(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

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 educational programs or activity receiving federal funding.

That's from the preamble to the Title IX of the education amendments of 1972.

Joining us to talk about that during this Journal will be three people from the university at Bowling Green State University, Lakeshia Dowlen, Jennifer McCary, and also a distinguished teaching professor emeritus at BGSU, Janet Parks.

And I wanna welcome Jennifer McCary.

Thank you for being here.

And Janet Parks, thank you.

That's the preamble.

And as I think Janet, we're gonna talk about in this segment, which is to kind of bring the historical background of what title IX began as, as to what so many people may interpret it as now or did in that time, Title IX was basically an education piece.

It wasn't as familiar.

A lot of people think it's just simply sports.

But it was really based on education and trying to prevent discrimination in education.

So talk a little bit about the historical aspects of that, how it developed and how it came about in 1972.

- Well, actually, you're right.

Most people think it is all about sport and it became very much about sport, but originally the original conception started in 1969 with a woman named Bernice Sandler, who is known as the godmother of Title IX.

And she had just gotten her doctorate at the University of Maryland.

And there were seven positions open in her department and she didn't get considered for any of them.

And she asked one of her colleagues, why was I not considered?

And he said to her, well, let's face it Bernice, you come on too strong for a woman.

Bernice calls those the five words that created Title IX.

- [Steve] Too strong for a woman.

- Too strong for a woman.

Well, she did what a lot of us did back then.

She went home and cried, and her then husband said, no, that's not what happened.

This is sex discrimination.

And sex discrimination wasn't a thing then, nobody knew what that even meant.

So she continued to look for a job.

She continued to experience discrimination such as, we don't like to hire women because they get pregnant and then they quit, or you'll be home with your kids and you won't be at work, and things that on the surface sound so reasonable that are just really outrageous.

And so she decided to start looking into what some of the people of color had done to get their rights and some of the laws that were passed and she couldn't find anything that related to sex.

She found an executive order that Lyndon Johnson had signed in 1965 that prohibited federal contractors from discriminating based on color, race and national origin, but sex wasn't in there.

But Bernice Sandler was an academic and she saw a footnote and she looked at the footnote and in 1968, Lyndon Johnson had amended his executive order to include sex.

So she says that she was all alone, but she shrieked out loud and said, schools are federal contractors.

So this is our door open to get some legislation passed having to do with sex discrimination in our schools.

And every time I look at that, I think of two lessons.

I think of her colleagues saying "too strong for a woman" and I think, be careful what you say to strong women.

They might go out and change the world.

You never know.

And the other thing is read the footnotes.

- Yeah, the fine print.

- Look at the fine print because that's what got us where we are today.

- And you wonder, I know we can't get back to that, but why it showed up in the footnote, why Lydon Johnson would've sort of slid it in there after the fact in 1968, someone obviously said, hey, by the way, this needs to be in there and that's what he did.

- I guess.

I don't know the details on that.

I'm just glad he did it.

- It's funny that one three letter word made a huge, huge difference.

- And Patsy Mink really helped to push that and is one of the co-authors of title IX.

And so I think that it's important for us to also remember that Title VI and Title VII did proceed title IX.

They were a part of the civil rights act of 1964.

And so people knew that it was a thing to not discriminate against folks based on protected class, but it's important to hear about how it evolved to really shape education and how we thought about non-discrimination within education and specific to what has evolved, people still say sex because that's the way it's written in the preamble.

But gender certainly is something that we try to be inclusive of.

- Well, and it's interesting because I looked at some of the stats on this a little bit, and they said before title IX, fewer than half of the students in universities were women.

And this obviously had an impact on that as well, because it did open other doors, you said it opened doors in a lot of ways, but especially in access to education or programs, because there were certain programs that said, well, really women don't do this sort of thing and they don't become this or that, they do this, this and this, not that, that and that.

- Well, and as far as admissions, there's a very interesting letter in our Center For Archival Collections written by a woman named Betty Boyer.

Elizabeth Boyer was in 1937 graduate of Bowling Green State University.

And they wanted her to get an award, I think, an alumni of the year or something.

And she refused it because she said you're still not admitting women and what they wrote back and at the same rate as men.

And they wrote back and said, well, we can't because, seriously, they wrote, we can't because men will graduate and get really good jobs and then donate back to the university whereas women will not get those good jobs.

- The interesting thing is Elizabeth Boyer still has a fund here to support students.

And so it contradicted everything folks thought.

- Isn't that amazing that that was even part of the thought process at that time?

