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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court.html

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/chapter/affirmative-action/

https://www.employmentlawhandbook.com/resources/affirmative-action-programs/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/us/politics/trump-affirmative-action-race-schools.html

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has proposed major changes to federal enforcement of Title IX, the statute that deals with gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct in schools.

The changes would restore due process protections for students accused of sexual assault, and thus have earned the ire of victims' advocacy groups, Democratic politicians, and even the American Civil Liberties Union, which usually takes the pro due process position.

These groups are concerned that any rebalancing of the scales of justice will make victims of sexual assault less likely to report their rapists to campus authorities. I sympathize with this concern: While the size and scope of the campus sexual assault problem is a subject of legitimate debate, the only acceptable number of rapes is zero, and those who have experienced abuse should feel comfortable and supported in coming forward.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration's efforts to address the problem were misguided at best, and often at odds with basic principles of fairness. DeVos' reforms are contentious but necessary; what came before them just wasn't working.

In 2011, the Obama-era Office for Civil Rights - a sub agency within the Education Department that monitors Title IX compliance - published a "dear colleague" letter outlining new requirements for campus sexual misconduct adjudication. OCR took the position that schools were obligated to investigate any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, or risk loss of federal funding. The government further stipulated that administrators must use a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard when deciding a sexual misconduct case, and that cross-examination - one of the most important tools for arriving at the truth of a dispute - should be discouraged on grounds that it could re-traumatize victims.

Title IX is just one sentence long, and reads: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." It's quite a stretch to read this as a requirement for schools to hold campus rape trials, let alone structure them in a manner that is fundamentally unfair to the accused. Nevertheless, the Obama-era guidance revolutionized how schools handle sexual assault allegations.

The guidance also produced an endless stream of lawsuits from students - usually male, often athletes of color - who were accused of sexual misconduct and expelled from campus. Many argued that the universities had treated them unfairly, violating their rights at the behest of the government.

A Title IX trial is not the same thing as a criminal court proceeding: Universities don't have the power to send people to jail. Still, it's reasonable to expect them to be fair to both sides. Sadly, this has seldom been the case.

I've read the investigative reports, evidence, files, lawsuits and legal documents relating to more than a hundred Title IX cases, and many of them were simply farcical. A few examples: a Colorado State University Pueblo student was expelled for sexually assaulting his girlfriend, even though she had never complained and denied he did anything wrong when asked; a University of California-Davis student spent $12,000 defending himself against an accusation of brief nonconsensual touching, even though it was obvious that the accuser had initiated the encounter; a Michigan State University graduate forfeited his shot to play for the NFL after he belatedly learning his accuser had appealed the initial not-guilty finding - he was tried a second time, without his knowledge, and lost.

DeVos' reforms will make these travesties of justice less likely. For one thing, they require cross-examination, which means accused students will be better able to defend themselves. Contrary to what many activists claimed, the new rules do not force sexual assault survivors to face their attackers; the rules specify that attorneys or representatives of the accused and the accuser should do the questioning.

DeVos' reforms also use a more reasonable definition of sexual misconduct - it's no longer all unwanted conduct - while eliminating the single-investigator model, an increasingly popular form of Title IX adjudication in which a sole administrator was charged with investigating the case, gathering evidence, and determining guilt or innocence.

I understand why casual observers might see this as an example of the Trump administration treating rape victims callously - the president himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 19 women, after all. But DeVos' reforms aren't an attack on women - they're an acknowledgement that the existing Title IX guidelines were legally dubious, impractical and unfair. She's taken a step in a better direction.

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Point: Title IX Reforms Are Contentious, but Necessary - InsideSources

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has proposed major changes to federal enforcement of Title IX, the statute that deals with gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct in schools. The changes would restore due process protections for students accused of sexual assault, and thus have earned the ire of victims' advocacy groups, Democratic politicians, and even the American Civil Liberties Union, which usually takes the pro­ due process position.

