Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
Title IX is the federal prohibition against gender discrimination in education.
In recent years, it was expanded by the Obama Administration to require schools to address reports of sexual violence and harassment "promptly and effectively."
It's a task, which some could argue, is much more easily said than done. The University of California system has taken a number of steps to comply. The latest is their announcement this week of their first-ever
This week, they announced their first-ever system-wide Title IX coordinator.
Kathleen Salvaty will be taking on the new role next month. She's an attorney who most recently worked as Title Nine coordinator at UCLA. She joined Take Two to discuss how she envisions her new role.
What she sees as the biggest challenge of the job:
"It's just the sheer scope... when we talk about it, or we read guidance, it seems simple. The obligation is simple, right? To take care of your students. When you put it into practice on the ground, I can tell you, having done it here at UCLA, it's very challenging."
What her benchmark for success is:
"I think our benchmark would be that we are getting reports of sexual violence and sexual harassment when they occur; that most people believe that we are promptly responding; and really, I think that we change the culture in the university and understand how sexual harassment and sexual violence can impact a student's access."
How President-elect Trump's pick of Betsy DeVos as the new Secretary of Education might impact the work universities do to combat campus sexual assault:
"It's certainly something that we're all thinking about. This whole energizing of Title IX and pushing the universities to do better on it, has been driven in large part by the students and I don't think that's going to change. Students are going to continue to demand equal access to their education and demand that universities respond to sexual harassment and sexual violence. I don't think any government administration is going to change that."