- The other thought process is they wanted to keep a 50/50 ratio of men to women because of course, all men were looking for a woman and all women were looking for men.

And so they had to keep that ratio.

And even though more women had the GPA to get in than men, they passed over those to add men who didn't have the GPA, so we could keep that social balance.

- Interesting.

And we've got just a couple of minutes in this segment, so that's how we got to that.

That's how we got the initiation, we got it started.

How has that evolved now over time, like the last 40 years cause we're 50 years now, June 23rd is the 50th anniversary.

How is that different today now in terms of access and things, those kind of things aren't even a consideration now.

Hopefully.

We hope that people don't still apply those kind of rules to admission and things like that.

- I think that that's why title IX is still a very relevant part of our conversation today.

It has evolved certainly through the Department of Education, their office for civil rights overseas, title IX.

And we've seen it evolve over 50 years from something that people only thought about in sports and it certainly changed the sports and athletics world, but also it has expanded to also cover things such as sexual harassment and being sure that people are not sexually harassed in the workplace, on campuses, and things of that nature.

And we've watched various regulations in each administration take their own spin on how title IX is to be really carried out.

And so institutions work to be in compliance with title IX, but we have to always remember that the center of it is people and making sure that people are taken care of and not discriminated against, and so the evolution has to certainly keep in mind who it's there to serve.

- Well historically, is there anything that we haven't touched on real briefly that we wanna make sure that people understand about the historical context of this?

- No, just, well, one thing is the systemic discrimination that was going on, I briefly mentioned it, but it was in every area of universities and high schools.

It was on admissions, it was on salaries, it was on facilities.

And as I lived through that period and we did these audits, we did salary studies.

We did all kinds of studies to gather the data that showed where we needed to patch things up to bring women up to the level they needed to be.

And I will tell you, it was not easy.

It was not easy.

But it was well worth every minute we spent on it.

- If people take the time to look and read about the track that this had to take, it's pretty incredible.

- And real quick, I'll just say if people are interested in following it, every issue, because the library here is so good, they have every issue of the BG news online.

And a lot about title IX is in those BG news's so they can follow that.

- Okay.

Well, great.

Janet Parks, thanks for being here with us on segment, and Jennifer, you'll be back as we go through this.

Back in just a moment more about Title IX here on "The Journal" on WBGU PBS.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal".

We're talking about Title IX, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary of implementation tonight, June 23rd, 1972 is when title IX effectively became law in the United States of America.

And I'm joining this segment by chief diversity and belonging officer at BGSU, Jennifer McCary, and also Lakeshia Dowlen, who is the director of title IX at BGSU.

And we talked a little bit about the history and the background and why title IX needed to be put into place, how it came about.

Part of what we wanna talk about too, is clearing up what title IX is and what it's not.

And one of the things is who is protected by title IX ,Jennifer?

So let's start there.

And then we'll kind of expand into detail on that.

- So title IX is a non-discrimination law based on sex.

And so it really does protect everyone based on perceived or actual identity when it comes to sex.

And so there's a misconception that it only applies to women, that it's specific.

And so that's one of the things that needs to be cleared up is because it does apply to anybody who feels they're being discriminated against based on sex.

- Yeah, and I know with the university, and obviously in all walks of life, people go through training on that to make sure that it isn't just one gender or the other gender.

It is, as you said, gender, everyone is protected by this in some fashion.

Now Lakisha, you're obviously director of title IX.

So that means you're carrying the heavy water on this a lot of the time.

So talk about what that means, the office of title IX, what are the kind of things that you get into and what are some things that people still have misconceptions about when they come to you about it or maybe don't come to you and should?

- Yeah, like you had talked about earlier is that every time administration is a different administration, they change the policies or change the law a little bit.

And we have to be in compliance a little bit differently from years past.

And that's definitely happened in the past three years.

Ever since I got into the position, I've sort of had to change the policy every year and probably will change it again this year to meet the requirements of title IX as the law has indicated.

And so I think misconceptions outside of the fact that it is only for female students or female identifying students is also this idea that the university is someone that only protects the person who's making the complaint or the complainant or the alleged victim in a particular situation.

And that's definitely not the case.

Because we wanna make sure that there is this equity with our students on our campus so they understand that we don't make a decision until an outcome has been determined one way or the other, if they go through a process.

So there are things in place that we wanna make sure that we are doing to make sure that they are still participating at the university the way they intended as students here, or maybe even staff or employees as well.

But that's something that misconception that people don't report because they know that we are going to maybe not believe the person that's reporting.

