Perhaps we could find someone from the National Women's Law Center to join
this
discussion on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the three
major
Supreme court decisions that have gutted that law since the step forward in
1992 with Franklin v. Gwinnett. Title IX is a funding law, as I have
pointed
out (you can also glance at the annual Georgetown Review of Gender and the
Law,
which I sometimes advise), and therefore does not protect people in school
comprehensively. In addition, most cases involving sexual harassment peter
out
on appeal--lawyers for the plaintiffs know that there is no point in
pressing
them anymore, and so do the well-paid lawyers for school districts around
the
country. The fact that the public still thinks that sexual harassment is
not a
good thing is very good--that is what we must have as a prerequisite in
order
to change the law. But as long as educators and educational equity
advocates do
not understand the law, both the legislated regulations and the case law,
as
well as the administrative law that springs up around regulations, we don't
have a snowball's chance in hell of actually changing a discriminatory
school
system that functions on sexual harassment and constructs an economy and
social
system of unequal wages, unequal opportunities, and sexual assault and
violence. It is our own ignorance that continues to cripple us.
Linda Purrington
Title IX Advocates
lpurring@earthlink.net
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