Feds dismissing civil rights complaints

May 2, 2018
DeVos OCR Office for Civil Rights Title IX
1 Comment
civil rights, DeVos, OCR, Office for Civil Rights, Title IX

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) says it gets too many complaints about discrimination, creating an “unreasonable burden” on the Office. It recently changed procedures to make it harder for people to file complaints and is now disregarding hundreds already received. It also scrapped the option to appeal decisions made by OCR in cases that it does take on. Civil rights advocates are not happy, to say the least. As the late, great Yogi Berra might say, it’s like déjà vu all over again. This isn’t the first time that OCR has tried systematically ignoring many of […]

Ten reasons to vote, for Title IX

October 11, 2016
Dunkle Knox Mink People Sandler Uncategorized
civil rights, Donald Trump, education, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Title IX, women's rights

Title IX itself isn’t on the ballot Nov. 8, but it might as well be. The gains made for sexual and gender fairness through Title IX were created by politicians, courts, and activists, and can be undone by them, too. Now that we’ve had several generations of women grow up and grow stronger under Title IX, I tend to think that we’ll never go back to the days when “normal” meant only men got to make the decisions and to define what’s fair. We’ve still got a long way to go to reach equity in so many parts of our […]

Women’s rights, minority rights inseparable

December 4, 2015
Gleaves McKindra People race Sandler video
African Americans, civil rights, education, Francelia Gleaves, Francelia McKindra, Sandler, Title IX

VIDEO: Francelia Gleaves (now McKindra) not only was one of the first people to work at length on Title IX issues in the 1970s, she was one of the few African Americans doing this work. To her, minority rights and women’s rights were inseparable, though not everyone felt that way, she says in this 2015 interview. A lot was happening on both fronts at that time. White America still was slow to adjust to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which, by the way, failed to prohibit discrimination based on sex in some of its provisions, hence the need for Title […]

Students as sexual predators: the norm?

March 11, 2015
Consent People rape Sandler sexual assault Uncategorized
civil rights, colleges, Hunting Ground, MIT, rape, Salkind, sexual assault, Title IX, universities

What do Title IX, the comedian Betsy Salkind, and the new film The Hunting Ground have in common? A historical thread that’s about to change one sorry aspect of U.S. society. Finally. I hope. The Hunting Ground opens in cities across the United States this week and offers the possibility of a fundamental cultural shift toward accepting that non-consensual sex is an assault even if it’s done by a peer, like a student with a student, and that schools must not hide, tolerate, or condone it. At least, I think that’s what the film may point toward. I plan to see […]