Category: Campus

Can Lockdown Learning Liberate Male Students?

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 5, 2020

The COVID-19 cloud hanging over North American universities may contain a ray of sunlight. It may ease what is called “the boy problem” in education—a significantly reduced number of male students and of male achievement in colleges. As bleak as isolated learning may seem to some, it may be more male friendly than many campuses.

Critics denounce off-campus learning as a lesser service being offered at full price. Certainly, the college experience can be enhanced by direct interaction with professors, other students, and organizations. But a radical left ideology dominates the university system, and it is sustained by an army of administrators who implement policies of social control, from speech codes to sexual mores. This often leads to stifled opinions, preferential treatment of some classes of student, accusations of misconduct, speech police, campus hearings with no due process, and punishment with no appeal. There can be advantages to a stripped-down version of learning without the social justice and social control that turns the benefits of interaction into cruel dangers.

An October 2018 article in the New York Times, “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators,” complained,

The ideological bent of those overseeing collegiate life is having the biggest impact on campus culture…I received a disconcerting email this year from a senior staff member in the Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach. The email was soliciting ideas…for a conference, open to all of us, titled “Our Liberation Summit.” The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people.

The conservative professor objected to the political polarization of this campus conference and the power of the administrator. Those who reject any tax-funded conference can sympathize, not because of the politics involved but because of the taxes. The fact that “those overseeing collegiate life” push their own orthodoxy is insult added to injury.

The silver lining of at-home learning: students who attend class in pajamas have little occasion to encounter social justice warrior (SJW) bureaucrats. In on-campus life, they seem to be everywhere.

In 2017, Todd J. Zywicki and Christopher Koopman of George Mason University published a study entitled “The Changing of the Guard: The Political Economy of Administrative Bloat in American Higher Education.” They found,

Universities have increased spending, but very little of that increased spending has been related to classroom instruction; rather, it is being directed toward non-classroom costs. As a result, there has been a growth in academic bureaucracies, as universities focus on hiring employees to manage or administer people, programs, and regulations. Between 2001 and 2011, these sorts of hires have increased 50% faster than the number of classroom instructors. This trend…has become ubiquitous in…American higher education. (p.2). [Data draws on WSJ article “Deans List: Hiring Spree Fattens College Bureaucracy—And Tuition.”]

Focusing on a narrow field of administrators offers a glimpse of the harm these bureaucrats inflict. Consider the impact of one branch on one student population: Title IX on male students, who have been called “the new minority” at colleges. This is particularly true of males from low-income families.

Jim Shelley, the manager of the Men’s Resource Center at Lakeland Community College in Ohio, explains one reason why; campuses feel hostile to them. They feel that college is geared toward protecting and promoting females.

“Not only are there not programs like ours [on other campuses] that are supportive of male students, but at most college campuses the attitude is that men are the problem.…I’ve had male students tell me that their first week in college they were made to feel like potential rapists.”

A great deal of attention in the last decade has been directed to “the boy problem” in education. A few examples include:

Higher Ed Live: Missing Men: Addressing the College Gender Gap
Stanford Professor Postings: Where the Guys Are: Males in Higher Education
Inside Higher Education: The Other Gender Gap
College Stats: Why Men Are Falling Behind in Higher Ed

Logically, administrators seem to be ideally placed to ensure that campuses are welcoming to and not hostile environments for males. In reality, they do the opposite. Just one example are sex specific scholarships that overwhelmingly favor female applicants—often prohibiting male ones—even though Title IX’s implementing regulation, 34 CFR 106, prohibits federally tax-supported scholarships that, “On the basis of sex, provide different amounts or types of such assistance, limit eligibility for such assistance which is of any particular type or source, apply different criteria, or otherwise discriminate.”

A broader overview reveals how badly administrators may be failing or actively harming male students. The overview involves taking universities at their word and examining the makeup of staff, such as Title IX administrators. A popular campus idea is that only another member of a specific gender or race understands the experience of that gender or race; only blacks understand the black experience, etc.

This argument is used to push for a so-called diversity of hiring that gives female students access to female counselors and mentors, for example. Again, this approach leads to preferential hiring based on gender or race—that is, quotas—which are anathema to any system of merit. Nevertheless, socially engineered quotas are normal at universities. If applied even handedly, this should result in a population of administrators that roughly mirrors the population of students. This seems especially important for Title IX administrators who are supposed to ensure non-discrimination based on sex.

What is the gender mix of the student populations? It varies from campus to campus, of course, but an October 2019 article entitled “The Degrees of Separation Between the Genders in College “ in the Washington Post renders a fair sense of it. The article states, “Fifty years ago, 58 percent of U.S. college students were men. Today, 56 percent are women, Education Department estimates show.” This is a commonly cited statistic.

Capture One would expect Title IX administrators, therefore, to be half-female and half-male, or something roughly close to this ratio. A review of the websites of the largest public university in each state, however, reveals a huge gender gap in Title iX staff. In the 51 universities, there were 168 female staffers to 48 male, or 3.5 times more females.

