Free Republic

Brenda Tracy (left), talks with Sen. Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden and PSU President... Oregon’s colleges and universities must resist any Trump administration plans to walk back federal rules directing how schools respond to sexual assaults on campus. That was the takeaway from a Monday morning roundtable discussion at Portland State University. Oregon Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and sexual assault survivor Brenda Tracy held an informal discussion with PSU Title IX leaders and sexual assault prevention staffers. The meeting came less than a month after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded Obama-era guidelines on how schools should handle...

College hearings into alleged misconduct ‘must be fair and impartial,’ education secretary saysEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday rescinded the Obama administration’s Title IX letter on campus sexual assault, sparking outrage from her foes but relief from those who have lambasted the policy for eroding due process by favoring the accuser over the accused. Ms. DeVos also issued an interim guidance for schools on “how to investigate and adjudicate allegations of campus sexual misconduct under federal law” while the department proceeds with its rulemaking to replace the 2011 policy. “This interim guidance will help schools as they work to combat...

'Unwanted Advances' is a clarion call for accusatory university cultures gone madA spectre is haunting the American campus, and it’s called Title IX. Originally, you might remember, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 was the law that required colleges to have women’s as well as men’s sports teams. It still does that, but since 2011 it does a lot more: Title IX, overseen by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, now covers not just gender discrimination but all forms of sexual misconduct—a generously interpreted term that, if you’re a professor, now seems to include your...

Did anybody else not pay any attention to what happened over the weekend? I found myself uninterested in March Madness, couldn’t summon the energy required to watch the Sunday Showboats spout off on why RyanCare was a disaster for whoever they were opposed to, not in the mood for Donald J.Trump’s tweets and couldn’t even manage to get appropriately agitated about the black-hooded New World Order Obots who showed up at the Trump rally to pepper spray the attendees.But this caught my attention, possibly because it inadvertently provides insight and commentary on everything else that has run amok in this...

Yesterday the Trump administration preserved federalism, respected the principle of local control over local schools, and corrected one of the Obama administration’s many lawless and radical executive actions. With a simple, two-page letter, the Departments of Education and Justice withdrew and rescinded two Obama-administration letters that purported to unilaterally redefine Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The Obama administration had expanded Title IX’s explicit ban on sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions to encompass “gender identity” discrimination and then imposed intrusive “guidance” on every federally funded school in the nation, on matters ranging from pronoun usage to...

A Baylor University graduate who says she was raped by football players in 2013 sued the university Friday. Her lawsuit includes an allegation that 31 Baylor football players committed at least 52 acts of rape, including five gang rapes, between 2011 and 2014 — an estimate that far exceeds the number previously provided by school officials.

[T]he Sexual Harassment Policy inappropriately stated that ‘in assessing whether a particular act constitutes sexual harassment forbidden under this policy, the rules of common sense and reason shall prevail. The standard shall be the perspective of a reasonable person within the campus community.” This standard falls short of the preponderance of the evidence standard required to satisfy Title IX.

A teen boy runs, and wins, against teen girls in a high school level competition. The winning part is not surprising. Men have some biological reasons for being physically superior to women. Testosterone increases their muscle mass, lung capacity, and upper body strength. Then there are all the subtle ways that make a boy/man faster and stronger: smaller Q-angles, denser bones, more efficient oxygenation. Here is the practical effect of a boy participating in girls’ sports from the Alaska Dispatch News: Wangyot posted the third-fastest time in the 200 preliminaries and the fifth-fastest time in the 100 preliminaries. The top...

Creating the Department of Education in 1979 was certainly one of the worst blunders the nation made in that whole blunder-filled decade. Having neither a constitutional warrant nor any rationale except to reward the teachers’ unions for backing Jimmy Carter, the Department barely made it through Congress. (Even the New York Times thought it a bad idea, as Richard Vedder notes in this Pope Center article in which he explores the damage this agency has done.) Since then, we have wasted billions on the Department but educational results are worse than ever. And now it’s evident that the bureaucrats have...

You’d best get out your hip waders, folks – we’re about to wade through a steaming pile of government balderdash. The controversy surrounds a storage shed built by the baseball booster club at Arbor View High School in Las Vegas. The youngsters needed a place to store their bats and balls and bases. The boosters had wanted to build a clubhouse for the teenage ball players, but after months of delay they came up with an alternative plan. One of the parents knew the owner of a company that made precast one-story buildings. The company offered to donate the manpower...