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2. Exploration Option 3 - Bribery & College Acceptance

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2. Exploration Option 3 - Bribery & College Acceptance

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At the forefront of news media is the scandal involving several wealthy celebrity parents cheating in order to secure admission for their children into elite universities. One article discussing this topic refers to the non-secretive bribery that occurs between the wealthiest Americans (think billionaires, not millionaires) and elite universities. These people publicly donate millions of dollars to various universities and programs. However, they face less scrutiny as it is deemed as charitable donations, rather than bribery (Eaton, 2019). In either scenario, ethical concerns arise. One piece of legislation aimed at limiting these types of incidents proposes donor's inability to claim tax deductions on donations made to universities prior to or during the enrollment of their own children to said university.

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Last week, federal prosecutors announced charges against 33 wealthy parents and more than a dozen others who allegedly helped them use bribes to seek admission for their children to Stanford University, Yale University and other elite institutions.

The entitled audacity of the plotters is grotesque. But what the parents involved all have most in common is that they belong to the class of America's merely rich -- a ragtag collection of millionaires. On the other hand, the scheme does not appear to have involved any of the nation's 500-plus billionaires, plutocrats with several orders of magnitude more wealth.

The absence of billionaires from this particular conspiracy reflects that the most elite U.S. universities and the wealthiest Americans have long collaborated in plain sight to mutual advantage. In his 1955 book, The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills documented that half of the 90 richest Americans at the time who had attended college had gone to the Ivy League, with a third having gone to Harvard University or Yale. Fifty years earlier, the editor and historian Frederick Lewis Allen reported that the nation's 10 top financiers had sent 12 of their 15 sons to Harvard or Yale. The other three went to Amherst College, Brown University and Columbia University.

Over the last 30 years, however, something big has changed in the ties between prestigious universities and the nation's rich and powerful: Wall Street financiers have attained even greater dominance as alumni, donors and governing board members.

Private equity and hedge fund managers have particularly benefited from Ivy League connections, and they have returned the favor. Private equity and hedge funds hardly even existed at the beginning of the 1980s. But financial deregulation made it possible for their managers to make fast fortunes. This led to a rapid migration to the new funds from the ranks of investment banking, a profession long dominated by Ivy League graduates, according to sociologist Lauren Rivera.

Those Ivy Leaguers who joined the private equity and hedge fund revolutions were well rewarded. As part of my ongoing research on the power of financiers in the U.S. higher education system, I used profiles published in the list of the wealthiest Americans to code how each of the noninheriting people on the list attained their wealth. While virtually absent from the list in 1982, private equity and hedge fund managers had come to make up 20 percent of the noninheriting members of the list of the wealthiest Americans by 2017, rivaled only by the billionaires of high tech.

I also coded which universities had conferred degrees to each of the Forbes 400 superrich. This revealed that the nation's wealthiest financiers are much more likely to have Ivy League ties than other economic elites. For 2017, 58 percent of private equity and hedge fund managers had Ivy League degrees, according to my research. Just 30 percent of those from outside finance had an Ivy League degree.

My analysis of the Forbes data adds quantitative evidence to recent qualitative research by Rivera, Megan Tobias Neely and a team of researchers working with Amy J. Binder. These sociologists have shown how elite private universities foster shared identities, trust and social networks that provide advantages to their alumni in ways that have helped keep the top echelons of finance closed to women, people of color and those without degrees from the most prestigious private universities.

For example, when Yale alumnus and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer learned that his fellow Yalie David Swensen had been appointed to lead the university's endowment, he reached out and asked him to invest Yale endowment capital in his upstart Farallon Capital. Two years later, Swensen provided Farallon with $300 million, a third of the firm's total investment capital.

With deep pockets and the élan of wealth, the new financiers also have assumed pre-eminence on the boards of their private university alma maters. I uncovered this transformation by working with Albina Gibadullina to build a data set from profiles of board members published online by the top 30 private universities and top 30 public universities since 2003. We linked our data with lists of the board members for the top 23 private universities in 1989 that were gathered by legal scholar Garry W. Jenkins, who has found an increase in representation of financiers of all types on nonprofit boards.

