Title IX

Welcome to NWLC’s first weekly roundup for April. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, so I thought I’d kick things off by sharing a few ideas of how you can support victim of sexual assault and help raise awareness during the month. Also this week: our latest infographic, some lady athletes making history, and more.

All throughout April, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center will be providing resources and ways to get involved with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, or SAAM for short. The 2012 SAAM Day of Action passed us already (it was this past Tuesday, April 3), but you can see what other current campaigns are in the works here, including Tweet About It! Tuesdays every Tuesday in April at 2pm ET. SAAM activists from around the country will be using the hashtag #Tweetaboutit for these weekly chats, in addition to #SAAM and #SAAM2012.

You can also check out Take Back The Night’s calendar to see if there will be a TBTN event in your community in the coming weeks.

Yesterday we published a new infographic detailing what tax breaks for millionaires cost. The

 average tax cut per millionaire in 2012 – $143,000 – could help support a number of programs, like Head Start or Pell Grants. Want to learn more? Check out the graphic – it opens in full size if you click on it.

Read more »

It is fitting that 40 years after the passage of Title IX – the law that barred sex discrimination in education, including athletics – last night the Baylor Lady Bears set an NCAA record by being the first men’s or women’s basketball team to end their season with a perfect 40-0 record.

The Lady Bears bested the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 80-61 to win the NCAA Division I national championship.

Baylor was led to the championship by their coach, Kim Mulkey, who according to the New York Times, “represents the sporting possibilities available to women since the passage 40 years ago of the gender-equity legislation known as Title IX: scholarships, championships, Olympic gold medals, financial security and the self-assurance to be forceful and brash and daring without being apologetic.”

Growing up, Mulkey played little league baseball because there was no softball team available for young women. She made the regional all-star team, but was later kept from playing in the championship tournament because she was a girl. Her family initiated a Title IX lawsuit, but halted the legal action because Kim decided she did not want her team to miss out because of the commissioner’s biased decision. Read more »

Earlier this week, the federal district court for the District of Columbia dismissed a case brought by the American Sports Council against the U.S. Department of Education, in which ASC tried to stop the Department from applying to high schools Title IX’s three-part test for determining whether schools are providing males and females with equal opportunities to play sports. Of course, the law has always applied to high schools; this was merely the latest attempt to weaken Title IX’s application to sports.

You would think that everyone would be in favor of treating our sons and daughters equally, but ASC and similar groups have long argued that the law hurts males by requiring schools to cut their opportunities in order to provide girls and women with opportunities that they don’t really want, because they are inherently less interested in playing sports. Fortunately, the federal courts of appeals have unanimously rejected such arguments, which are premised on the very stereotypes that Title IX was enacted to combat. Read more »

On Monday, the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Justice (DOJ), six student plaintiffs, and the Anoka-Hennepin School District just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, filed a landmark consent decree that resolved the plaintiffs’ claims that middle and high schools in the district failed to address pervasive bullying and harassment of students who failed to conform to gender stereotypes. The students alleged violations of a number of laws, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination — including sex-based harassment — in schools that receive federal funding.

In the Anoka-Hennepin School District, students who were or were perceived to be LGBT endured near-daily sex-based harassment, in some cases for years on end. They were subjected to awful slurs, were told by their peers that they were “sinners,” would go to hell, and should kill themselves. Tragically, some student in the district did take their lives as a result of the bullying and harassment. (For further details of harassment targeted at LGBT teens in the district, see the recent Rolling Stone article.)

The consent decree, if approved by the district court, will put in place many essential protections against sex-based harassment, including requirements that the district hire an expert consultant to review its policies and procedures, develop a comprehensive plan to prevent and addressed student-on-student sex-based harassment, provide improved training for both staff and students, and submit annual compliance reports to the DOJ and ED for five years. Read more »

My mother got pregnant when she was seventeen. Luckily, she was able to nab her diploma before she started showing. Otherwise, in order to be excused from PE requirements, the gym coach at her school forced pregnant students to stand in front of the class and publicly flagellate themselves. My mother saw it happen to a schoolmate and says she will never forget the girls face, frozen with fear and humiliation. Years later, I had the same gym coach. Every time I looked at her, all I could think about was what kind of smallness had to exist inside of a person to do that to another human being, to a child no less? Whenever she blew her omnipresent whistle, I ran as far as I could away from her.

