Staying Alert with Title IX Issues & Events
Not for Lack of Interest
By Sally Jenkins, Indianapolis, April 2, 2005

If a university had catered solely to my "interests" as an 18-year-old undergraduate, the entire campus would have been converted into a giant bar offering cheap beer and free pool. My only textbook would have been Stephen King's "The Stand," and dining hall cuisine would have consisted of Nacho Cheese Doritos. Mercifully, the university offered something more.
 
There are a lot of things I never thought I had an "interest" in, starting with the Bible and including Renaissance painting. I'm particularly proud of what I wasn't interested in, because the list mainly reflects my ignorance. Generally, when I lack interest in something, it's because I don't know enough about it. What I once thought of as morbid philosophy and gloomy literature I now think quite differently of. That's because I was a moron.
 
"Interest" is a word that dogs women's sports—it inherently suggests that, on some level, games are still not an entirely legitimate subject for females. The Bush administration recently suggested that women should have to prove their "interest" in sports, via new language that tampers with Title IX. This is shocking not because it's sexist, but that it's such a regressive, anti-educational thought on the part of an administration that supposedly prizes fresh thinking.
 
Take a moment, and conduct a survey of yourself. List the things you never would have been interested in, until they were made available to you. The current assumption is that interest always precedes accessibility. History, and the expansion of your own mind, shows it's just the opposite.
 
For the entire article, click here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19944-2005Apr1.html 
 

American Association of University Women: www.aauw.com
"AAUW Decries Decision in Simpson vs. University of Colorado": The American Association of University Women (AAUW) Legal Advocacy Fund expressed its profound disappointment in a judge’s ruling dismissing the case of Simpson v. University of Colorado (CU), noting that the decision sends a chilling message to rape victims and clouds the strength of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
 
"In this case, and in independent reports and investigations, it has been demonstrated that over the course of many years CU has fostered a sexually hostile environment and chosen not to address and remedy it any meaningful way,” said Leslie T. Annexstein, director of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund. “The court’s decision sends the discouraging message to other campus women who may be in a similar situation that proving your case may be an uphill battle."   For a full summary of the case, visit http://www.aauw.org/laf/cases/simpson.cfm