Title IX’s godmother is gone. We are her legacy.

Bernice Sandler didn’t know what to say when Rosa Parks sat down next to her. It was one of the few times in her life when Sandler found herself tongue-tied. She was near the back of a crowded audience at a panel discussion in the late 1980s. Every seat was full when the elderly Parks entered. The woman next to Sandler called out, “Mrs. Parks! Mrs. Parks! Take my seat, please.” Sandler couldn’t even begin to tell Parks how much her brave and dedicated work in the civil rights movement and the anti-sexual violence movement had meant to Sandler and […]

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 […]

Men fought (and fight) for Title IX too

June 23, 2015
Macaluso People Sandler video
Carl Albert, Hunting Ground, James Vivenzio, Macaluso, Mink, Nixon, Sandler, Title IX

From 93-year-old Vincent Macaluso to young men on college campuses today, a long line of male allies to women helped bring us Title IX and are fighting to uphold its principles of fairness. (Video: The Godfather of Title IX) While we wouldn’t have this essential law without all the uppity women who pushed for it, let’s take a moment on this 43rd anniversary of President Nixon signing Title IX (June 23, 1972) to recognize its forefathers, in a week when the nation also celebrates Father’s Day. Much of the momentum leading up to Title IX came from a slew of […]

Fresno tied to Title IX over decades

February 15, 2015
Fresno Sandler sexual assault video
athletics, Fresno, Milutinovich, Sandler, sexual assault, Title IX

Video: Bernice Sandler coaches Women’s Studies students and faculty who are trying to improve policies at the California State University, Fresno, in November 2014. People all over the United States have links to Title IX. I’m enjoying seeing the fingers of this important law poke up in some unexpected places as I research its history and today’s in-the-news developments. Among them: Fresno, California, which appears often enough that it serves as an example of nearly every phase of Title IX. For example, Frederick W. Ness was president of Fresno State College just before becoming president of the Association of American Colleges and […]

Name it to change it

January 29, 2015
Mink rape Sandler Stanford video
Cynthia Brown, Mink, rape, rape culture, Sandler, sex discrimination, Stanford

(Video: Title IX expert Bernice Sandler on why words matter.) We swim in a sea of cultural assumptions. Norms surround us like the air we breathe, scarcely noticeable until we find them toxic, and then hard to explain to someone who isn’t feeling their poisonous effects. Parting the sea, cleaning the air of sexist assumptions takes time and effort, and even the cleaners may feel residual toxic effects. Women from the early history of Title IX have described to me insecurities from internalizing the sexism around them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bernice Sandler initially believed a colleague when he told […]

37 words that inspired thousands

January 13, 2015
Mink Newman People Sandler
37 words, athletics, Mink, Newman, rape, Sandler, sexual assault, sports, Sulkowicz, Title IX

Bernice Sandler wanted to be a professor. Patsy Takemoto Mink hoped to be a doctor. Meg Newman wanted to play baseball in high school. Emma Sulkowicz just wanted to feel safe on a college campus. Thirty-seven words make those dreams possible today — too late for some of these women, but possible for millions of others, and only because women fought back when the people in charge told them to go away. These battles are not over. They’re in the news every day. Those 37 words make up Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the most important legislation for U.S. […]