If this gap resulted from free market factors, then it would be an interesting and harmless anomaly that probably reflects how employment preferences differ between the genders. No solution would be required because no problem would exist. But universities are socially engineered institutions. They receive Title IX funding and other federal benefits on the specific condition of non-discrimination. If blacks constituted 44 percent of a student body while 3.5 times more whites than blacks occupied highly paid positions of authority, there would be a cry of “racism!” No one cries out for male students.

Administrators will not give up their positions easily, simply because they are highly paid and bring status. According to the 2012-13 “Administrators in Higher Education Salary Survey” by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, the average annual salary of a “Chief Executive Officer of a System” in a two-year institution was $291,132; in a four-year institution, $370,470; in a doctoral context, $431,575. By contrast, a 2015-16 report from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found the average salary of a tenured professor at a public college was $78,762. Again, this is not a hard comparison, but it renders a good general sense of the scope of the problem and why the administrators will not easily cede their authority.

Ultimately, the solution is to privatize colleges and run them as businesses in which owners make decisions, usually according to market feedback. In the absence of this and the presence of tax-funding, however, it is blatantly wrong to privilege one class of human being and discriminate against another class in employment and opportunity. It is especially hypocritical to do so within a program that allegedly champions non-discrimination.

If the lockdown of universities loosens the death grip that anti-male administrators have on college campuses, then at least one benefit will come from it. If SJW social justice bureaucrats are shown to be irrelevant, perhaps cash-strapped universities will consider a return to academia and cease to be petri dishes of social experimentation.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/can-lockdown-learning-liberate-male-students/

Campus Department of Education Title IX Trauma Informed

Why TIX and Trauma-Informed Investigations Don’t Mix

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 5, 2020

As Universities put finishing touches on their Title IX policies, SAVE is advising university counsel to assure Title IX investigations do not rely on methods that are victim-centered, where investigators are encouraged to “Start By Believing”.

When investigators start by believing the accusing party, in effect, they are disbelieving the responding party. This leaves no room for
Presumption of Innocence in campus adjudications.

These trauma-informed methods are inadvisable for four reasons:

• The Final Rule requires all Title IX administrators are trained on…how to serve impartially, including avoiding prejudgment of the facts at issue, conflicts of interest, and bias…”

• Recent judicial decisions rule against trauma-informed investigations. In a decision against Syracuse University, a federal judge noted: “Plaintiff alleges that the investigation relied on ‘trauma informed techniques’ that ‘turn unreliable evidence into its opposite,’ such that inconsistency in the alleged female victim’s account. . .becomes evidence that her testimony is truthful”.

• A lack of scientific basis noted in several peer-reviewed articles surrounds trauma-informed investigations. Journalist Emily Yoffe has described these methods as “junk science”.

• Leading Title IX Groups, such as ATIXA, FACE, and SAVE have been critical of these types of investigations, noting lack of fairness and due process for all parties. In addition, 158 professors and legal experts endorsed an Open Letter critical of the use of trauma-informed methods.

SAVE notes “trauma-informed” may be useful in the context of providing counseling and mental health services. But trauma-informed philosophy serves to bias the investigative process, rendering campus adjudications unreliable.

SAVE encourages you to contact the provost at your alma mater or local college and encourage their oversight to assure the university does not include trauma-informed investigations for their TIX proceedings.

Campus Investigations Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Trauma Informed

PR: Four Reasons Why General Counsel Should Not Allow ‘Trauma-Informed’ Investigations for Title IX Cases

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 3, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Four Reasons Why General Counsel Should Not Allow ‘Trauma-Informed’ Investigations for Title IX Cases

WASHINGTON / August 3, 2020 – With less than two weeks remaining before the effective date of the new Title IX regulation, SAVE is advising university counsel to review institutional polices to assure Title IX investigations do not rely on flawed “trauma-informed” methods. The use of such investigative approaches, sometimes referred to as “victim-centered” or “Start By Believing,” is inadvisable for four reasons:

Regulatory Requirements: “Trauma-informed” means the investigator presumes that the complainant has experienced significant physical and psychological trauma, and interprets the complainant’s statements through that lens. This presumption is inconsistent with the text of the new Title IX regulation, which reads:

“A recipient must ensure that Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any persons who facilitate an informal resolution process, receive training on….. how to serve impartially, including avoiding prejudgment of the facts at issue, conflicts of interest, and bias… recipient also must ensure that investigators receive training on issues of relevance to create an investigative report that fairly summarizes relevant evidence….Any materials used to train Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any person who facilitates an informal resolution process, must not rely on sex stereotypes and must promote impartial investigations and adjudications of formal complaints of sexual harassment.” [key words in italics] (1)

Case Law: In a growing number of lawsuits, judges have issued rulings against universities because of their use of trauma-informed investigations. In a recent judicial decision against Syracuse University, the federal judge noted: “Plaintiff alleges that the investigation relied on ‘trauma informed techniques’ that ‘turn unreliable evidence into its opposite,’ such that inconsistency in the alleged female victim’s account . . . becomes evidence that her testimony is truthful” (2).

