservices.org/equity

Title IX Title IX Equity Project

PR: Widespread Sex Discrimination Found in College Scholarship Programs

Post author By saveadmin
Post date May 18, 2019

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Widespread Sex Discrimination Found in College Scholarship Programs

WASHINGTON / May 20, 2019 – An analysis of sex-specific scholarships at 115 of the nation’s largest universities reveals widespread sex discrimination policies. Among 1,161 sex-specific scholarships, 91.6% were reserved for female students, with only 8.4% designated for male students.

Such sex-specific scholarships violate requirements of federal Title IX regulations, which prohibit scholarships that “On the basis of sex, provide different amounts or types of such assistance, limit eligibility for such assistance which is of any particular type or source, apply different criteria, or otherwise discriminate.” (34 CFR 106.37(a)(1))

The analysis was conducted on colleges in 24 states across the nation: : AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, and WY.

The disparities were greatest in three states: Alabama (Male-female scholarship ratio: 2 to 81), Florida (Male-female ratio: 3 to 70), and Utah (Male-female ratio: 2 to 86). The only state where sex-specific disparities approached parity was South Carolina, with 12 scholarship programs designated for men and 16 programs for women. Full details are available on the Title IX Equity Project website (1).

SAVE has begun to contact these colleges about their discriminatory policies, urging them to come into compliance with Title IX requirements. When colleges decline to promptly remedy their discriminatory policies, complaints are forwarded to the federal Office for Civil Rights. An OCR Title IX investigation costs colleges $193,750, on average (2).

Last year the OCR reached a Resolution Agreement with Tulane University to correct eight discriminatory programs such as its Women-to-Women Mentoring program (3). Currently, the Office for Civil Rights is investigating complaints of female-specific programs at the following universities: Brown (Complaint No. 01-19-2053), Clemson (Complaint No. 11-19-2081), Michigan (Docket No. 15-18-2272), Rutgers (Case No. 02-19-2068), and Wayne State (Docket No. 15-18-2312).

Currently, 43.7% of college students are male (4), which means there are 129 women enrolled in college for every 100 men. For African Americans, the degree gap is much larger: Black women earned 178.2 bachelor’s degrees in 2017 for every 100 degrees earned by Black men. Digest of Education Statistics, Tables 322.40 and 322.50.

Such disparities are incompatible with long-held aspirations for gender equality.

Citations:

Title IX Uncategorized

Trump Administration Rollbacks Protect, Rather than Endanger, Civil Rights

Post author By saveadmin
Post date November 27, 2018

The Congressionally-appointed U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, often labeled a “watchdog” group, has raised concerns about Secretary Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education and its enforcement of civil rights statues. But in reality, DeVos’ department is returning to long-held interpretations of civil rights guarantees such as Title IX and racial equity in school discipline, after President Obama’s administration pushed them far beyond their boundaries. Using his infamous “pen and phone,” President Obama often pushed the boundaries of statutory interpretation, moving beyond language designed to protect the equal rights of women and racial minorities to advance a far-left agenda that has had serious negative consequences on the ground.

Title IX guidance from the Obama administration has spurred the spread of kangaroo court-style sexual misconduct “trials” in universities. Just last month, a freshman at UC Davis spent months of his life and $12,000 defending himself in a Title IX court for a make-out session that was clearly not only consensual, but mutual. An African-American student is suing Brown University for discrimination after the university barred him from campus in which a girl “bit, choked, and pinned him,” but later filed a Title IX claim. The Obama guidelines produced a system so absurd that the roles of victim and perpetrator in a drunken hookup can be assigned by the order in which students report the incident.

Americans recently watched these reputation-destroying new norms metastasize onto the political scene in the Kavanaugh hearings, and poll results indicate they did not like what they saw. A large, bipartisan majority of 75 percent disagreed with the way the accusations against then-Judge Kavanaugh were handled by the Democrats, and almost 70 percent agree that false accusations are some type of problem in the workplace, directly contradicting the “believe all women” slogan of campus-style feminism.

Furthermore, having the opportunity to observe what was for all intents and purposes an Obama administration-endorsed Title IX “trial” play out on the national stage may have done long-term damage to professional and personal relationships between the sexes. In a new survey, 40 percent of men would rather be falsely accused of murder than sexual assault, compared with just 22 percent who preferred the latter, almost certainly because almost 60 percent of all respondents, men and women, said that men accused of sexual misconduct do not have the benefit of being presumed innocent absent evidence.