By tracking the type of financial firm for each financier on universities' boards, we've found that private equity and hedge fund managers together went from just 3 percent of board seats at the top private universities in 1989 to 17 percent in 2014. That drove an increase in the share of board seats going to any kind of financiers, including traditional bankers, from 17 to 32 percent. Private equity and hedge fund managers gained an even larger share of board officer positions, rising from just 4 percent to 32 percent of board chairs, vice chairs and secretaries. This drove an increase in the share of board offices held by any kind of financier from 32 percent to 67 percent. Tellingly, no comparable transformation has occurred at public universities.

Private university board members are explicitly expected to donate generously and raise money from their peers. For example, private equity billionaire Robert Bass joined Stanford's board in 1989 having previously attended its business school. By 1991, Bass had given $25 million to the university. Steyer similarly has given tens of millions of dollars to Stanford, where he served on the board from 2012 to 2017, as well as millions to Yale. Harvard alumnus and hedge fund investor John A. Paulson, who serves on the Dean's Advisory Board of Harvard Business School, gave the university a record-setting $400 million donation in 2015, just a few years after he made billions by betting on the collapse of mortgage-backed securities.

Journalist and author Daniel Golden has shown that the children of trustees and billionaire donors are routinely given admissions preferences. So no illegal bribe is needed to gain an advantage. Golden found, for instance, that Stanford admitted one of Bass's children in 1998 despite grades and an SAT score (1220) that were lower than those of seven of her classmates who were denied admission and below the average for admitted students.

As long as Wall Street and other billionaires retain their privileged access to the nation's most elite schools, millionaire strivers will continue to use whatever means they can -- even the illicit ones revealed last week -- to help their children also gain admittance. The less advantaged simply remain left out. In fact, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have shown that 38 private colleges today enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent for income than from the bottom 60 percent combined.

If we want roll back this persistent inequity, we first will need to break the co-dependency of the Ivy League and powerful economic elites such as those from finance. U.S. senator Ron Wyden, who is the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, announced legislation last week that takes a promising first step in this direction. The bill would eliminate tax deductions for donations given "before or during the enrollment of children of the donor's family." Hopefully, this will be an opening salvo for more creative policy initiatives to level the playing field at America's most elite colleges and universities.

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Wealthy Wall Street donors have legal admissions advantages that should be curtailed (opinion)

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Last week, federal prosecutors announced charges against 33 wealthy parents and more than a dozen others who allegedly helped them use bribes to seek admission for their children to Stanford University, Yale University and other elite institutions. The entitled audacity of the plotters is grotesque.

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The ideal number of sexual assault cases on any college campus is obviously zero. However, data from various sources suggest numbers are significantly higher than this for most institutions. One study conducted by Claude Ann Mellins and Jennifer S. Hirsch, indicated 22% of survey participants indicated some sort of unwanted sexual contact (Howard, 2019). The Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) research was conducted to identify data trends in sexual assault cases and shed light on possible avenues of reform.

Following a directive by the Department of Education (DOE) during Obama's administration, many schools have placed prevention of sexual assault at the forefront of Title IX reform. One aspect of reform is requirements that students participate in Title IX training, sexual assault training, and bystander awareness training (Howard, 2019). The DOE's initiative also indicated sexual assault cases should be evaluated for a "preponderance of evidence" rather than "clear and convincing" or "beyond a reasonable doubt" measures typically used in court. The initiative has served to increase awareness of sexual assault and propagate ideas that sexual assault is easier to report and receive justice for (Howard, 2109).

Proposed reforms to Title IX by Betsy Devoss, under the Trump administration, involve changes to the process such as the required use of cross-examination, altering the definition of sexual misconduct, and eliminating the single-investigator model. With the proposed changes, both the accused and the accuser are to be represented in a form of adjudication to determine guilt or innocence (Soave, 2018). Those in favor of Devoss' reforms cite how unfair prior policies were for the accused, and suggest these policies will follow our government's due process system more closely, making these types of proceedings fair and just for both parties (Soave, 2018).