Brooklyn College professor KC Johnson has summarized a number of these cases (3): “In a lawsuit against Penn, the court cited the university’s trauma-informed training as a key reason why the complaint survived a motion to dismiss. During the Brown university bench trial, the decisive vote in the adjudication panel testified that she ignored exculpatory text messages because of the training she had received. Ole Miss’ trauma-informed training suggested that an accuser lying could be seen as a sign of the accused student’s guilt. And at Johnson & Wales, the university was so disinclined to make public the contents of its training that it refused a request by the accused student’s lawyer to see it before the hearing.”

Lack of a Scientific Basis: Several peer-reviewed articles have discredited the scientific basis of trauma-informed investigations: Deborah Davis and Elizabeth Loftus: “Title IX and “Trauma-Focused” Investigations: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” (4); Sonja Brubacher and Martine Powell: “Best-Practice Interviewing Spans Many Contexts” (5); and Christian Meissner and Adrienne Lyles: “The summary of Training Investigators in Evidence-Based Approaches to Interviewing.” (6)

Journalist Emily Yaffe has described trauma-informed methods as “junk science.” (7) A compilation of other scientific critiques of trauma-informed is available online (8).

Criticized by Leading Title IX Groups: Several organizations have issued reports and statements that are critical of trauma-informed investigations: ATIXA: “ Trauma-Informed Training and the Neurobiology of Trauma;” (9) FACE: “Trauma-Informed Theories Disguised as Evidence”(10) SAVE: “Believe the Victim: The Transformation of Justice;” (11) In addition, 158 professors and legal experts endorsed an Open Letter that is critical of the use of trauma-informed methods (12).

A UCLA working group appointed by former California governor Jerry Brown concluded, “The use of trauma-informed approaches to evaluating evidence can lead adjudicators to overlook significant inconsistencies on the part of complainants in a manner that is incompatible with due process protections for the respondent.” (13)

“Trauma-informed” may be useful in the context of providing counseling and mental health services. But trauma-informed philosophy serves to bias the investigative process, rendering campus adjudications unreliable.

Links:

Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Due Process Fair Campus Act Investigations Title IX

To cripple the abusive campus ‘sex bureaucracy,’ rein in the Title IX coordinators

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 2, 2020

If you want to entrench a government policy, make sure someone’s job depends on enforcing it. Even if that person isn’t a true believer in the program initially, she will be by the time her first paycheck arrives – and increasingly after that. That’s certainly the case with the education system’s Title IX coordinators, who are charged with overseeing schools’ compliance with federal sex discrimination statutes and questionable regulatory dictates.

What do Title IX coordinators do? Their core job duty, at least in theory, is to monitor their institution’s compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which helps ensure that institutions receiving federal money do not tolerate sexual harassment that effectively bars the victim’s access to educational opportunity.

However, regulators’ zeal for stamping out sexual harassment has warped enforcement in ways that violate students’ free speech and due process rights. That’s all thanks to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department of Education, which under the Obama administration issued widely criticized guidance documents elaborating on – and often unreasonably expanding the interpretation of – what counts as harassment. These documents imposed new duties on regulated schools based on a serious misreading of the law, and were instituted without following the appropriate procedures for public notice and comment.

Fortunately, the Trump administration has withdrawn some of the worst guidance documents and issued binding regulations that should discourage schools from curtailing students’ fundamental rights. However, there is at least one more problematic Obama-era Title IX guidance remaining on the books. It describes, at length, the procedures that federal funding recipients must follow in employing Title IX coordinators.

The term “coordinator” appears nowhere in Title IX itself. The requirement originates from a 1975 regulation (34 C.F.R. 106.8) that told funding recipients they had to designate a responsible employee to handle Title IX compliance. The requirement prompted almost no public comment at the time, probably because it was seen as the kind of modest measure that agencies routinely take to carry out a statute, such as telling recipients what color paper they must use in correspondence with an agency.

Yet onto this slender bureaucratic reed, the Obama administration engrafted a complex regulatory regime that essentially created privately administered “sex bureaucracies” within every funding recipient’s management.

Under pressure from this guidance, many colleges and universities expanded their Title IX offices. Harvard University has by my count 58 compliance staff members. Yale University has 22. Even tiny liberal arts colleges have significant Title IX offices: Middlebury has one main Title IX coordinator and six deputies; Amherst has one coordinator and six deputies; Haverford has one and eight deputies.

As these offices have grown, staff duties have expanded to include work going beyond ensuring compliance with the law and instead promoting the “spirit” of Title IX. One Swarthmore coordinator noted to the media that these “jobs are really not just about compliance anymore, but also about campus climate.”

