Federal documents on the case

I can't find this reported in the news, and stumbled across it while reading case docs. In the letter OCR published, I noticed that the names were not redacted, nor email, and the guy who filed had "Dr." as his title. I looked him up, along with his university email in the case docs, and discovered he WAS THE PRESIDENT OF THE SCHOOL.

The complaint addressed a number of programs at the school, and OCR nailed the school on the following:

  • Returning Women Students
  • Center for Women in Technology
  • Women of Color Collective
  • Charlotte W. Newcombe Scholarship
  • Jodi Mister/Newcombe Scholarship
  • Bryson-Neville Scholarship
  • Rosalie Tydings Scholarship

Notable language where OCR bitch-slaps the school in the letter:

OCR’s investigation to date revealed concerns that the University administers and promotes programs and scholarships that contain restrictions or preferences on the basis of race and/or sex. OCR acknowledges that the University has taken preliminary steps to begin the process of identifying which programs and scholarships contain such restrictions, and where restrictions exist, and intends to take steps to ensure they do not have a discriminatory effect. OCR’s investigation to date does not have information or documentation to verify the University’s process or otherwise corroborate its assertions.

Contextualize this with the reporting party being the president himself, and the story gets real interesting. It looks like the school was lying about taking action to OCR, and the president was able to rat them out. I suspect the school was unaware the president was the one who filed and was sending them info about what was going on.

A school getting in trouble for this stuff is rare. Normally OCR employs a variety of methods to make it go away quietly, including statement of action by the school at face value. Not here. Note that OCR mentions "preference" in the following statement:

OCR’s investigation to date revealed concerns that the University administers and promotes programs and scholarships that contain restrictions or preferences on the basis of race and/or sex.

This is not typical for OCR, which has normally allowed statements of preference to exist, and usually calls it "encouragement" for the demographics it shows preference for. Such as this case I filed, where OCR said labeling an event "all female" was compliant I can't overstate how monumental this language and outcome is. No doubt, such a resolution could not be secured if it wasn't the president himself who filed.

I wonder what was going on behind the scenes were the president was powerless to stop this from happening. How bad are things in University where a president has to go to OCR to get things like this at his own school to end? Did he go to OCR because the rest of the admin wouldn't fix it? Did he go to OCR as an activist looking for the government to make a public example of the school? Either way, this is amazing.