Tag:Education
Title IX Changes & Timelines: What Can We Do When a Final Rule Will Take Too Long?
On September 13, more than thirty members of Congress sent a letter to the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, urging the Biden Administration to continue to build on the steps the administration has taken thus far to protect survivor-complaints from sexual misconduct. The letter emphasized President Biden’s clear interest in Title IX reform, celebrating many of the changes he has made since coming into office. However, alongside this praise, came the enumeration of several remaining concerns born out of the Trump Administrations widely criticized May 2020 Title IX regulations.
How Much is Too Much? College and University COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
As schools attempt to return to “normalcy”, approximately 1,000 colleges and universities have mandated vaccines for students. While the majority of these schools have relatively high vaccination rates, students complain that extra precautions including student surveillance and monitoring are going too far. Conversely, many schools in states with notoriously lax COVID-19 mandates struggle to keep students safe while following state mandates.
Administration Matters: The Evolution of Cross-Examination Requirements under Title IX
On August 24, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), released guidance clarifying that, effective immediately, it will stop the enforcement of 34 C.F.R. § 106.45(b)(6)(i). With this new guidance, a decision-maker at a post-secondary school may now consider outside information submitted by a survivor-complainant during the Title IX grievance process, even if the survivor-complainant does not partake in cross-examination.
First Amendment Rights and Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill
Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would bar Florida educators from speaking to students about LBGTQ+ topics that are not considered “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students” has passed in Florida’s House and is likely to pass in the Senate as it now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate floor for a vote. The horrific piece of legislation, formally known as HB 1557, has raised questions as to whether the bill, if passed, would violate the First Amendment rights of teachers or students in public primary schools across the sunshine state.
Why a Culture Change in the Workplace Benefits your Mentoring Program
It’s hard and expensive to find and retain good employees. With this in mind, it’s not a surprise that companies are willing to try all sorts of things to make sure their employees stick around. For example, many companies have attempted to establish corporate mentorship programs where newer employees are paired up with veterans who can show them the way. But is this the right approach? Mentoring programs typically rely on single mentor-mentee matches and formal hierarchical pairings. Even if you can implement the best mentoring program, it is unlikely to achieve its intended result when the surrounding workplace is competitive and individualistic. For mentorship programs to have a real effect on the workplace, it seems that we all must take a step back and realize that real mentorship starts with company culture, not formal programs.
Current Status Pending: Title IX, Deliberate Indifference, & Non-Student Offenders
With the Biden administrations new proposed Title IX regulations set to be published in April of this year, attorneys and advocates alike have been left to speculate as to what changes the Department of Education (ED) will propose. Among this speculation, is a narrower question: will ED, in their proposed Title IX regulations, finally state directly that universities can be held liable for deliberate indifference to known sexual harassment perpetrated by a non-student guest? At this point, any answer to this threshold inquiry would be speculative, but there are a few indicators that suggest the answer may be yes.
Decriminalization Is Not Enough, Abolition Is a Must
In the United States, since the 1980s, the federal prison population has increased by roughly 790%. Specifically, presently within Illinois, there are approximately 76,000 citizens who are incarcerated. In 2014, Illinois appropriated and spent nearly $1.3 billion on prison budgets. Where even though cannabis is now legal, in Illinois, roughly 90 inmates are still incarcerated for offenses relating to the use, manufacturing, and selling of cannabis. According to the Last Prisoner Project, inmates remain incarcerated even though House Bill 1438 establishes that persons who have been convicted on an offense are granted a pardon because the Bill provides no resentencing or commutation procedures, and the process to have sentences pardoned is slow.
In examining the injustices of carceral punishment, statistics like these show that these injustices are not an anomaly, but rather the norm. Because prisons are premised on punishment, rather than transformative healing, health, and prevention, prisons are a human rights issue, rather than a criminal justice issue. Prisons are premised on punishment, rather than transformative healing and health, and prevention. As a result, resources and funding which are currently given to our present system of policing and prisons should be reallocated to tools that actually serve the community, rather than on incarceration.
Students In Illinois Believe That Title IX Offices Are Failing Them, But Why?
Where Title IX offices exist, controversy follows. While certain students attending four year higher education institutions (HEIs) may feel empowered or supported by their Title IX offices, in my experience, many more feel mistrust, pain, and neglect. In my time as a student at three different HEIs, I was constantly surrounded by women and queer people in pain. Sometimes, this pain came in the form of a friend stating they did not want to engage with the Title IX office because they wholeheartedly believed nothing substantive would come of reporting. Other times, the pain came in the form of large groups of students making it known that they felt betrayed by their school’s Title IX office, unsupported and ill-equipped to advocate for themselves and their friends.
A recent article in the Loyola Phoenix, pointedly entitled, They Just Didn’t Make It Very Easy For Us’: Three Loyola Students Voice Frustrations with Loyola’s Sexual Assault Investigation Process, named only some of the many critiques students have of Title IX offices. The voices of these students are valid. Change can, should, and must be made. Any response which does not acknowledge these two realities ignores the pain so many young people are clearly feeling. Refusal to diligently, and in good faith, work on improving protections for survivors throughout HEI campuses is a failure, in every sense of the term.
Advancing Abolition Is a Must — Abolition Means Transformative Wellbeing and Prevention
Policing is a settler colonial creation to control native populations and is exported aboard to teach other empires how to do the same. In 2007, the FBI found that cops averaged roughly four hundred “justifiable homicides” every year, whereas nearly eighty cops were murdered in the line of duty. These disparities have only further developed, where since 2014, cops averaged nearly one thousand homicides each year, and the number of cops killed in the line of duty remained around forty-eight. Policing and prison systems are premised on punishment, rather than transformative healing, health, and prevention. Thus, as stated in Decriminalization Is Not Enough, Abolition Is a Must, resources and funding which are currently given to our present system of policing and prisons should be reallocated to tools that actually serve the community, rather than on incarceration.
Justice is a means through which people can discuss, decide, and create environments that encourage them thrive and it involves the people who are most impacted by those conditions. In that vein, abolition will look different in each community. The goal of abolition should be prioritizing the needs of each community by allowing the community control and ultimate decision-making ability. Abolition allows each community to communicate, prioritize, and enact methods and means that will make that community the best environment for its members. As Dereka Purnell wrote in Becoming Abolitionists, “activists or abolition-curious people will often ask me, ‘What does abolition look like to you?’ My answers change all the time during conversation, especially since I believe that the dreaming and practicing should happen together. This is what I’m thinking about today as I’m writing the conclusion to this book. Every neighborhood would have five quality features: a neighborhood council; free twenty-four-hour childcare; art, conflict, and mediation centers; a free health clinic; and a green team.” Upon community needs, discussion, and approval, funds currently spent on police and prison systems should be reallocated to education, housing, health care, and public spaces.
In Theory and In Practice: The Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act
As we ring in the new year, there is a lot to celebrate in Illinois education law, including the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act (TEAACH). TEAACH, which was signed into law by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in July 2021, officially makes Illinois the first state to require public schools to teach a unit of Asian American History. With the law taking effect during the 2022-2023 school year, most Illinois schools must change their current elementary and high school curriculum starting this year.