And we do a lot of education around making sure people understand that my number one concern is making sure that folks are supported, they have an understanding of what the policy is and what the procedures are so they can make a determination of what they wanna have in the next steps.

- And I guess, and Jennifer, you can jump in here too, that as you said, this evolves every so often a lot of times, depending on who happens to be in the president.

And it has evolved over time, depending on how each administration puts its interpretation on the law because it's a public law, but open to interpretation with executive orders and things of that nature.

So that obviously makes it difficult even in the limited university setting to keep everybody educated and clear on what to do and what not to do or how to do it.

So talk a little about the challenge of that.

That's gotta be an ongoing issue.

- There are a number of challenges and to Lakeshia's point, it is about making sure that we have regular training and that people don't think, oh, I did training last year, so much could change in one year.

And title IX is one of those things that's connected to so many other laws.

And even though there's been some attempts to sparse them out, we're still paying attention to things like the cleary act and the violence against women, blah blah.

And so there are things where we're trying to make sure that we are in compliance and helping people understand and be educated about each of those.

And so people just need to show up to trainings, log in and participate, no matter if you're on this campus or anywhere else, there needs to be this awareness of who title IX is here to serve and protect and that we get rid of some of those misconceptions about how things will be handled and resolved.

And one of those big misconceptions is, again, that it's only for folks who identify as women.

- Now the Cleary act, that's been I always say a moving target a little bit too, because again, interpretations by the Department of Justice and Department of Education, that's evolved over time.

Moves back and forth all the time.

So where do we stand, first of all, explain what the Cleary act is and then how it's applied right now.

- So Jean Cleary was a student at Lehigh University and after she was unfortunately raped and murdered in her residence hall room, her parents were able to have the Cleary act pass and it helped to set up that we report out on the various crimes that are happening on and around the campus community.

It also helped with a number of other things.

There's an annual security report.

There's a whole lot we can go into with Cleary, but there's a clear geographical map and things within that are reported out so that we can be transparent about what's happening.

And then that we're also reporting out on our policies in that annual security report on how we're going to actually resolve things such as title IX incidents that are reported on a college campus.

- So it really opened up a lot of transparency that had not existed before.

So let's face it, most institutions, any organization doesn't want to talk about bad news.

And obviously having incidents as you described is not something you want to have people know about, at least now that's required, there's clarity there, there's transparency.

So if a parent wants their student to come here, they can understand, well, let's take a look at the Cleary report and you said annual report comes out every year, and of course you're involved in getting all of that data collected.

- I think one of the great things about what we do at Bowling Green State University, we're really great in collaboration.

So it's a feat that takes my office, the campus safety office, the office of the Dean of students, and many other offices around campus to start to come together to make sure that we have the correct information to be a part of this report and that we're updated on different definitions and things that that report dictates us to do.

So it is definitely a collaborative effort.

And one we take seriously because we wanna make sure that we are being transparent and not hiding anything from our public.

- And we go through at the university, obviously the television station is a part of the university.

We go through all of that training.

And of course the being able to recognize the situations and your responsibility to report is a big part of that.

And we do that on an annual basis and we'll go through it now but of course, Corporation of Public Broadcasting, we go through that as well.

So we get multiple layers, but it's very important that people understand when they see something, hear something, whatever, what their responsibility is to report, and then you folks can then get involved and we'll talk about how that all involves in just a moment, but it's important that people understand and organizations have realized the value of that.

And obviously we do here at the university as well.

We'll pick that up in just a moment.

Back in just a second more about title IX, what it is today, back on "The Journal" in just a moment.

You're with us here on "The Journal" and our guests are Jennifer McCary, the chief diversity and belonging officer at Bowling Green State University, and also at Lakeshia Dowlen, who is the director of title IX here at BGSU.

We talked about the current status of titls IX, but let's talk about an example of an incident.

How does that process work?

Someone sees something or believes they see something that title IX applies to.

And I know we wanna talk about too, that it isn't just about sexual harassment, sexual discrimination.

There are other pieces of that, but how does that process start to work as we sit here today, because we know it evolves over time and sometimes gets interpreted different ways by different administrations, but how does that process work today, if someone comes to you and says, I think I need to talk to you about this, I think I have a complaint, what happens?

- I think what is really great about some of the iterations of title IX law is the creation of my position, title IX coordinator.

And so my sole responsibility is oversee the process and the education and the training as it relates to title IX.

And one of the things that we've tried to do is streamline how reports are made or make it very simple.