Critics of the proposed changes indicate this will halt the progress previously made in which students were beginning to feel comfortable reporting sexual misconduct and assault. With stricter guidelines for evaluating claims, they fear students will no longer feel it is worth the effort to report such incidents (Howard, 2019). Trump has been scrutinized for treating sexual assault victims so "callously" (Soave, 2018). It is up to colleges and universities to take these policies and reforms (if and when they pass) to best serve their campuses in a way that sexual misconduct and assault is treated as a serious issue, while ensuring just treatment for all parties involved.

References:
Howard, B. (2019). A Safer Campus Campus. Best Colleges, 38. Retrieved from https://easydb.angelo.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=133007130&site=eds-live

Soave, R. (2018). Point: Title IX reforms are contentious, but necessary. Inside Sources. Retrieved from https://www.insidesources.com/point-title-ix-reforms-are-contentious-but-necessary/

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Angelo State University - Library Online Resources

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Unauthorized use is prohibited; Usage may be subject to security testing and monitoring; Misuse is subject to criminal prosecution; No expectation of privacy except as otherwise provided by applicable privacy laws.

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The topic I chose to research deeper is sexual assault. This issue in relation to Title IX regulations is not a new topic. With impending changes to these regulations, speculation into how colleges will be effected is a trending topic.

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2. Exploration Option 3 - Sexual Assault

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2. Exploration Option 3 - Sexual Assault

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From 2016-2018, sexual assault rates as reported by female undergrad students at Duke University are at 48%. This is up 8% from the 40% reported by females in 2016. Though most students report they generally feel safe on campus, they state they are unsatisfied with policies for preventing and reporting sexual misconduct (Mangan, 2019). There is growing concern that these issues will continue to increase in number due to the proposed changes to Title IX regulations such as: accused right to cross-examine the accuser, narrow scope of incidents colleges are responsible for, as well as allowing for mediation and informal resolution of Title IX matters rather than strictly legal ones (Brown & Mangan, 2018).

Overview of Proposed Changes: https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/245118

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Nearly half of Duke University's female undergraduates say they have been sexually assaulted since enrolling at the university, a sharp increase from the proportion in 2016, according to a report released on Thursday.

Complaints of both sexual assault and sexual harassment increased from 2016 to 2018. It was unclear, the report says, whether that reflected more incidents or a greater awareness of and willingness to report sexual misconduct, given the national attention the problem has received over the past few years.

The report was based on confidential surveys. The latest, conducted last spring, found that 48 percent of the undergraduate women and 14 percent of the undergraduate men who responded said they had been sexually assaulted while they were at Duke. That is up from 40 percent for women and 10 percent for men in 2016.

The survey was sent to every undergraduate and graduate student at Duke who was over the age of 18. Some 6,782 responded, a rate of 40 percent. The survey defined sexual assault as "any unwanted, nonconsensual sexual contact," including sexual battery and rape. It did not include sexual harassment or coerced sexual contact.

Duke's vice president for student affairs, Larry Moneta, said the university's numbers don't appear to be out of line with what the Association of American Universities has found at similar institutions.

In 2015 the AAU conducted a multicampus survey that found that one in four female undergraduates reported being the victim of sexual assault or misconduct. More than 150,000 students at 27 universities - 26 AAU members and one nonmember, Dartmouth College - responded. Duke did not participate in the 2015 survey.

The association plans to conduct a follow-up survey this spring. If the results of Duke's survey are any indication, reports of sexual assault may well be up on other campuses that have instituted procedures to encourage students to recognize and report sexual misconduct.

In 2017 the AAU released a report describing dozens of steps universities had taken to strengthen their policies. The steps include enhancing support for victims, developing interventions for specific student populations, and focusing more on bystander intervention. An AAU spokesman said he could not comment on Duke's survey results or how they compare with those of other universities.

The 2016 Duke survey found that while students generally felt safe on the campus, they weren't happy with the university's procedures for responding to sexual misconduct. Since then, the university has published annual reports showing how many complaints it received and how they were handled. It has also expanded bystander intervention and other training during and after student orientation.

