Our Country, Which Art In Panic

When It Comes To Sex And Policy, Nobody Seems To Know Which Side Will Be On The Right Side Of History.

- Shira Tarrant

I teach a university class called Gender, Sex and the Law for which I give a series of lectures on Title IX, the 1972 anti-discrimination law that guarantees equal access to education, regardless of sex, at schools that receive federal funding. Lately my lectures have focused more on due process and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s recently proposed changes to the law, some of which would bolster the rights of those accused of sexual assault. DeVos is the point person for policy changes that would modify Obama-era directives on how Title IX violations are handled on college campuses. Since 2017 she has walked back more than 20 directives, including one that addressed patterns of racial disparity in imposing school punishment. Many of DeVos’s policies have been criticized by national higher-education groups and pummeled by the media as well as left-leaning students. During one recent lecture I decided to avoid mentioning her by name in an effort to separate political assumptions from policy debate.

Without a doubt, campus sexual misconduct violates the provisions of Title IX. But investigations of such violations are hardly fail-safe. Since 2011, the U.S. government has conducted 502 “investigations of colleges for possibly mishandling reports of sexual violence,” according to data from The Chronicle of Higher Education. My students saw compelling reasons for revising current Title IX procedures. They agreed that changing the burden of proof from what has been dubbed the “50 percent plus a feather” standard to a “clear and convincing” one would better serve justice; anything less than that simply wasn’t tough enough, given the gravity of assault charges. They also believed that mandated faculty reporting, which infantilizes students by taking the decision to report an alleged assault out of their hands, should be ended.