New Title IX regulations will go into effect Aug. 1 — with federal changes expanding the jurisdiction of incidents to include off-campus events, as well as no longer requiring a live hearing for cases of discrimination.
An email from Megan Karbley, Elon University’s director of compliance and Title IX coordinator, went out to all students May 23 explaining some of these changes. Elon is also in the process of hiring another staff member for the Title IX office, Karbley said.
Title IX is a federal law enacted in 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school, including higher education or other education programs that receive funding from the federal government.
In 2020, under former President Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. Secretary of Education Besty DeVos put together new Title IX regulations. This was the first time Title IX had the force and effect of law, meaning the law had to go through a specific process in order to be enforced. These regulations first went through an open-comment period where schools were able to provide comments about Title IX. The federal government then took comments into consideration, assessed costs and burdens of the law and then put the regulations in place to be enforced.
Many of the new regulations that will go into effect on Aug. 1 will reverse regulations from 2020, Karbley said. One regulation from 2020 was requiring a live hiring with cross examination, which allows the accused person’s adviser, who could be an attorney, to question the person accusing an offense. This extra, and possibly intimidating step, could discourage people from filing a report, Karbley said.
“That was a big change and a pretty big concern for a lot of people,” Karbley said. “We were worried … that would create what we call a chilling effect on reporting.”
In August, this will no longer be a federal requirement. While implementing this requirement was a change at the federal level, Elon had been doing live hearings for a long time prior to that, according to Karbley. However, the Title IX office — in collaboration with the Gender and LGBTQIA Center staff — is looking at what it would mean to take out the live hearing requirement, Karbley said.
Another change is the jurisdiction of incidents reported. As of the 2020 regulations, any sex-based discrimination and sexual harassment that happened off-campus could not fall under Title IX, Karbley said. This led Elon to create its sexual misconduct policy, where off-campus incidents are categorized. Now, the new regulations make it so there no longer needs to be a separate policy and off-campus incidents will be treated the same way and the Title IX office is working on consolidating both of these processes into one.
“If someone is sexually harassed at Fat Froggs, we can consider it under the same Title IX policy,” Karbley said. “That's helpful because if you look at the student conduct process, the student conduct policy says you're a student everywhere, and so the Title IX policy has been separate from that, Title IX only applies when you're here. Now we get to kind of realign ourselves with other similar processes on campus.”
With these changes, Karbley said she hopes to simplify the process for students who file reports. Overall, Karbley said 4% of students who have a meeting or email Karbley decide to actually go through the formal complaint and resolution process, which includes an investigation and a live hearing. Kapley said she hopes that — especially with reexamining the need for a live hearing — more students follow through with this process.
“I'm really hopeful that will help folks feel more comfortable coming forward if that's something that they want to do because they feel like they have more options,” Karbley said. “That's really the goal, that … ‘I could feel some type of resolution, I could feel like I have support.’”
Moving forward, one question Karbley said her and other Title IX administrators have is whether Title IX regulations will continue to change based on the views of the presidential administration. She also said this may be one reason why the new regulations don’t explicitly include athletics in regulations regarding gender identity — as to avoid controversy and possibly being changed when a new administration comes into power.
The debate surrounding athletics is mainly based in transgender athletes as more states, including North Carolina, have prohibited transgender women from competing in women’s sports — which is not mentioned in the new regulations. But, the new regulations do explicitly state that sexual orientation and gender identity is to be included in Title IX.
With the addition of the new staff member for the Title IX office, Karbley said the new role will include more front-facing training and education for Title IX. She also said the office is interviewing candidates for the role now and hopes to have the new staff member begin working at Elon at the beginning of the fall semester. If someone has any questions about what their options are for Title IX, this would be someone they could meet with. One of Karbley’s goals for the office and for the new staff member is to help increase the accessibility of Title IX, she said.
One thing Karbley said she has noticed is that some students, when thinking about Title IX, only envision filing a formal complaint. But the office does more than that, including providing students resources, such as giving academic support letters to students struggling and having informal meetings, she said.
If students do choose to go through with a formal complaint, Karbley said she wants to improve upon the office’s transparency and help students through that process.
“My hope is that folks feel like if they decide to engage in any way, that that for them is part of their healing journey and it’s a big commitment,” Karbley said. “One of the things that’s important to me is that even if things take a long time, even as they are difficult, there are ebbs and flows to that process and investigations and hearings. I think we can improve upon just checking in with people.”