'Not Doing a Good Job'

Last spring Duke conducted the survey again, to see if anything had changed. In the report released on Thursday, both undergraduates and graduate students generally felt better about the campus climate surrounding sexual assault, including overall awareness of the problem and willingness of bystanders to take action.

Still, "a sizable percentage of undergraduate women in particular continue to feel that university leadership could be doing more to protect the safety of students generally, and more than half of undergraduate women continue to feel that Duke is not doing a good job of preventing sexual assault in particular," the report says. The survey was conducted under a contract between Duke and RTI International, an independent, nonprofit institute.

Both surveys found that very few women who said they'd been sexually assaulted reported the incident to the police or to university officials. They were more likely to report it to roommates, friends, or family members. Those who did report it to the authorities generally found the response helpful.

Reports of sexual harassment also increased from 2016 to 2018. While complaints from gay, lesbian, and bisexual students were down, members of those groups were still disproportionately affected. The most common complaints involved unwanted sexual advances, sexual comments, and sexual jokes.

Most incidents involving women happened off campus. For male undergraduates, the complaints were more likely to involve activity on campus.

Many victim's-rights groups worry that off-campus rapes will continue to be swept under the rug if the Education Department's proposed Title IX regulations are approved. Colleges would be required to investigate only cases that happened on their campus or within an educational program or activity.

The most common time for undergraduate women to be assaulted was during September of their freshman year, the survey found. More than half of the assaults, of both men and women, involved drug or alcohol use by the perpetrator or the victim.

Moneta said he wasn't surprised by the findings. Based on conversations with students, he said, he expected the numbers to be higher. While the scope of the problem is troubling, "I believe we have empowered victims to recognize behaviors they felt were normal that they realize now were a violation," Moneta said. "They're also more willing now to acknowledge they've been victimized."

When he asked students how many undergraduate women would report, over the course of their four years, experiencing an unwanted kiss or a deliberate brush on the dance floor or a party that made them uncomfortable, they estimated 90 percent would, Moneta said.

A Duke student took a more critical view. "I can't say we're particularly surprised, but we're disappointed by these numbers," said Tara Smith, a junior and member of Duke Students Against Gender Violence. She's particularly worried about the number of assaults that happen off campus and the additional limits that a revised Title IX procedure might place on the university's ability to investigate them.
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.

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48% of Female Undergrads at Duke Say They Were Sexually Assaulted While Enrolled, Up Sharply From 2016

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Nearly half of Duke University's female undergraduates say they have been sexually assaulted since enrolling at the university, a sharp increase from the proportion in 2016, according to a report released on Thursday. Complaints of both sexual assault and sexual harassment increased from 2016 to 2018.

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2. Exploration Option 1 - Professional Interview

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2. Exploration Option 1 - Professional Interview

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In order to gain insight into legal and ethical issues affecting higher education, I spoke with my friend Stephanie. Though Stephanie is currently filling an academic role at Midland College, she served in student affairs for 6 years prior to this one. The five major topics I identified via our conversation are:
1. Title IX Issues
Title IX required the most attention and caused the most conflicts on campus.
2. Student Organization Sponsored Events
These must be highly regulated for compliance to safety rules, as well as evaluated for ethical and legal issues.
3. Legal Training
Title IX training must be updated annually. Other trainings are shared via email should issues arise and/or administration deem them necessary.
4. Reporting
One issue addressed is the legal requirement for reporting any issues observed. This responsibility affects employees of any facet in higher education.
5. Greater Regulation
Upon increasing legal issues, most colleges are re-vamping their own policies to ensure they match the exact wording recommended by the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). Midland College is rewriting policy to match as well.

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I have worked with high school students for nine years and enjoy working with students to prepare for their higher education ambitions. I am pursuing a degree in Student Development & Leadership in Higher Education. After completion, I plan to secure a student affairs position at our local community college: Western Texas College

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Western Texas College - Home For Western Texas Community College - 50th

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Western Texas College is one of the best Texas Community Colleges around. WTC ranks with the best Texas colleges in the state.