Still no images of boys on the brochure
Grand Valley State University opened its STEM summer camp for girls to all students in order to resolve a Title IX complaint filed by a professor at another university.
It’s the latest victory for University of Michigan-Flint economist Mark Perry, who shared the documents resolving the complaint with The College Fix. He said he has now obtained more than a dozen “favorable” outcomes – three of them at a single university – in response to his sex discrimination complaints.
The resolution agreement with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, dated Feb. 4, binds the public university in Michigan to “modify the Science,Technology & Engineering Preview Summer (STEPS) camp to ensure all of the University’s activities to the 2020 STEPS are open to all students regardless of sex.”
OCR’s Cleveland office notified GVSU’s deputy general counsel on Monday that its investigation had concluded, but specified that OCR will still monitor compliance with the agreement. It received the university’s first “monitoring report” Feb. 26.
Perry has spent the past four years targeting universities for operating programs that exclude men, from scholarships and faculty awards to various academic “camps.” Ohio State University opened several programs to men just last month to resolve another Perry complaint.
Having filed 108 federal sex discrimination complaints, Perry has noticed a pattern across 13 resulting agreements between OCR and targeted schools, he told The Fix in an email. The professor is now “confident” that OCR “is not willing to tolerate any exceptions to sex discrimination in violation of Title IX, including sex discrimination against men.”
MORE: Perry complaint prods OSU to open women-only programs to men
Now has five gender options
Perry filed the complaint against GVSU in January 2019. OCR’s resolution agreement says the university website described the middle school girls’ summer camp as “a day-camp preview of science, engineering and technology for young ladies between the 6th and 7th grades.”
The university contacted OCR after it received Perry’s complaint, sharing a July 15 memo that said the 2020 camp will have “no restriction on gender as a prerequisite for participation” and that marketing materials would be updated. OCR also confirmed that the university added “check-boxes” for male and female applicants.
But GVSU was slow to change other elements of the website, according to OCR. The agency “had concerns” in a January review “that the University’s promotional materials did not convey that the program is open to students regardless of sex.” For example, all the photos on both the website and the application brochure “depicted female campers.”
Now the website makes clear that the camp accepts all student applicants. As a result, the word “Girls” has been stripped from the program name, and the new website for the program now boasts in large font “**STEPS has changed their application policy to be gender inclusive. No applications will be denied based on gender identity.**”
The 2020 brochure still has no discernible images of male students, though. A new “Gender Identity” field offers female, male, “Non-binary/third gender,” “prefer to self-describe” and “prefer not to say.”
The Fix asked the university Thursday about its legal review of the previously all-girls summer camp before it launched. Spokesperson Nate Hoekstra wrote in an email that he would “pass this along to the team who works on Title IX issues.”