Are these the “civil rights” the U.S. Commission is concerned DeVos is not enforcing sufficiently? If so, Americans are indicating by wide margins that they would prefer the Department of Education focus on bringing to justice violators of the actual rights that Title IX is intended to protect, rather than engaging in witch hunts that upend other important rights-protecting norms like the presumption of innocence and cross-examination of accusers.

Likewise, investigations into school districts for racial disparities in discipline rates has produced not just bad policy, but arguably tragedy.

While specific incidents of suspected racial bias in public schools should absolutely be investigated, once again, the Obama Department of Education issued overly-broad guidance that strongly incentivized schools to move away from traditional discipline practices. The result in many districts has been that students who repeatedly engage in violent behavior have been slipping through the cracks. Most famously, the Parkland school shooter had no criminal record despite multiple potentially criminal behavioral incidents, due to the reluctance of the district to bring formal disciplinary charges or involve law enforcement. Those same Parkland policies were praised and pushed by the previous administration, with dubious statutory authority, in the name of “civil rights.”

Civil rights statutes are meant to ensure that students of color have the same opportunities to receive a public education as white students, not to micromanage the on-the-ground discipline decisions of teachers and incentivize districts to accept lax, sometimes dangerous, discipline standards. When the Trump administration undoes some of these attempts to push social policy well beyond the boundaries of civil rights law, it is not threatening rights in this country, but ensuring that federal law is enforced properly.

Two Commission on Civil Rights appointees voted against the politicized resolution condemning DeVos, and some speakers highlightedthe normalcy of the Department’s pushback against overbroad interpretations. “Conservatives, including conservative civil rights lawyers, tend to feel bound by statutory and constitutional text. As such, advocacy groups and others that want, in the absence of statutory authority, to advance issues such as transgender rights, are disappointed,” said Robert Driscoll, a former DOJ Civil Rights Division deputy assistant attorney general under the Bush administration.

DeVos’ more narrow interpretations of federal law will help to reverse some of the unintended consequences of the previous administration’s overreach. That the Department of Education is pulling back from some of the most extreme interpretations of the Obama era is not cause to worry that it is abandoning its obligation to enforce civil law statutes. Instead, DeVos’ insistence on staying within the boundaries of reasonable Congressional intent instead of legislating via administrative fiat is a welcome return to Constitutional governance.

Source: http://iwf.org/blog/2807995/Trump-Administration-Rollbacks-Protect,-Rather-than-Endanger,-Civil-Rights

Title IX

ABC Makes Patently False Claim About New Title IX Rules

Post author By saveadmin
Post date November 17, 2018

LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS/NewscomABC has badly mischaracterized Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ proposed changes to Title IX, the federal statute dealing with campus sexual misconduct.

“One of the biggest changes to the rule would be a new definition of sexual harassment,” writes ABC’s Anne Flaherty. “Under Obama, it was defined it as ‘unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.’ The new rule would define sexual harassment as unwanted sexual conduct that is ‘so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a recipient’s education program or activity.’”

So far, her description is correct. (For more on why such changes are good for students’ due process and free speech rights, read this post.) But what comes next is totally false:

That definition would be significantly more difficult to prove because the victim would have to prove the misconduct prevents them from returning to school.

Unfortunately, ABC’s mischaracterization of the standard is already being parroted by the Daily Kos. This is how fake news spreads.

If would be great if a civil-liberties-minded organization in good standing with the left could step up and explain why Title IX reform is necessary and long overdue. Unfortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union has opted to go another route.

Photo Credit: LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS/Newscom

Associate Editor Robby Soave, a 2017–2018 Novak Fellow at the Fund for American Studies, is the author of a forthcoming book about campus activism in the age of Trump.

Campus Title IX Victim-Centered Investigations

PR: SAVE Calls for Major Reforms to Campus ‘Victim-Centered’ Investigations

Post author By saveadmin
Post date January 1, 2018

Contact: Nasheia Conway

Telephone: 301-801-0608

Email: nconway@saveservices.org

Following USC ‘motherf—er’ Case, SAVE Calls for Major Reforms to Campus ‘Victim-Centered’ Investigations

WASHINGTON / January 12, 2018 – Superior Court Judge Elizabeth White recently issued a ruling regarding a sexual assault case in which she concluded the university’s investigative procedures lacked fairness and impartiality. Based on this case and similar ones at other universities, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is now calling on college administrators to end the practice of using guilt-presuming “victim-centered” investigations.

