Browsing by Subject "Title IX"
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Item Anti-discrimination policy backlash: Title IX as a Mass Communication case study.(2009-03) Kaiser, Kent LutherAnti-discrimination policies often generate opposition from people who disagree with how the policies are being implemented and from people who disagree with how resources and power might be reallocated if the policies are implemented. This opposition can shift the focus away from the core issues like equity, discrimination, and barriers to equal access, toward issues that undermine the policy, like reverse discrimination, survival of tradition and traditional values, and effects on the status quo. It can also pose a threat to the timing and effectiveness of anti-discrimination policy implementation. This dissertation begins by offering a concept explication of the term "backlash" that could be used in future social science research. Then, using as a case study the 35-year conflict over the implementation of Title IX as it relates to women in sports, this dissertation explains how the opposition to Title IX has exemplified backlash. This dissertation uses frame analysis of major newspapers and of legal and legislative sources to suggest a model for how a conflict featuring backlash is likely to evolve when the mass media are involved. It builds descriptively and theoretically on existing scholarly work, especially that related to frame theory, cultivation theory, and conflict theory. It helps to explain the conditions under which backlash frames emerge in a policy conflict and migrate to the mass media; it articulates the role of the mass media vis-à-vis the conflict over the implementation of Title IX, providing a predictive model for how backlash might appear in other public policy conflicts; and it contributes ideas that could be used in the construction of a comprehensive theory of conflict transformation involving backlash. This dissertation concludes that backlash is part of a dynamic process that involves responsive argument adaptation and deliberate shifts in framing strategy on the part of the disputants in an anti-discrimination policy conflict.Item The Exact Opposite of What They Need." Administrator Reflections on Sexual Misconduct(2017-06) Williamsen, KaarenIn 2011 the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights released additional guidance to colleges and universities on how they should handle campus sexual harassment and assault. Since that time institutions of higher education have been under significant pressure to improve their processes. This qualitative study adds to this conversation, expanding the knowledge base to include information, observation, and insight from 21 administrators who work closely with the student conduct response to campus sexual misconduct. Specifically, this study explores what Title IX staff, conduct officers, and advocates/advisors from 3 large public institutions, 1 midsize public institution, and 4 small private colleges want and need from a campus conduct response to student sexual misconduct. It also examines their perspectives on survivor/victim and campus community expectations of the adjudication process and explores the possibility of adding restorative justice to the list of options available to campus officials negotiating this complex landscape.Item Forty Years on the basis of sex: Title IX, the "Female Athlete" and the Political Construction of Sex and Gender(2013-08) Sharrow, ElizabethThis project employs a policy feedback framework to analyze how American political institutions grapple with inequities in educational settings, and how policy design and implementation matter for social change. Using archival data and quantitative data, I explore how political battles over the implementation of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 have shifted social and political understandings of sex and gender. I argue that battles over the implementation and meanings of the law's application to athletics have recursively altered political meanings of sexed bodies and political repertoires of gender. Further, debates over the meaning of policy have constituted the "female athlete" as a political figure germane to Title IX's policy domain, as well as broader social change over the past forty years. This dissertation historicizes the politics of Title IX, focusing mainly on the implicit definition and application of its central clause, "on the basis of sex", to the domain of athletics (and sports vis-à-vis classrooms). Throughout, the work is guided by my main research question: How have battles over the implementation of Title IX altered political and social understandings of sex and gender? Each chapter analyzes a different decade in order to illustrate the difficulties in settling cultural change (especially to gender roles) through political intervention and rights-based legislation. Attention to the politics of sex inherent to sports in Title IX illustrates how policy has cemented certain embodied understandings of what sex (and sex at the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and ability) means. In sports, "sex" is defined as a category of the body, and this meaning has been re-naturalized through political battles of the past forty years. Athletics were not mentioned in the original congressional legislation, but institutions of American government charged with implementing the law quickly became embroiled in debates over how to address severe disparities in college athletic opportunities between women and men. Throughout the 1970s, sports emerged as the most politically contentious realm of Title IX's implementation. Over the past forty years, the application of the law to