Ask the average person on the street what they know about Title IX and s/he will likely answer with, "Something to do with college athletics." For years, institutions with student athlete programs have worked hard to comply with Title IX as it applies to NCAA standards, ensuring that men and women have "equal" opportunity in sports. This has never meant that women must be allowed to play on the men's football team, but it has meant that if men can have a football team, women can have a volleyball team.
In 2002, the University of Colorado at Boulder's world was rocked when a student sued the institution for failing to handle her allegation of sexual misconduct correctly. Her case named several football players as the perpetrators. This case essentially tied Title IX to sexual misconduct and sexual harassment in a real way for the first time ever--though it still involved athletics.
Anecdotaly, most institutions thought, "This will never happen to us", so the resolution that came about by the CU Boulder lawsuit was headline news, but did not necessarily impact the way that institutions did business around the Title IX issue. Departments of Athletics had their fingers on the pulse of how to handle athletes who perpetrate sexual assault, but the institutions in a macro sense (aside from CU Boulder) were largely still unaware of what the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) had in store. Unfortunately, OCR had not really communicated what they wanted institutions to do around the issue.
Eastern Michigan and Notre Dame Colleges were slapped with investigations by OCR which resulted in fines mounting into the tens of thousands of dollars. Suddenly, the bottom line was affected and institutions were informally put not notice to get their act together around gender equity. Gender equity included timely resolution to sexual misconduct and sexual harassment cases, even when athletics were not involved. To clarify further, Vice President Biden released the Dear Colleague Letter in April of 2011. This document finally clarified what is expected both from an athletics perspective and from a student conduct perspective. The message? Title IX is not just about athletics and institutions need to hear that loud and clear.
So, we finally have arrived at a point where our institutions have clear direction on how to comply with federal law...so why aren't we doing it? A partnership of well known higher education attorneys have found a niche in training institutional staff on how to comply with the mandates placed upon us. One of those attorneys have even created a professional organization, ATIXA, for those in charge of Title IX on their campuses. It has never been easier to get on board with the OCR, yet many institutions are not working toward compliance. What is it going to take in order for the industry of higher education to comply with Federal laws?
Jill, I think that what it will take is a lengthening list of schools who are investigated by OCR. Since they are tending to do random audits these days, I think that will happen. However the decades (perhaps centuries? since women were allowed to attend college?)of history of botched processes and further emotional damage to victims is going to take a while to turn around.
ReplyDeleteWhen you and I were at that Title IX investigation training in Columbus, we talked about how shocked we were that in a room full of the people who do the investigations of their respective campuses' sexual misconduct cases, there were so many inappropriate victim-blaming lines of questioning. That experience, more than anything else tells me that any change in sexual misconduct investigations is going to take a long time.
But, I am excited to be a part of the changing culture!