University of Southern California investigator Patrick Noonan submitted an investigative report that omitted more than 150 pages of communications between the parties. The investigator failed to interview the man’s roommate, despite the accused student’s request. Noonan also organized the numerous text messages in non-chronological order, rendering their meaning difficult to decipher.

Following a subsequent teleconference between the university officials and the accused student and his advisor, neither party hung up the line. Thereupon Noonan and the USC Title IX coordinator chatted between themselves, referring to the male student as a “motherfucker” and commenting that the accuser was “so cute and intelligent.”

The expelled student filed a lawsuit against the university. Not surprisingly, the judge concluded the accused student was a victim of a process that was not “fair, thorough, reliabl[y] neutral, and impartial.” http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/40537/

This week SAVE is releasing a new Special Report, “’Believe the Victim:’ The Transformation of Justice.” The report traces the evolution of the “victim-centered” movement over the past decade and documents its incompatibility with recognized investigative methods that are premised on objectivity, neutrality, and fairness. http://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/SAVE-Believe-the-Victim.pdf

The report concludes, “Victim advocates’ efforts to assure serious consideration and respectful treatment for complainants are commendable. But demanding that investigators and adjudicators reflexively “believe the victim” places a priority on subjective feelings over objective evidence.”

A previous SAVE report documented how victim-centered investigations represent a liability risk for colleges and universities: http://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/Victim-Centered-Investigations-and-Liability-Risk.pdf

SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments) is working for fair and effective solutions to campus sexual assault: www.saveservices.org

Campus Press Release Sexual Assault Title IX

PR: SAVE Urges Massachusetts Lawmakers to End Campus Rape Tribunals

Post author By saveadmin
Post date April 10, 2017

Contact: Chris Perry

Telephone: 301-801-0608

Email: cperry@saveservices.org

SAVE Urges Massachusetts Lawmakers to End Campus Rape Tribunals

WASHINGTON / April 10, 2017 – The current system of campus-based adjudications for sexual assault has turned out to be inefficient, unfair, and in some cases harmful, according to a report released by the non-profit group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments. The report, “Six-Year Experiment in Campus Jurisprudence Fails to Make the Grade,” was issued on the six-year anniversary of the controversial “Dear Colleague Letter” on sexual violence, first issued by the Department of Education on April 4, 2011.

The “Dear Colleague Letter” has not led to respectful, fair, and prompt resolutions. Rather, complaints to the Office for Civil Rights and federal lawsuits that identify flawed campus procedures increased six-fold after the Department of Education letter was released.

The SAVE report identifies numerous cases in which identified victims of sexual assault claimed their colleges failed to appropriately investigate, adjudicate, and sanction their complaints. In one case, a female student charged that campus authorities at Harvard University showed “deliberate indifference” to her sexual assault claim. Her claim focused not only on the school’s initial response, but also on the University’s failure to respond “to her multiple reports that she was subjected to continuous, retaliatory harassment by [John] Doe and his friends.”

Numerous accused students have filed federal lawsuits as well. In one recent case, a judge criticized Brandeis University for “appear[ing] to have substantially impaired, if not eliminated, an accused student’s right to a fair and impartial process.” Among the 51 known lawsuits filed by accused students since 2012, a majority of the rulings from federal judges have been decided at least partly in favor of the expelled student.

The Massachusetts legislature is currently considering S.706 and H.632 which would codify many provisions of the “Dear Colleague Letter.” Instead, SAVE urges the enactment of the Campus Equality, Fairness, and Transparency Act. CEFTA aims to protect all students by encouraging the referral of campus rape cases to law enforcement officials and providing due process: http://www.saveservices.org/sexual-assault/cefta/.

Identified victims and accused students share a common, over-riding interest in assuring the investigative and adjudicatory process is conducted in a respectful, prompt, and fair manner in order to reach reliable outcomes.

The SAVE report can be viewed here: http://www.saveservices.org/reports/.

SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments) is working for fair and effective solutions to campus sexual assault: www.saveservices.org