What are these offices doing to promote Title IX’s spirit? As Jeannie Suk and Jacob Gersen discuss in a 2016 California Law Review article, “The Sex Bureaucracy,” many have gone beyond preventing unlawful sex discrimination and instead have expanded into lecturing students on what used to be seen as highly personal decisions about pursuing “healthy” or “safe” romantic and sexual relationships. Most of us learned foundational relationship skills such as “Always use ‘I’ statements” and “Don’t interrupt your partner” from partners, friends, clergy, or private therapists. Yet Title IX coordinators at Swarthmore and the University of Illinois have taken it upon themselves to propound such advice to students

“Is bureaucracy the antonym of desire?” Suk and Gersen ask. Certainly many of us would think so. Are bureaucrats hired to enforce a nondiscrimination statute really well-equipped to serve also as essentially relationship therapists? Much of their advice may be noncontroversial, but some may be less so, especially to students who hold traditional or religious values. Is it infantilizing to young adults to treat them as needing this kind of hectoring? Because of the pandemic-related economic downturn, many universities are in a particularly tight financial situation right now. Wouldn’t it make sense for regulators to give them some more flexibility in this area?

The Trump administration has made a priority of restoring the rule of law and stopping agency abuse of guidance documents: an executive order lays out procedures for transparency in issuance of guidance documents and restricts executive agencies’ unlawful issuance of guidance documents, and Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand issued a memo prohibiting Department of Justice components from issuing guidance documents that effectively bind the public.

The Trump administration should follow through on its commitment to pull back overreaching guidance and repeal this problematic document, in order to rein in the Title IX coordinators and their abusive sex bureaucracy.

Alison Somin is a legal fellow at Pacific Legal Foundation, which litigates nationwide to achieve court victories enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of individual liberty. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonSomin.

Accountability Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Discrimination Due Process False Allegations Investigations Office for Civil Rights Press Release Sex Education Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Training Victims Violence

Double Jeopardy: SAVE Calls on College Administrators to Assure Due Process Protections for Black Students in Title IX Proceedings

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 28, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart
Telephone: 513-479-3335
Email: info@saveservices.org

Double Jeopardy: SAVE Calls on College Administrators to Assure Due Process Protections for Black Students in Title IX Proceedings

WASHINGTON / July 28, 2020 – SAVE recently released a study that shows black male students face a type of “double jeopardy” by virtue of being male and black. (1) Analyses show although black male students are far outnumbered on college campuses, they are four times more likely than white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated in Title IX proceedings (2), and at one university OCR investigated for racial discrimination, black male students were accused of 50% of the sexual violence reported to the university yet they comprised only 4.2% of the student population. (3)

In 2015, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley raised an alarm to the U.S. Senate HELP committee that, “the rate of complaints and sanctions against male students of color is unreasonably high.” (4) She advised school administrators to, “not only to secure sex equality but also to be on the lookout for racial bias and racially disproportionate impact and for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity – not only against complainants but also against the accused.” (5)

Her powerful words were ignored. Over the past 5 years numerous black males have been caught up in campus Title IX proceedings. Their lawsuits often claim a lack of due process in the procedures.

Grant Neal, a black student athlete, was suspended by Colorado State University – Pueblo for a rape his white partner denied ever happened. (6) Two black males students accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student recently settled a lawsuit against University of Findlay for racial, gender and ethnic discrimination. (7) Nikki Yovino was sentenced to a year in prison for making false rape accusations against two black Sacred Heart University football players whose lives were ruined by her accusations. (8) These are just a few examples.

Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, a major stop along the Underground Railroad, recently dismissed Chaplain Tim Blackmon, its first nonwhite chaplain in its 155-year history. Blackmon claims Wheaton’s Title IX office failed to investigate a previous Title IX complaint against him in a “clear misuse of the Title IX investigative process,” and he was “completely blind-sided by this Title IX investigation.” Blackmon’s attorney believes the professor’s race heavily factored into his firing, and that Wheaton was looking for an excuse to sever its relationship with its first African American chaplain and return to being a predominantly white educational institution. (9)

The impact to black male students and faculty could be even greater than any data or media reports imply since only those who can afford a costly litigation file lawsuits and make the news. More data is needed, but anecdotally black males are disproportionately harmed in campus Title IX proceedings.

SAVE recently spoke with Republican and Democrat offices in the House and Senate regarding this issue. Virtually all staffers agreed members of Congress are concerned about harm to black students and supportive of ways to offer protections to all students, including those of color.

The new Title IX regulation offers necessary due process protections that black students need. By complying with the regulation, college administrators will protect the rights of all students and address the serious problem that black men are accused and punished at unreasonably high rates. At a time when activists on college campuses are clamoring that Black Lives Matter, college administrators should assure they are doing everything they can to help their black students.

