Much of the renewed
interest around Title IX can be attributed to more guidance from the U.S.
Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and communication from the
White House about campus sexual assaults, said Scott Lewis, a founder of the
Association of Title IX administrators.
Lewis, who's also a
partner with the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, has
helped train thousands of college and university investigators.
Schools have been
criticized in recent years for not doing enough to make victims of sexual
misconduct feel safe on campus and for questioning victims' character, sexual
behavior and drinking habits, among other things, Lewis said.
It's possible that
some schools are overcorrecting now for past mistakes, he said.
"For a long time,
the pendulum was swung very heavily to the due process rights of the accused,
at the expense of the victim at times," Lewis said. "So as the
pendulum begins to come back to the middle, and we have good impartial
decisions made by investigators, there are some schools that have swung that
pendulum a little far."
In an April 2014
newsletter, Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX
Administrators, described his recent involvement in five cases where he
believed universities mistakenly found men guilty of sexual misconduct when
alcohol was involved.
"Finding each of
the accused in violation of sexual misconduct is sex discrimination," he
wrote. "We are making Title IX plaintiffs out of them."
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