sports has fueled more persistent political clashes regarding the meaning of equality than has its application to educational settings. I argue that a tension between "sex-blind" enforcement in education and "sex-conscious" guidelines for sport continues to fuel political battles over the law. Consequently, this policy designed to end discrimination "on the basis of sex" came to naturalize sex as a characteristic of bodies. Title IX's policy design did so in the realm of sports, but not in classrooms. Classrooms were by and large sex-integrated, educating girls and boys in the same spaces "regardless of their sex". Sports, were sex-segregated, first dividing girls from boys into different spaces, "by virtue of their sex". This on-going mechanism of policy design constitutes what I refer to as the "Paradox of Title IX", and this work demonstrates how it has developed and been reified through political battles over the policy. The history of sports as a U.S. policy domain demonstrates how policy development and political battles can come to generate unexpected and uneven outcomes and tensions, even within purportedly "successful" policy interventions. Although Title IX has had many positive outcomes, applying an intersectional lens helps to understand some of the law's on-going limitations.Item Going Beyond Compliance to Dismantling Rape Culture: A Feminist Phenomenological Study of Title IX Administrators(2019-05) Steiner, JenniferData collected over the past 30+ years consistently show one in five women are sexually assaulted on college campuses (Mccauley & Casler, 2015), and that the occurrence may be even higher due to serious underreporting on campuses (Palmer & Alda, 2016). To better combat sexual assault on campus, universities are charged through federal law and policy (i.e., Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972) to create systems for the prevention, education, investigation, and adjudication of sexual misconduct. While these policies resulted in significant advances, the continuing rates of sexual assault on college campuses demonstrate that policy alone is not enough. One issue of a policy-focused approach is the focus on individual complainants as opposed to addressing the greater campus culture and climate. According to feminist theory, to solve a complex issue (like sexual assault), institutions must examine the systems that permit oppression to exist on our campuses (Ahmed, 2012). Feminist theory suggests that approaches to sexual assault focused on addressing the entire campus community may have better outcomes for decreasing occurrence of sexual assault while dismantling oppressive systems, such as rape culture, that have historically prevented progress on this issue. This study, using a feminist phenomenological approach (Gardiner, 2017), looked to campus administrators who enact Title IX on their campus to gain a deepened understanding of how college practitioners approach Title IX work. The study had 13 college administrators participate, representing institutions across the U.S. to uncover: How do those responsible for enacting Title IX understand their work as an effort to dismantle rape culture on university campuses? The overarching goal of the study was to identify methods of supporting college administrators in shifting from compliance-focused approaches to more holistic, preventative, culture-focused efforts. What was uncovered was that college campuses are locked within a compliance frame, limiting any potential progress for dismantling campus rape culture and declining rates of campus sexual assault. The study found to break this cycle, college administrators must not move quickly to action, but must focus first on the process of learning, unlearning, and relearning (Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012). Promising practices for practitioners, policymakers, and further areas for research are also discussed.Item Title IX Self-Evaluation, University of Minnesota, The Coordinate Campuses: Crookston, Duluth, Morris, Waseca (1976-07)(1976)A workshop designed to explain the implications of Title IX and to initiate the self-evaluation process was held on each coordinate campus in March of 1976. It was conducted by Vice President Walter Bruning; Lillian H. Williams, Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action; Ann M. Pflaum, Title IX Coordinator; and Gary Engstrand, Athletics Consultant. Each coordinate campus established its own unit committees to generate information, as required by the 95 questions and the regulations. The responses were reviewed first by the Coordinate Campus Policy Review Committee and then by the Vice Presidents' Policy Review Committee from an institution wide perspective. All of the policies relevant to the institutional self-evaluation under Title IX are system-wide University policies governing activities in all locations. Because the four coordinate campuses are administered with substantial autonomy and fulfill missions distinctive from those of the Twin Cities Campus, however, each coordinate campus was asked to establish its own policy reveiw [sic] committee. Each conducted its own campus review and reported to the Vice Presidents' Policy Review Committee. The results are therefore reported in two forms in the University self-evaluation: as campus reports on the complete range of regulations and as portions of the reports on specific sections of the regulations (e.g., housing). Reports of the individual coordinate campuses follow this introduction. This summary will not duplicate the detailed information available elsewhere in the report, but it will provide a general overview of the self-evaluation process and the compliance activities on the coordinate campuses.