Citations:

SAVE is leading the policy movement for fairness and due process on campus: http://www.saveservices.org/

Campus Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Victims

Supreme Court Asked to Review Title IX ‘Circuit Split’

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 24, 2020

The petition to the Supreme Court, made by Emily Kollaritsch and other women who say they were raped by the same male student while attending Michigan State, asks the justices to solve a “circuit split” between appellate courts across the country. Several courts disagree on how colleges should be held liable when sexual harassment complainants experience further harm after filing complaints. The petition calls on the justices to decide whether colleges can be held responsible for failing to address students’ “vulnerability” to sexual misconduct, or if preventable sexual misconduct must actually occur for colleges to be found in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that prohibits sex discrimination at federally funded institutions.

The case is centered on Kollaritsch and argues that Michigan State failed to protect her from being further harassed by a male student after the university found him responsible for sexually harassing her in 2011. The university issued a no-contact order and Kollaritsch said the male student broke it, but Michigan State could not prove he had. Kollaritsch also said she suffered panic attacks as a result of seeing the male student on campus, which she said indicated that Michigan State was “deliberately indifferent” to her sexual harassment. She said she suffered further harm by the male students’ presence on campus.

The 2019 opinion issued in the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said Michigan State could not be held liable because Kollaritsch could only prove she experienced mental health challenges from seeing the male student and not “further actionable sexual harassment” by him. The case was sent back to the district court for dismissal.

The Sixth Circuit opinion deepened a split in how different appellate courts interpret a 1999 Supreme Court case that found colleges can be held liable for “deliberate indifference” to sexual misconduct on campus under Title IX. Some circuit courts maintain that if a victimized student is merely vulnerable to harassment, even if it does not actually occur, then the institution is failing to provide an equal educational environment and could be held liable. The Eighth and Sixth Circuits hold that alleged victims must “prove additional, post-notice sexual harassment in order to state a claim for damages under Title IX,” according to Kollaritsch’s petition.

The petition was filed on July 2. On July 23, the court approved an extension requested by Michigan State to move the deadline for when the university’s lawyers must file a response. Michigan State will respond to the petition by Sept. 9, the case’s docket says.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/07/24/supreme-court-asked-review-title-ix-%E2%80%98circuit-split%E2%80%99

#MeToo Campus Civil Rights Discrimination Due Process False Allegations Free Speech Investigations Office for Civil Rights Sexual Harassment

Black Immigrant Chaplain Claims Christian College Used Bogus Title IX Investigation to Fire Him

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 20, 2020

‘From the outset … race was very much at issue’

A professor’s race heavily factored into his firing on the grounds of making racially and sexually insensitive comments, according to his attorney.

Wheaton College, known informally as the Harvard of evangelical colleges, publicly announced the dismissal of Chaplain Tim Blackmon earlier this month, more than a month after his firing.

The 50-year-old black immigrant from the Netherlands has since vigorously disputed the allegations against him, telling the Chicago Tribune that “they are a complete misconstrual of the comments” he made.

President Philip Ryken justified the college’s firing of Blackmon by publicly accusing him of several violations Wheaton learned about last fall. He had “repeatedly used an ethnic slur” to refer to an Asian employee and suggested that a female staff member sit on his lap during a training session for sexual harassment, according to Wheaton’s statement.

The black chaplain also circulated a meme to employees about masturbation and “arranged” to have the book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra” placed on a female staff member’s desk, the college claimed.

Wheaton claimed that Blackmon “admitted to certain allegations, which is patently untrue,” his attorney Andrew Miltenberg told The College Fix in an email. The ex-chaplain “continues to refute” both the allegations and the context Wheaton applied to them.

“From the outset, Chapl[a]in Blackmon’s race was very much at issue,” contrary to Wheaton’s race-neutral portrayal of the allegations, Miltenberg said.

Citing Wheaton’s allegedly poor record with racial and ethnic diversity, “especially with the African American community,” the attorney said that Blackmon has been treated far worse than his white colleagues.

Pressure to conform with the prevailing views of the #MeToo movement and the controversies surrounding Title IX investigations resulted in an overreaction from the college, the attorney added.

Ultimately, Wheaton chose to oust Blackmon so that it could maintain the mantle of being an “ethnically diverse” college all the while “return[ing] to its roots – that being a primarily white educational institution,” Miltenberg alleged. Yet the fired employee and his attorney have not decided whether to take legal action yet.

When asked to specify some of the college’s allegations about Blackmon – including the exact racial slur – beyond its curt statement, Director of Marketing Joseph Moore stated: “Wheaton College is not providing further comment.”

That supposed slur, Blackmon told a blogger last week, stemmed from an “inside joke” about the song “Black and Yellow” by the rapper Wiz Khalifa and its relevance to working in a “predominantly white institution.”

Theological articles he shared were ‘ideologically problematic’ for accuser

Wheaton’s internal statement to its community, which Moore provided and which preceded Blackmon’s response, made clear that the college did not find that he engaged in “sexually immoral relationships or physical sexual misconduct.” Rather, its investigation “revealed conduct inconsistent with Wheaton’s policies and commitments.”

Moore did not not provide The Fix with the specific policies and commitments purportedly breached by Blackmon, however.

