By Kaethe Morris Hoffer, CAASE Executive Director
Since Title IX became law in 1972, girls and women in the United
States have been entitled to receive education unencumbered by sex
discrimination.
More than four decades later, however, colleges, universities, and
secondary schools too often lack policies and practices capable of making real
the promises made by Title IX. To this day, significant minorities of
girls and women (as well as too many boys and men) experience sexual violation
at the hands of classmates and teachers, only to then discover that the
communities in which they are embedded are woefully unequipped to respond to
them, or to the people (who are mostly male) whose acts of sexual intrusion
throw worlds, and educations, into trauma and chaos.
The ways in which colleges and universities have long been
incompetent at preventing or responding to sexual violation have overwhelmingly
hurt women, and violated the promises of Title IX. Having been so bad,
for so long, at acknowledging or taking appropriate responsibility for the
realities of sexual violation, it is predictable that certain schools will
develop new policies and practices that are ham-fisted at best. It is
clear, in fact, that some schools have simply ping-ponged from being stupid and
cruel in the way they treat victims of sexual assault, to being stupid and
cruel in the way they treat men in their community against whom allegations of
sexual violation are made. This is not the outcome that feminist activists
seek, and it is not a reason to jettison efforts to demand that schools and
universities learn how to do better.
In the last few years young women activists have been
spectacularly successful at increasing awareness regarding the epidemic levels
of sexual violence inflicted on (mostly women) in campus settings, and there
have been significant, positive developments across the country. New,
thriving conversations about the importance of affirmative consent, and the
imperative of seeing that sexual assault is as much a “men’s issue” as it is a
“women’s issue," have been critically bolstered by never-before-seen levels of
enthusiastic support from male allies and the Federal Government’s Department
of Education under former President Barack Obama.
Given President Trump’s apparent lack of concern for the sexual
dignity of women, many in the anti-rape movement have been anxious about what
steps would be taken by his administration regarding campus sexual assault, and
last week Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued a stinging rebuke of
efforts made by her predecessors. At the same time, she announced that
her Department will launch a notice-and-comment period regarding regulations,
with the aim of ensuring that schools are better informed and guided, and have
processes that better serve both victims and perpetrators. CAASE supports those
aims, and we agree with Secretary DeVos on this point: the Department of
Education can do a better job of helping institutions get it right.
We worry, however, that Secretary DeVos believes that false rape
accusations are routinely (rather than very rarely) leveled against men.
There are no facts to support that claim, although it is an effective and
powerful lie that plays a key role in silencing victims. We are also disturbed
by the Secretary’s suggestion that rapes occur because of individual
“personal weakness,” and her failure to acknowledge the ways in which the
violation of young women’s bodies is simultaneously normalized and ignored by
our culture. We worry that the Department of Education will promote policies
that undermine school efforts to rid their campuses of sexual violation.
We will not stand for any roll back of Title IX rights for
survivors. We will continue to amplify the voices of the victims, students, and
communities that support Title IX. We will continue to fight for the
realization of the law’s promise: students are entitled to an education
unencumbered by sex discrimination, harassment, and assault.
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