Vice President Joe Biden has designed a plan to prohibit sexual violence in schools. This plan is an expansion of Title IX, a civil rights law for gender equality in education, designed to educate both faculty and students about sexual discrimination and how to respond to sexual assault. This is in hopes that it will reduce the amount of sexual discrimination on campuses. While the plan may seem like a good idea that is going to help stop sexual violence, it is an idea that is already implemented.
Students and faculty are already educated about the negative effects of sexual violence. More education will not purely stop all sexual violence that occurs. A letter from the United States Department of Education and its Office of Civil Rights states that information about sexual violence should be in the schools’ handbooks; however, I remember it being in my handbook when I was in high school and there were still cases of sexual harassment. Even if it wasn’t in a handbook and they put it in there, very few people read the handbook front to back. Most students throw it away or put it somewhere and leave it for the rest of the school year. A sheet of paper about sexual violence collecting dust along with the rest of the handbook is not an effective way to educate people.
Educating people about a topic as sensitive as sexual violence cannot be through paper and books; to effectively educate someone risks must be taken. For example, after the sexual assault here at N.C. State the red and white flags were put up in Carolina Court, showing that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted by the end of their college career. Every time students walk by the flags they think of what it means. That is an example of effective education.
Another problem with Title IX was that it is very wordy. Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights, Russlynn Ali said, “[The Office of Civil Rights] is already working with schools to help them in their fight against the harmful effects of sexual violence by providing technical assistance and seeking remedies designed to stop such conduct, prevent its recurrence and remediate its impact.”
My question is, what remedies are they speaking of? Also what technical assistance? What remedies are so influential that they’re going to stop all sexual violence, prevent it from ever reoccurring again, and remediate its impact? These are all things that no one has a direct way to fix. Biden might be able to implement more education about sexual violence but he cannot stop every person from committing an act of sexual violence.
While reading through the letter from the United States Department of Education I came across a statement multiple times that quite frankly bothered me. “If a school determines that sexual harassment that creates a hostile environment has occurred, it must take immediate action to eliminate the hostile environment, prevent its recurrence and address its effects.”
This statement seems to be pointing out that if and only if a hostile environment is the result of sexual harassment then immediate action will be taken; not just if sexual harassment has occurred. In my opinion, immediate action should be taken after any act of sexual harassment, not only the acts that result in a hostile environment. While Biden’s intentions are good, in order to relieve the problem of sexual violence, he is going to have to get a little more creative with his ideas of educating people. Maybe looking into the way N.C. State handled its recent assault will help Biden’s plan become a little more plausible.