“To be clear, I was completely blind-sided by this Title IX investigation,” Blackmon said via his attorney in response to Wheaton’s statement.

“I recently learned this was the second time this individual filed a Title IX against me,” the first one occurring in 2017 after Blackmon had “shared five theological articles that the complainant [accuser] deemed ideologically problematic.” (He doesn’t give a more specific description of the accuser; Wheaton’s language suggests at least two women complained.)

Wheaton’s Title IX office didn’t investigate at the time, “as it was a clear misuse of the Title IX investigative process,” the chaplain continued. But in the most recent complaint, he said that “several of my comments have been taken completely out of their factual and, in some cases, religious context.”

He emphasized that no one accused him of “flirtation, inappropriate relationships, sexual misconduct or any sexual action towards anyone,” and neither the accuser nor “any witness, communicate[d] offense or discomfort.”

While it left out his race when justifying his firing, Wheaton emphasized Blackmon’s race when hiring him five years ago as the first nonwhite chaplain in its 155-year history.

Rodney Sisco, director of the Office of Multicultural Development, told The Wheaton Record: “I think change is change, and change is always difficult. Chaplain Blackmon is going to be seen differently.”

While Sisco was personally excited to have a “person of color leading the chaplain’s office,” he suspected that some community members would be “a little worried, asking, ‘Have we made some sort of strange mistake?’” He concluded by saying: “I think there will be some folks who push against the college.”

At the time, only 2.3 percent of the student body was comprised of African Americans. The most recent figures from 2017 put it at 3.03 percent––its white population is at 70.8 percent. (Ranking service College Factual says Wheaton has more “non-resident alien” students than African Americans.) This is at a college that was founded by evangelical abolitionists in 1860 and was a major stop along the Underground Railroad.

“Wheaton has failed in its attempt, if any were even made, to achieve truly measurable and transformative cultural diversity,” Miltenberg, who has represented hundreds of college students accused of sexual misconduct, told The Fix.

‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra’ was a regifted ‘gag’

In a separate public statement, the attorney alleged that Wheaton administrators “are now publicly smearing and defaming my client in the media by using out of context statements and false accusations.”

Contrary to President Ryken’s claim, Blackmon “never asked his secretary to sit on his lap during a sexual harassment training,” and “never harassed anyone, sexually or racially,” according to Miltenberg. The college simply “weaponized the Title IX process to get rid of someone whose words and ideas didn’t always conform to their views.”

The lap allegation, Blackmon told The Roys Report blog last week, stemmed from his critical comments about “the mandatory (but rather patronizing) sexual harassment training video” he was required to watch when starting at Wheaton in September 2015.

He said he told the accuser: “Come on, it’s not like I don’t know what sexual harassment is. It’s not like I’m asking my secretary to sit on my lap and take the training for me.”

The context for another allegation, about his comments to a newly married female employee, was the fact that her “brand-new husband had been pulling all-nighters for grad-school,” Blackmon continued:

As a way of celebrating their newly wedded bliss I said, “Maybe you should surprise him and pay him a conjugal visit.” As to the conjugal-visit comment, I was genuinely trying to commiserate with her about the challenges of graduate school and newlyweds.

Regarding the incident involving “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra,” Miltenberg told The Fix that Blackmon “received the book from a former parishioner.”

That person’s wife wrote about the incident in a comment on a blog post on the Blackmon controversy: “I left the book on Tim’s desk. During our annual Church bazar [sic] I found the book in the donated items as we set up.” She thought that it would be “ironic to put the book on Tim’s desk.”

Later, after she and her husband “laughed about it,” her husband “snuck into Tim’s office and hid it in his library where it sat for years. I guess it made its way to Chicago. I thought it was funny to put a book that silly in Tim’s office. And the idea I was a victim is stupid.”

According to Miltenberg, at some point Blackmon “told the complainant the story after he found the surprise gag gift in his [college’s] library and then gave her the book. He thought it was a funny story. That’s all there was to it.” (Blackmon told The Roys Report he shared the story with others, but admitted that it sounded bad when “taken out of its contexts without the prank.”)

Because this was “such a benign event,” the attorney continued, “we believe that Wheaton was looking for an excuse to sever its relationship with its first African American Chaplain” and return to being a predominantly white educational institution.

‘China-man’ was an ‘inside joke’

Regarding the “ethnic slur” he allegedly used repeatedly toward an Asian American employee, Blackmon provided the context to The Roys Report.

When he started working at Wheaton, Blackmon said one of his Korean ministry colleagues was “mistaken” for a professor. They “commiserated about the realities of beginning to work” at the predominantly white institution, comparing their situation to the Wiz Khalifa song “Black and Yellow”:

[A] black pastor from Holland and a Korean ministry associate. I said, “Maybe we should call you the China-man because people can’t even tell one Asian from another, one Chinese from a Korean.” More laughter ensued and for the next couple of weeks we commiserated about the ironies of working in a predominantly white institution, and we soon moved on from our inside joke and got to work.