Man, I thought, I’m so glad that was then and this is . . . oh my god this practice is still going on! Yesterday, a middle school student named Shantelle sued her school after staff members forced her to stand up at an assembly and announce to the entire student body that she was pregnant. Until that moment, Shantelle had not revealed to anyone at school (other than her sister) that she was pregnant.

This wasn’t the first time the school had tried to humiliate Shantelle. Earlier, when school officials found out Shantelle was pregnant, they kicked her out of school. The ACLU of New Mexico wrote to the school to let them know that schools are not allowed to discriminate against students because they are pregnant. The school relented and re-enrolled Shantelle after a four-day suspension. Read more »

Last week the University of California at Davis (UCD) settled a case with three women wrestlers and agreed to pay $1.35 million. The settlement came after a federal judge found that the University violated Title IX by not providing female students with equal athletic participation opportunities. 

The women, Arezou Mansourian, Christine Ng, and Lauren Mancusco, were all competitive high school wrestlers. They were recruited by UCD and went to school there because it touted a strong women’s wrestling program. But shortly after they enrolled, UCD changed the program.

The women wrestlers were no longer allowed to compete against other females, and were forced to compete with men in order to remain on the team.

The three wrestlers brought suit under Title IX, the law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education. Read more »

Today is our last weekly roundup for February, which has been an interesting month. In today’s roundup, I’ve got an updates on the two reproductive rights bills in Virginia I told you about last week, some info on an exciting new video series we’re launching, good news (!) from Maryland, new Civil Rights museums, the outcome of the tragic Yeardley Love murder case, and a segment from last week’s Saturday Night Live. Read more »

The whistle just blew. It’s halftime. 

You’re losing. Your coach is telling the team we’ve made progress since the beginning of the season, but we still have a long way to go. You think to yourself, “What is progress? We’re down – what’s the score again?”

A 35-yearlong study on women in intercollegiate sport released the score last week, showing an unprecedented number of women’s teams leading to the highest women’s participation and employment numbers in intercollegiate athletic history.

“Some would point to this progress and say we’ve arrived,” authors R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter wrote in a 2009 Academe article. “But progress is not completion. Movement toward equity is not full equity.”

Increases in athletic participation have not mirrored the percentage of women represented as coaches, athletic administrators and trainers. Despite a record-setting 200,000 intercollegiate female athletes, only 1 in 5 intercollegiate teams is coached by a female and the same number of athletic directors are female, according to report estimates. Read more »

The recent revelation that Yale quarterback and would-be Rhodes Scholar Patrick Witt was accused of sexual assault illustrates the importance of transparent and robust grievance procedures for addressing incidents of sexual violence at schools. The victim filed an informal complaint instead of participating in the school’s formal adjudicatory process for sexual harassment and assault allegations. It is perhaps unsurprising that she would choose the more informal route—even though that route, curiously, offers no possibility of disciplinary consequences for the accused—as those who come forward with allegations of sexual assault on their college campuses often find that the experience of dealing with their schools’ formal, cold, bureaucratic, and often unhelpful processes can be traumatizing. These are the types of barriers that those who experience sexual assault all too often face when they attempt to seek justice through their schools’ grievance processes.

But last spring, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance reminding schools that sexual harassment, including violence, is a form of sex discrimination that schools must take seriously and treat as a civil rights issue. The Guidance was needed to help schools, colleges, and universities more effectively prevent and respond to sexual harassment and violence on their campuses, as required by Title IX. Read more »

Hi all, and welcome to another weekly blog roundup! This week we’ve got stories about some anti-choice bills in Virginia, a new video and call to action on SNDA,  an update on Samantha Garvey, some of the perils faced by pregnant women on the job, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure decision on Planned Parenthood, and some wrap-ups on blog carnivals we participated in this week, all after the jump. Read more »