And so the university has a reporting form that anyone can use that makes it pretty easy to collect that information or share information, but also we in the past year or so, especially with the latest iteration of Title IX, folks can contact me anyway they see fit, through email, coming into my office, calling me on the phone.

So all of that makes it easier.

But when I get a report from anyone, the first thing that I wanna do is make sure that we are taking into account the safety of those that are on the report.

And if it's our students, if it's our staff members, the first goal is really to get whoever is reporting the alleged act into someone's office, either mine or working with the Dean of student's office so we can talk through what their needs are, what is going on, how can I help you and then really explain the next steps of the process.

Part of that is making sure that that person has the ability to make some decisions.

Because not everything that is reported ends up having an outcome that is dictated by our process.

Sometimes it's just offering a student some support and making sure that they're able to continue being a student here at Bowling Green State University.

So some supportive measures could be put into place, but the goal is to act very swiftly, the turnaround, we try to make it pretty quick in terms of getting people connected and contacting folks to get them in our office.

So that's where the process starts.

And usually with my office, no matter what it is, we don't want people to have to make determinations of should this go to title IX or should this go to the Dean of students, just come to me and then I'll take care of sorting that out.

- And I guess that's obviously when you look at the office of diversity and belonging, that's a piece of that whole picture that you're trying to build that sort of transparency and accessibility and the comfort level of saying I think I need to talk to somebody about that, you go to a door and then they can say, well, it's not me, but here, I'll put you in connection with the person you need to talk to about this.

Yeah.

So as you said, it's allow those different organizations and individuals, employees, everybody is responsible for that.

- And I love that you made that connection, Steve, because a lot of people will ask why is the office of Title IX in the division of diversity and belonging, but that is exactly it, it is really about making sure that people feel safe, included and that they belong.

And so Lakeshia and her team do a great job and the office of the Dean of students and a number of other partners across campus, because it does take the entire campus community.

We still work really closely with athletics.

We work with health and wellness, pregnancy is another issue covered under Title IX.

And so making sure that we're helping to support our students who are working toward having a family to be sure that they are also really understanding how to have the accommodations that they need as well.

And so all of it is about belonging.

- I think, and the important thing too is, as you guys have made clear, that you wanna make sure that people do feel comfortable coming forward.

Because that had been an impediment in years past, not recently here, but in a lot of places, well, nothing will happen or they would actually, in some cases we've heard where universities or offices would counsel people not to say anything, but that's obviously the exact wrong thing to do.

And it's really clear when we go through that training, that is not an acceptable answer.

Don't rock the boat, don't do this.

And I think that's the important thing.

Now you talk about too, I know Lakeshia that not everything that comes to you or to another office within this area goes through a full process.

But if it starts to do that, and you talked about, of course protecting identities and protecting people personally, that kind of thing, how does that work?

So if something does actually rise to the level of, okay, we need to start moving through the steps now, what happens then?

- So I think what's important is that that every person that is involved understands their rights and their responsibilities going through the process.

So due process is key that we are very transparent about what is being reported or alleged that folks understand the timeline around it.

They understand the process completely.

And that's the first step when we are starting an investigation process.

And so my office, along with the office of the Dean of students are the folks that sort of oversee those pieces.

And we work closely with general counsel in a lot of different areas.

And so basically we schedule an investigation, it takes however long it needs to take, but we try to make sure that we are very timely in that.

And then from the investigation, there are a couple different places it could go.

And so we could get into a situation or in a hearing where there are individuals there that have to speak for themselves or on behalf of others, but there's informal processes as well, where we don't make it to that point.

There might be a mediation or something set up for folks to engage in conversations to talk about the alleged harmful acts that have happened and how that has impacted someone.

And so there's different opportunities for that, but the outcome is the same.

We wanna make sure that at the end of any process, that we've done something to sort of make sure that we're keeping the campus safe, that that person is safe, that we've been fair and equitable in our process and that we are making sure, you know, picking at the situation so that that type of behavior doesn't happen again.

- Preventing the recurrence and then also hopefully helping our campus culture and climate be the best that it can be.

- Good.

Well yeah, that'll work.

We can leave it right there, I know that we could go on.

There's a lot more here, as we were talking, there's a lot of other information we could spend a lot more time on, but the bottom line is people need to understand if they have questions about Title IX, it's very easy to find information online.

Hopefully you find accurate information online, but there is something that applies to a much wider range of things than a lot of people think.

So I wanna thank you, Jennifer McCary for being here, Lakeshia Dowlen, thank you.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM and we will see you again next time on "The Journal".

Good night and good luck.

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