“This,” said Blackmon, “is what they are considering the racial/ethnic slur.”

Miltenberg also suspects that “Wheaton may have overreacted out of fear of public pressure given the #MeToo movement and other Title IX related controversies as of late”:

Wheaton has repeatedly shifted the landscape in Chaplain Blackmon’s case, at times claiming it was Title IX issue, and other times, suggesting that the situation did not fall under Title IX.

This shifting has impeded Blackmon’s ability to appropriately respond to the allegations as well as “denying him the right to counsel,” Miltenberg said. The college has also ignored its own “employee conflict resolution procedures,” he claimed.

Its actions “have put Chaplain Blackmon’s future very much at risk,” Miltenberg said.

Source: https://www.thecollegefix.com/black-immigrant-chaplain-claims-christian-college-used-bogus-title-ix-investigation-to-fire-him/

Campus Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX

Betsy DeVos Thanks Assistant Secretary Marcus for His Service Leading Civil Rights Office

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 19, 2020

WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos praised Assistant Secretary Kenneth L. Marcus for his strong leadership of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and for the remarkable results achieved after Marcus announced his upcoming departure from government service to return to the private sector.

“I am so thankful for Ken’s strong leadership over the last two years,” said Secretary DeVos. “He helped drive incredible results for students by vigorously enforcing civil rights laws, expanding protections from discrimination, and refocusing OCR on resolving cases efficiently and effectively. He has been a tremendous asset to us and an ally to students, and I will always be grateful he agreed to return to government service to join the President’s and my team. While we are sad to see him go, I know in his next professional chapter he will further build on his successful career of advocating for the civil rights of America’s students.”

“I am grateful to President Donald J. Trump and Secretary Betsy DeVos for the honor of directing, over the last two years, OCR’s talented and committed staff,” said Assistant Secretary Marcus. “Throughout my tenure, OCR has reinforced its status as a neutral, impartial civil rights law enforcement agency that faithfully executes the laws as written and in full, no more and no less, focusing carefully on the needs of each individual student. The data demonstrate that this approach works. While I am sad to leave colleagues for whom I have so much respect and affection, I am heartened to know that I am leaving the institution in excellent hands.”

During the last two fiscal years and the first several months of the current fiscal year, OCR has made historic advances in protecting the civil rights of America’s students:

Resolving some of OCR’s most extensive systemic investigations of Title IX violations in American higher education, as well as the largest investigation that OCR ever conducted into systemic sexual assault problems in an urban public school system;
Launching the Outreach, Prevention, Education, and Non-discrimination (OPEN) Center to focus on outreach and proactive compliance with federal civil rights laws;
Commencing nationwide initiatives to address sexual assault in elementary and secondary schools and inappropriate use of restraint and seclusion on students with disabilities (with the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services);
Launching over three times more proactive civil rights investigations last year than the prior administration launched in all eight years combined;
Establishing the National Web Accessibility Team to resolve technology accessibility problems in educational institutions;
Advancing the Administration’s deregulatory initiative, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, by rescinding sub-regulatory guidance that exceeded statutory authorization;
Improving the quality of OCR’s authoritative Civil Rights Data Collection through numerous reforms facilitated by a newly-expanded partnership with the National Center for Education Statistics;
Reforming the Department’s approach to civil rights in career and technical education, through a new Memorandum of Procedures issued in conjunction with the Department’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education;
Providing timely and important guidance on protection of student civil rights in light of COVID-19;
Administering President Trump’s historic Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism through vigorous enforcement; and
Strengthening Title IX protections for survivors of sexual misconduct and restoring due process in campus proceedings to ensure all students can pursue education free from sex discrimination through game-changing Title IX regulatory reform.

The data demonstrate the vigor with which OCR has been conducting its work in recent years. For example, during fiscal years 2018 and 2019, OCR resolved nearly 1,000 more allegations of discrimination by requiring corrective action than the previous administration had during its last two fiscal years. During this period, OCR achieved a 45% increase in the total number of Title VI allegations resolved with change and a 78% increase in the total number of Title IX allegations resolved with change compared to the last two fiscal years under the previous administration.

Assistant Secretary Marcus will continue his service until the end of the month in order to ensure appropriate continuity within OCR. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Kimberly Richey will succeed Marcus as Acting Assistant Secretary.

Source: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USED/bulletins/294dcb0

Campus Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX

Ringing the Bell of Justice, 14 Attorneys General Remind Colleges of their Legal Duties Under Title IX

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 19, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Ringing the Bell of Justice, 14 Attorneys General Remind Colleges of their Legal Duties Under Title IX

WASHINGTON / July 20, 2020 – The Attorneys General from 14 states have released an Amicus Brief that summarizes the legal obligations of colleges and universities in responding to allegations of campus sexual misconduct. The Attorneys General represent the states of Texas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee.

On May 6, the federal Department of Education issued a new regulation creating a legal obligation for colleges to investigate and adjudicate allegations of sexual assault. The regulation, known as the Final Rule, increased legal protections both for complainants (1) and the accused (2).