Due process advocates have been up in arms over the past few months as California passed the first statewide “affirmative consent” law in the nation. According to the freshly signed SB 967, all college campuses accepting financial aid in the Golden State must enforce a high standard of establishing sexual consent in student disciplinary hearings, requiring both parties in question to vocalize their approval before engaging in sexual acts.While an array of concerns have been raised about the legal ramifications of this law, one important question has been left out of the discussion almost entirely — why are rape cases...

"Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation?" That astonishing question was posed at a conference on how colleges respond to sexual assault issues by Amanda Childress, Sexual Assault Awareness Program coordinator at Dartmouth. According to Inside Higher Ed, Childress continued: "It seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes more than we value the safety of our students. And higher education is not a right. Safety is a right. Higher education is a privilege." Give Childress credit for candor--even the campus spokespersons for increasing the number of guilty findings in campus tribunals usually aren't...

A weary wrestling coach once lamented that his sport had survived the Fall of Rome, only to be vanquished by Title IX. How did an honorable equity law turn into a scorched-earth campaign against men’s sports? This week is the 42nd anniversary of this famous piece of federal legislation so it’s an ideal time to consider what went wrong and how to set it right. MORE Historically Black Colleges Are Becoming More White Report: California Colleges Must Do More to Combat Sexual Violence Friday's Top 6 News Stories NBC News What Happened When One Woman Had Her Picture Photoshopped In...

Two new documents out from the White House--the Vice President's task force recommendations and a question and answer document from the OCR--continue the assault on due process at the expense of males accused of rape or sexual assault on campus. The administration tips its hand quickly with a telltale verbal switch--referring to complainants as "survivors," rather than as accusers. This language, which assumes guilt and the fact of a sexual offense before any hearing, is the terminology of hardline feminists who have the ear of this administration and have made it clear that they want more guilty findings. Yet what...

The George Fox campus only has single-sex dorms. Officials at the Christian school previously turned down Jayce’s request to live in an all-male dormitory. Last week, they chose not to hear an appeal. The complaint, filed by attorney and transgender activist Paul Southwick, leaves Jayce’s current genitalia situation very ambiguous but takes pains to indicate that “Jayce presents as a male and only goes by male pronouns such as he, his, him etc.”

It was a 1992 Barbie doll who accurately reminded us, “Math class is tough!” So hard that even a man with two Ivy League degrees, President Obama, is stumbling over the basics. The president seems to think that women can hold half the places in some fields of study — and a majority in the rest.

Justine Siegal was a pioneer long before she pitched batting practice to six major league teams in spring training this year. Two years ago she became the first woman to coach first base for a men's professional team, the Brockton (Mass.) Rox in the independent Canadian American Association. And she spent three seasons as an assistant baseball coach at Springfield (Mass.) College until resigning last year to pursue a doctorate.

FRANKLIN — The MIAA Field Hockey Committee voted, 12-0, yesterday in favor of a rule change that will limit the role of boys in a girls’ sport. Saying, “I’m sick of boys dominating the game,’’ Gloucester field hockey coach and athletic director Kim Patience was one of many committee voices in support of limiting what boys may do in the sport. The three-part rule, which could go into effect this fall if adopted by the Board of Directors at its June 9 meeting, says:

For those of us who believe in traditional values, the rule-of-law, secure borders, smaller government, and lower taxes, it’s become slim pickings when it comes to the entertainment, news, education, and information spaces. As a conservative who believes in the free exchange of ideas and who is anxious to hear reasoned and well articulated arguments from the left, I have watched in sadness and dismay as liberal group-think has systematically forced out conservative thought in movies, television, commercials, CDs, book publishing, the work place, colleges, universities, high schools, and even pre-school. Facing this informational and educational tidal wave of bias,...

Appeals Court: Women Wrestlers Can Sue UC Davis The Associated Press Feb. 8, 2010 SAN FRANCISCO -- An appeals court says it appears that the University of California, Davis violated federal law meant to promote gender equity in college athletics when it eliminated its women's wrestling program. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit Monday filed by three female wrestlers. The women were told in 2000 that they'd have to compete against men, then were cut from the varsity team. The plaintiffs accuse the university of violating Title IX, the federal law that requires schools to offer...