But one month later the Attorneys General from 18 other states filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the implementation of the new regulation, claiming the policy would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to schools and students (3).

Last week’s Amicus Brief by the 14 Attorneys General is grounded in schools’ constitutional and other legal obligations to assure fairness for all students. The AGs note, “the Final Rule’s due process protections requiring live hearings, direct cross examination, and neutral fact-finders, reflect a reasonable, straightforward approach to resolution of Title IX complaints that protects both complainants’ and respondents’ due process rights.”

The Brief charges that current campus policies represent a “constant recycling of discredited, unconstitutional policies” that “effectively eliminated a presumption of innocence for those accused of sexual misconduct.” The Brief concludes, “The Final Rule aims to provide robust protections for individual rights by ameliorating the constitutional and statutory deficiencies caused by prior regulations and guidance.”

The Amicus Brief also disputes the “immediate and irreparable harm” claim, accurately explaining that the plaintiffs “have known for years that constitutional norms favor more procedural protections for students accused of sexual harassment, not less.” Therefore, “If Plaintiffs and these institutions suffer harm because of the Final Rule’s effective date, then that harm was self-inflicted.”

To date, 650 lawsuits have been filed by accused students against their schools (4). In a majority of cases, judges have ruled in favor of these students (5).

The Editorial Boards of the following newspapers have endorsed the new Title IX regulation: New York Daily News, Detroit News, Wall Street Journal, The Oklahoman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Philadelphia Inquirer (6).

The Attorneys General Amicus Brief is available online (7).

NOTE: The original AG Brief, filed on July 15, listed 14 Attorneys General. The following day, the Nebraska Attorney General also agreed to support the Brief. So now 15 Attorneys General are included. This is the revised Brief: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/04517937890.pdf

Links:

Campus Civil Rights Due Process False Allegations Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment

Why Are Some Members of Congress Opposing Due Process Protections for Black Male Students?

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 14, 2020

SAVE

July 14, 2020

During the Senate HELP Committee’s 2015 hearing on campus sexual assault, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley made the surprising observation that in her experience, “male students of color are accused and punished at ‘unreasonably high rates’ in campus sexual misconduct investigations.” (1) Two years later, journalist Emily Yoffe posed this question in The Atlantic: “Is the system biased against men of color?” explaining, “black men make up only about 6 percent of college undergraduates, yet are vastly overrepresented in the cases I’ve tracked.” (2) Lara Bazelon, director of the racial justice clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law, likewise has opined about the troubling racial dynamics at play under the current Title IX system, and urged Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to “take important steps to fix these problems.” (3)

During this time of national reflection on race relationships, stories mount of black men whose lives were irrevocably harmed by false allegations or poorly administered campus tribunals (4). The examples of unfair treatment are numerous and egregious:

Two years ago, Nikki Yovino was sentenced to one year in jail for falsely accusing two black male football players, students at Sacred Heart University, of sexual assault (5).
Grant Neal, a black student athlete suspended by Colorado State University-Pueblo for a rape his white partner denied ever happened, sued and settled with his university (6).
Two black male students accused of sexual assault recently settled a lawsuit against University of Findlay for racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination (7).

Black faculty members also have been targeted by the campus kangaroo courts. The nation’s first elected black governor, former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, penned a scathing letter regarding his “unimaginable nightmare at Virginia Commonwealth University” after he was erroneously accused of sexual misconduct. He aptly titled his letter, “Secretary DeVos Right to Restore Due Process on Campus.” (9) Similarly, Howard University castigated law professor Reginald Robinson for allegations of sexual harassment, although his actions were clearly an expression of academic freedom consistent with university policy. (10)

So how widespread is the problem?

In 2017, the Office for Civil Rights investigated Colgate University for potential race discrimination in its sexual assault adjudication process. During the course of the investigation, the institution had to reveal the embarrassing fact that “black male students were accused of 50% of the sexual violations reported to the university,” (11) even though black students represent only 5.2% of all undergraduate students (12).

More recently, Title IX For All analyzed demographic data from the approximately 650 lawsuits filed against institutions of higher education since 2011. Among the 30% of cases in which the race of the accused student was known, black students are four times as likely as white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated in Title IX disciplinary proceedings. Title IX For All concludes, “These findings come at a time when public officials who have long regarded themselves as champions of civil rights for minorities suspected or accused of crimes advocate a heightened awareness of their rights, while simultaneously working to undermine their rights in higher education settings.” (13)

The new Title IX regulation will ensure fairness, equitability, and credibility, and will support and assist sexual assault complainants, as well (14). Some members of Congress in both the Senate (15) and the House of Representatives (16) have urged Secretary DeVos to rescind the new regulation with vague claims that it is harmful to students.

At a time when activists across the country are clamoring that Black Lives Matter, why are some members of Congress opposed to a regulation that will help improve the lives of black men?

Citations: