Category Archives: Women in Congress

He said what?!?

“Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow.”

            Whoa! A judge deciding a pre-Title IX case actually said that. We’ll get to him in a little bit.

            In August 1970, Susan Hollander, a sophomore at Hamden High School in Connecticut, started running a mile a day, in preparation for trying out for her school’s track team. The problem? There was no girls track team at her school, so she planned to try out for the boys team.

            When school started, she began training with the boys team. The cross country coach was willing to let her compete, and the boys didn’t seem to mind. But the football coach saw her running with the boys and reported her to the athletic director.

            “The rules are against that. You have to tell her she can’t work out with you,” the athletic director told her coach, Carl Westberg.*

Going the distance

            The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) got involved and ruled that Susan couldn’t run with the boys. The CIAC had banned co-ed teams, so if a girl wanted to participate in a particular sport and her school didn’t have a girls team, she couldn’t play.

            Fortunately, Susan’s father was a lawyer, and a runner himself. They brought a lawsuit against the Hamden school board. They were joined in the lawsuit by a swimmer at another Connecticut school, Jane Frederickson of Willimantic High School. Their suit was on behalf of all female athletes in the state of Connecticut who wanted to participate in non-contact sports on boys teams.

            The next year, in the spring of 1971, a judge dismissed the suit.

            “The challenge to win and the glory of achievement, at least for many boys, would lose incentive and become nullified,” wrote Judge John Clark Fitzgerald of allowing girls’ participation.**

            Not satisfied with that pronouncement, Judge Fitzgerald continued with the statement that I started my post with, one that has become infamous post-Title IX. 

            “Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow.***

            Eye roll!

No support here

            The lawsuit went on to U.S. District Court in New Haven, this time backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. There, in January 1973, the young athletes won the right to compete.

            Judge Jan O. Newman limited the victory, however. The girls could compete on a boys team only if there wasn’t a comparable team for girls at the school. The ruling was also considered an experiment that was to last just one year. And — get this! — compliance was up to the administration at each school.

            Reaction to the ruling was as breathtakingly tone-deaf as Judge Fitzgerald’s comments.

            “If they want to play on my team, they can shower with my team,” huffed one Connecticut basketball coach.****

            And, instead of supporting the girls, the head of the CIAC’s Girls Athletic Committee trashed them.

            “It’s doubtful that either could be competitive on the same level with the boys,” Arden Curtis sniffed.

            Susan Hollander never benefited from the lawsuit she brought. At the time of the court victory, she was a senior, and her school had added a girls spring track team, which she joined. Even before the victory, she was willing to let the hubbub die down.

            “I don’t particularly enjoy all the attention,” she told the media.† “I just want to be on a team.” 

                                                ___________________________

* Lori Riley, “Changing A Mind-Set That Kept Girls Out Of Track, Cross Country,” The Hartford Courant (June 26, 2012).

** Judge’s Ruling Keeps Girl Off Cross Country Team” The Hartford Courant (April 1, 1971), p. 27.

*** Shelley Smith. “Not Quite the Game Intended,” Nike is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports. Ed. Lissa Smith (New York: Grove Atlantic, 1998), p. 300.

**** Bob Baird, “CIAC Girls’ Activities Head Opposes Coed Competition,” The Bridgeport Post (January 26, 1973), p. 32. Arden Curtis’s quote comes from this article as well.

† Hartford Courant, p. 27.

Schlafly v. Title IX

When you hear the name Phyllis Schlafly, what comes to mind? Her battle against the Equal Rights Amendment, of course. But when her name came up in my last blog post, I got to wondering whether she’d also campaigned against Title IX.

            First, the facts of her life. I had no idea she was a lawyer. Phyllis Stewart Schlafly earned her BA and JD at Washington University and a masters at Radcliffe. She was a Republican activist who founded the Eagle Forum, a conservative political interest group that she helmed until her death in 2016 at the age of 92. She was the author and co-author of many books, including an anti-feminist book titled,  “The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say.”

            Schlafly worked tirelessly to defeat the ERA, arguing that it would erase traditional gender roles and force women out of the home. She — a working woman. How ironic! She stoked fears that single-gender bathrooms would disappear (well, she saw the future), force courts to approve same-sex marriage (again, ahead of the curve), that women would be forced to serve in military combat roles and that older women would lose their Social Security benefits.

            Her campaigns were made for TV. She dropped off homemade pies to legislators with the slogan, “I am for mom and apple pie.” Ironically, Schlafly and her sister had been raised by a working mother. Odile Stewart was a librarian and teacher. She supported the family through long stretches of her husband’s unemployment during the Great Depression.

Fly, Eagle, fly

            Schlafly used the Eagle Forum as a platform for her views on Title IX. In 2003, she ridiculed Bernice Sandler, the “Godmother of Title IX,” for believing that women should have — or that they even want — equal opportunity to participate in sports.*

            “But now enter from stage left a feminist named Bernice Sandler,” she wrote, “who took over the Office of Civil Rights in Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education.

            “She picked the innocuous word ‘proportionality’ out of the dictionary (not out of the law), and turned it into a feminist code word for one of three tests by which college athletic departments would be judged as to their compliance with Title IX. She created a new definition for this word: if 56 percent of a student body is female, then 56 percent of the students playing on athletic teams must be female.”

            It’s this “proportionality” test that Schlafly objected to. This test examines whether the number of male and female students enrolled in the school’s athletics programs matches the male/female student body ratio.

            “This rule is not only unfair but ridiculous because men like to play sports far more than women do,” she said. “It’s a fact of human nature that female college students do not seek to play on athletic teams in anywhere near the percentage that male students do.”**

            Overall, Schlafly believed that enforcing Title IX is detrimental to men.

            “The evidence is overwhelming that Title IX has been turned into a tool to punish men,” she said. “The feminists’ intention is to eliminate everything that is masculine or macho, and to pretend that women are equal to men in physical prowess and desire.”

Back to the future

             It’s ironic then that the Eagle Forum has pivoted to the issue of the biological differences between women and men. This year, it introduced “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” which it says aims to protect the original intent of Title IX — to provide equitable athletic opportunity for males and females.

            The act opposes President Biden’s recent attempts to allow gender identity, and not biological sex, to define who is a woman and who can compete on women’s sports teams. Allowing trans men to compete on women’s athletic teams, the Forum says, strips athletic opportunities from women and violates their privacy.

            The Eagle Forum is in good company on this issue. A wide array of feminist activists oppose allowing gender identity to drive the Title IX bus. Phyllis Schlafly a feminist? Maybe!

                                                _____________________________

* Phyllis Schlafly, “Wrestling with Title IX,” The Eagle Forum (February 12, 2003). Schlafly hoped the newly formed Commission on Opportunity in Athletics would eliminate the proportionality test. In its report, the commission made 23 recommendations. The final recommendation was what Schlafly wanted: identifying more ways to comply with Title IX. Didn’t happen.

** She was ignoring the fact that the proportionality test is only one of three ways a college can comply with Title IX. The third test says that colleges can be in compliance if they can show that female students are not interested in participating in an expanded athletic program.

Time for time travel

It’s surprising how little attention Title IX got when it was signed into law in 1972. But a lot was happening that year — both good and bad — so the headlines were claimed by events that buried a seemingly insignificant piece of legislation whose impact wouldn’t be realized for years.

            So, c’mon, hop in the way back machine with me and take a look at what was happening fifty years ago.  

                                                            ******** 

January 5. NASA initiates the space shuttle program. We’re conquering space!

January 25.  Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman, announces her candidacy for president. Her goal was a “union of the disenfranchised.” 

February 21. President Nixon begins an eight-day trip to China to meet with Mao Zedong. He’s the first president to make an official visit to the Communist country.

March 22. Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. Activist Phyllis Schlafly wages war with her “STOP ERA” campaign.

March 24. “The Godfather” is released in theaters around the country. It’s a hit, to say the least!

April 16. The United States resumes its bombing campaign, targeting the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The Vietnam War rages on.

April 17. Women run officially in the Boston Marathon for the first time. Nina Kuscsik of Huntington, New York, wins with a time of 3 hours, 10 minutes and 26 seconds.

May 15. Alabama Gov. George Wallace is shot and paralyzed at a rally in Maryland. An ardent racist, he had ordered police to shutter the state’s public schools rather than integrate them. On his orders, civil rights activists were attacked by state troopers.

May 26. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, both of which limit weapons systems. We’re trying to get along!

June 14–23. Hurricane Agnes kills 128 people along the East Coast.

June 23. President Nixon signs Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, into law. This should be big news!

June 23. But also on this day, five men hired by White House officials are arrested for breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. A scandal is brewing!

July 8. Actress and activist Jane Fonda begins a two-week tour of North Vietnam to protest the war. In an epic optics fail, she sits astride a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun for photographers. She gains the nickname “Hanoi Jane.”

July 21. On “Bloody Friday,” nineteen Irish Republican Army bombs explode across Belfast, killing nine and seriously wounding 130 other people. “The Troubles” continue.

July 25. The U.S. admits that Black men were used as guinea pigs in the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” beginning in 1932. Consent was never sought and treatment was withheld.   

August 1. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic nominee for vice president, withdraws after his treatment and hospitalization for depression becomes known.

August 21. Nixon is nominated at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach for a second term, along with his running mate Spiro Agnew.

September 1. American chess player Bobby Fischer defeats Russian chess grandmaster Boris Spassky at a match held in Reykjavik, Iceland. He’s the first American chess champion.

September 5. Eleven athletes from the Israeli Olympic team are murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. Incredibly, Olympic Chairman Avery Brundage says the Games must go on.

October 16. Country singer Loretta Lynn becomes the first female to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award. Chalk it up to “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

November 7. Nixon defeats McGovern in a landslide election. But Watergate looms as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pound away at their typewriters.

November 14. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 1,003.16, the first time the stock index had topped 1,000. We’re in the money!

December 14. Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt become the last astronauts to walk on the moon.

December 25. Following the breakdown of peace talks, Nixon begins another bombing campaign against North Vietnam. “The Christmas Bombing” is widely criticized. The war drags on.

  ********

            Those of us who were following the news in the 1970s no doubt remember all of these events. We all wish we could go back in time and erase so much of what happened that year. But Title IX is one highlight of that eventful year that we would never wish to change!

PHOTO: Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for president (Associated Press)

Follow the money

A Title IX battle is brewing at San Diego State University. But the university and the students don’t agree on what the issue is.

            Last year, the university cut the women’s rowing team. It’s rationale? The university has more female athletes than male athletes, so it can’t stay in compliance with Title IX without evening the score.  

            But seventeen female athletes sued the university, saying the issue isn’t about the number of female athletes. It’s about scholarship numbers. They countered that the university isn’t providing an equitable amount of scholarships for women.

            The women’s suit claims that for more than a decade, SDSU has awarded scholarships unequally. Over the past two years, it says, the shortfall has totaled $1.2 million.

            “It is a sad day for the entire SDSU community that we have to sue the university to make it comply with Title IX and provide athletic financial aid equally to women and men,” said Madison Fisk, a former rower.*

What are the rules here?

            The university disagrees that scholarships are the issue.

            “The truth is that SDSU awards approximately 95 percent of all possible scholarships permitted under NCAA rules for both its men’s and women’s teams, with the remaining fraction explained by legitimate reasons within SDSU coaches’ discretion,” the athletic director said.**

            A university can comply with Title IX by providing “substantially proportionate” athletic opportunities that match the gender enrollment. For example, if 50 percent of the student body is female, then roughly 50 percent of athletes should be women.

            But what happens when the numbers don’t match when it comes to men? At SDSU, male enrollment increased from 41.3 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2022. Yet in 2019-20, only 37 percent of SDSU’s athletes were men.

            SDSU’s solution was to cut a women’s sport. The rowing team had about 65 participants and offered up to 20 scholarships.

Warning: more numbers ahead

            The women who filed suit include eleven former rowing members and six women from the track and field team who joined the suit in solidarity. Fourteen of the women currently are students, while three have graduated.

            The women aren’t contesting the team’s elimination, only the scholarship awards. From  2010-20, female athletes at SDSU were granted about $2 million more in athletic scholarships than men. But, overall, scholarships have been less per female athlete because of the higher number of female athletes.

            In school year 2019-20, for example, 58.1 percent of athletes (315 women) received just 50.6 percent of the $9.2 million scholarship pool, a deficit of almost $700,000, the lawsuit states.

Is this a first?

            When the women filed suit in February, they claimed that their action represents the first time a woman’s sports team has sought monetary damages from a school for violating Title IX.

            That could be true, but I’m looking into it. The more I learn about Title IX, the more gems I discover from the past. I know, for example, that the first lawsuit seeking compensation in a case of sexual harassment was in 1986. Christine Franklin sought $6 million in damages from the North Gwinnett High School in Suwanee, Georgia, after suffering a teacher’s sexual harassment. The case was settled out of court.

            Whether the San Diego women’s lawsuit is the first, it probably won’t be the last. According to data published by the Department of Education, 31.4 percent of NCAA Division I  athletic departments (109 of 348 schools) failed to meet the “substantially proportionate” standard in 2021.

            Even so, it’s the rare — and courageous — woman who dares to bring a lawsuit against her school.

            “No one goes to college planning to sue their school,” said Arthur Bryant, the women’s attorney. “The lesson of Title IX’s enforcement in 50 years, sadly, is if women want equality, they have to sue. No one else is going to do it.”***

                                                __________________________

* Daniel Libit, “Female rowers sue San Diego State in First Title IX damages claim,” Sportico (February 7, 2022).

** Mark Zeigler, “Female athletes sue San Diego State for alleged Title IX violation,” San Diego Union Tribune (February 7, 2022). The NCAA caps the number of total scholarships a school can award per sport.

*** Dan Murphy, “San Diego State athletes band together in Title IX fight: ‘If women want equality, they have to sue’,” ESPN (June 14, 2022).

PHOTO: 2018 San Diego State University women’s rowing team

Food fight!

Sometimes, I play this game where I think of two words I believe I’ll never see in the same sentence. (I know… it gets slow in my head sometimes.) Well, this week, my mind game has come to life. I never thought I’d see “Title IX” and “free lunch” mentioned in the same sentence.

This is how it happened.

In January last year, the Biden administration issued an executive order intended to strengthen protections for LGBTQ students. It called for an overhaul of all government agencies’ anti-discrimination policies to make sure they encompass not only sexual orientation, but gender identity as well.

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” the order began.*

School sports and transgender athletes. We know how heated that topic has become.

Up next… the Education Department

Then in June of this year, the Education Department announced proposed changes to Title IX that would include protections for LGBTQ students in cases of both sexual orientation and gender identity.

“[The changes] would make clear that preventing someone from participating in school programs and activities consistent with their gender identity would cause harm in violation of Title IX, except in some limited areas set out in the statute or regulations,” the department said.**

Again, my mind immediately went to athletics. What does that term “school programs” mean? Does that include sports teams? 

No,  the department says. In the same press release, it said it will issue a separate notice of proposed changes to Title IX to address whether and how students might participate on male or female athletics teams.

That hasn’t happened yet.

And now the USDA

Meanwhile, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) didn’t wait for the Education Department’s move. In May, the USDA announced that any entity that receives funding from its Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) — the agency that administers the free school lunch program — must interpret Title IX as the Biden administration does.

The announcement updated the definition of sex to include gender and gender identity and expanded the definition of sex-based harassment to include any action that prevents a student from participating in an education program or activity “consistent with their gender identity.”

“USDA is committed to administering all its programs with equity and fairness, and serving those in need with the highest dignity. A key step in advancing these principles is rooting out discrimination in any form — including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said.***

The implication is that schools that don’t amend their anti-discrimination policies to align with the Biden administration’s definition of who is being discriminated against, and how they’re being discriminated against, won’t get federal funds for their free lunch programs.

In theory, that means that any school that doesn’t permit a biological male who identifies as a female to use the women’s bathroom or locker room or compete in school sports based on their gender identity, rather than their assigned sex at birth, could face a civil rights investigation and be barred from receiving school lunch funding.

Food fight!

The projectiles fly

By the end of July, 22 states announced they were suing the USDA for threatening to withhold funds for the FNS’s National School Lunch Program from schools that do not accept the Biden administration’s LGBTQ terminology and ideology.

At the same time, Grant Park Christian Academy in Tampa, Florida, threw its first handful. It sued the government to retain its free lunch program, which serves 56 low-income minority students. The lawsuit argued that the policy would force Grant Park to abandon its gender-specific student dress code, allow biological males into girls’ restrooms and force teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns, all of which goes against the tenets of their faith.

“The Biden administration is threatening to take away lunch money from low-income children simply because they attend Christian schools,” the academy’s legal counsel charged.****

 On Monday, the Biden administration retreated, assuring Grant Park that it will retain access to the free lunch program.

So, that’s one lawsuit down. But how will this play out across the states and in the thousands upon thousands of schools across the country? The issue of whether gender identity can be applied to sports programs hasn’t been settled yet, so I don’t see how the USDA can make this ruling stick.

You can be sure I’ll be watching in the months ahead. The whole cafeteria could be trashed in this epic food fight!

                                                ______________________

* Presidential Actions: “Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” (January 20, 2021).

** Dustin Jones, “Biden’s Title IX reforms would roll back Trump-era rules, expand victim protections,” NPR (June 23, 2022).

*** Press Release. “USDA Promotes Program Access, Combats Discrimination Against LGBTQI+ Community,” USDA (May 5, 2022). The directive also cover the agency’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp Program.

**** Sam Sachs, “Tampa religious academy sues Biden, Nikki Fried over school lunch program,”  WFLA (July 28, 2022). The academy’s counsel is Erica Steinmiller-Perdomo of the  Alliance Defending Freedom.

But Susan started it

In my last post, I mentioned that groundbreaking woman’s advocate Barbara Hackman Franklin and I share an alma mater — Penn State.

            That’s not all we share! We also both have a connection with the woman suffrage movement. Before I began writing about Title IX, I wrote about the women who powered the 19th Amendment to victory in 1920.*

            We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me introduce Barbara.

Many firsts, many slights

            In the 1960s, Barbara broke gender barriers in corporate and government spheres. She was one of the first female graduates of the Harvard Business School and the first female with an MBA hired by the Singer Company. From there, she went to Citibank, and then on to the Nixon White House, where she created a path for women to be hired for leadership roles. After that, President H.W. Bush named her U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

            While Barbara was forging ahead, she ran into some of the attitudes that women have perpetually faced in a world run by men.

At Singer: “I know that the salaries being offered to us women in the [Harvard Business School] class of ‘64 were less by a rather hefty amount than those being offered to the men,” she said in an interview for Penn State’s “A Few Good Women” oral history project.**

At Citibank: “I remember being chastised mightily for wearing a red dress. I’ve always liked red but was told not to wear bright colors. There was one other time when I knew I didn’t get as much of a salary increase as the guy who worked beside me. I raised that issue and was told, ‘You don’t need that salary increase. You’re doing fine, for a girl, and, besides, you have a husband who works.’”

At the White House:  “In some of my speeches I commented about the way I was described as ‘tiny, diminutive and Dresden-doll-like.’ Would we ever talk about the ‘diminutive, Dresden-doll-like’ Henry Kissinger?”

At the Commerce Department: “Somewhere there arose the impression that I was appointed to be a ‘cheerleader,’ and not to run that department. The quiet implication was, ‘My goodness. Can a woman really run that big conglomerate of a department?’”

Teaming up with Susan B.

            And here’s where the connection with the suffrage fight comes in.

            Eventually, Barbara and a few of her co-workers dreamed up a way to call out men who held these kinds of attitudes.

            In her own words, here’s how they did it:

            “One of the things that we dreamed up in 1972 that we thought would underscore this push toward equality was a bust of Susan B. Anthony to be placed in the White House. We had to get someone to create the bust, and several women’s groups agreed to pick up the tab.

            They decided to copy the bust of Susan B. Anthony that is in the Capitol. It was done in bronze somewhere in upper New York State.

            The bust was shipped to the White House and taken to my office. Then we had to wait for some months before there was an opportunity to present her. Mrs. Nixon did the honors.

            Between the time that Susan B. was delivered and her presentation to Mrs. Nixon, she resided in a closet in my White House office on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building.

            When someone said something that was derogatory about women, Susan B. would steal out of my closet in the dead of night and appear the next morning in the office of the guilty party to underscore her point.

            Then, of course, I had to come and rescue her and bring her back to the closet.

            It was known that the bust and the spirit of Susan B. Anthony roamed the White House on occasion at night. She just knew exactly where to go, and [White House Press Secretary] Ron Ziegler was always on the top of the list.”

            Perfect! I think that we all should have a bust of Susan B. roaming at night calling out these outdated stereotypes and attitudes, don’t you?

                                                ____________________

* Women Win the Vote! 19 for the 19th Amendment (Norton Young Readers, 2020).

** Barbara’s quotes come from “A Few Good Women,” which is part of the Penn State collection, “Advancing the Cause of Women in Government, 1969-74.” It accompanies a book by Lee Stout titled A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women (State College, PA: Penn State University Libraries, 2015).

A Few Good Women

In Heath Lee’s guest post this week, she recalls a moment in 1969 when Washington journalist Vera Glaser confronted President Nixon at the second press conference of his administration. 

            “Mr. President, in staffing your administration, you have so far made about 200 high-level Cabinet and other policy position appointments, and only three have gone to women,” she said. “Can you tell us, sir, whether we can we expect more equitable recognition of women’s abilities, or are we going to remain a lost sex?”*

            Normally, in this setting at the time, journalists lobbed softball questions at a president. This question was a bomb! Yet, Nixon accepted the challenge, creating The President’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities, whose job was to ensure that women had opportunities to take leadership roles in government.

            In 1971, Nixon appointed Barbara Hackman Franklin, one of the first female graduates of Harvard Business School, as a staff assistant. She coordinated efforts to fulfill the task force’s recommendations, which were published as “A Matter of Simple Justice” in 1970.

Penn State, of course

            When I researched Barbara, I was thrilled to find that we share an alma mater — Penn State. We ARE!

            Penn State went on to fund an oral history project titled “A Few Good Women.”** One of the women interviewed was the journalist who started it all, Vera Glaser.

            Today, I want to excerpt one small part of the interview conducted by Jean Rainey, the project’s administrator. It’s a story of a light-bulb moment when someone realizes that something isn’t fair in the world. So, here is Vera to tell the tale. 

Are you telling me…

            “I wanted to report to you something that reflects on the situation early on when the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced. I was covering the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the ERA.

            One member was Judge Marlow Cooke of Kentucky. One of the first witnesses was a very attractive young woman who had a law degree from Harvard and had graduated very, very high in her class.

            She testified that her male colleagues got choice job offers after graduating from Harvard, and here she was — having  ranked second or third in her class — with no offers of a job as a lawyer.

            So Judge Marlow Cooke said, ‘Are you telling me that my four daughters, that the money, the thousands that I’m putting out on their education, isn’t going to buy them the same break in the job market as it buys for a man?’

            She said, ‘Yes, I’m telling you that.’

            Well, that caused a hullabaloo. But his question was marvelous because it drew some chuckles, and at the same time was very, very pointed and valid.”

Use your imagination

            “I think it takes a little bit, or in the beginning, certainly it took a little bit of imagination and open mindedness on the part of men to accept what was beginning to happen 25 or 30 years ago. It isn’t that these men were prejudiced. It’s just that it had always been that way.

            Women were accustomed to this kind of division in the power structure. But women increasingly pushed for a role in the nation’s leadership.

            I have felt that my participation in the women’s movement was a very pivotal point in my life. I am so happy that I did it. I had qualms in the beginning. I had qualms as a journalist about asking the president the kind of question that I did. And yet in simple justice, you had to ask it. If I hadn’t, I am sure eventually someone else would have. So, I’m happy that I was able to do what I did, and I wish that I had been able to do a great deal more.”

                                                __________________________

* At the time, Vera Glaser was the Washington bureau chief for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), a syndicate serving about ninety newspapers. She went on to work for Knight Ridder and the Washingtonian, among other press outlets. She died in 2009.

** “A Few Good Women” is part of the Penn State collection, “Advancing the Cause of Women in Government, 1969-74.” It accompanied a book by Lee Stout titled A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women (State College, PA: Penn State University Libraries, 2015).

Harassment? What harassment?

In my last post, I introduced you to Christine Franklin, whose Title IX lawsuit expanded  the gender equality law to cover sexual  harassment. Although hers was the first successful such lawsuit,  it wasn’t the first.

            Five classmates at Yale University have that honor. In 1977, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, Lisa Stone and Ann Olivarius sued the university claiming sexual harassment.

            The women didn’t want money — their suit didn’t ask for damages. They merely wanted the university to implement an effective way of addressing sexual harassment and assault. Yale had admitted women eleven years earlier, in 1968, yet their well-being wasn’t being protected.

            The women’s complaints are familiar to almost every female on the planet. Ronni and Margery said they’d been physically harassed by a music teacher and a hockey coach. Pamela said she’d been the victim of what today is called quid pro quo harassment — a political science teacher offered good grades in exchange for sex. Lisa said an English professor had propositioned her and Ann Olivarius said she’d been threatened for helping fellow students pursue complaints.

Five women, five stories

            The details of the complaints were ugly. Ronni was studying music and taking private flute lessons from Keith Brion. He began locking the door of the lesson room, eventually touching and fondling her. One day, after she had bumped her head on a door frame and suffered a concussion, he offered her a ride home, but instead he took her to his apartment and raped her. He forced her into sex a second time on another day.

            Ronni told no one, believing it was her fault somehow. But when she quit music in her sophomore year, she began hearing from other women who quit their music studies. “Oh, me too,” the women would say, with a knowing glance.*

            Margery was manager of Yale’s hockey team. One day, Coach Richard Kentwell grabbed her and began fondling and kissing her. She fled. After this happened a few more times, she quit the team.

            Pamela Price said that her international relations professor, Raymond Duvall, demanded sex in return for a good grade on a paper. “Do I really, really want the A?” she says he began. When she refused, she got a C on the paper and in the course.**

            Lisa also took lessons from Brion, and she arrived one day to find him undressing in the lesson room. She also gave up the flute. Two years later, she was talking with poetry professor Michael Cooke in his office. He put a hand on her knee and suggested making love to her. She fled the room.

            Ann didn’t have her own complaint, but she’d heard plenty of women’s stories. She was incensed that they had no way of seeking justice.

Their point is made

            The women filed suit as Alexander v. Yale University. For daring to speak out, they faced hostility, even from women.

            “There was some sense that the women in the lawsuit were whining about issues they should have expected to face,” said student Betsy Scarf. “We all faced them: before Yale, at Yale, after Yale.”***

            In the end, all but Pamela’s case was thrown out. In a pre-trial hearing, magistrates said Ronni’s and Margery’s cases were moot, because they’d graduated. They said Lisa and Ann had not directly suffered harassment — there was no concept then of a hostile workplace — so they could not sue.

            In Pamela’s case, the courts ruled that she had not proved the quid pro quo deal. “I knew what that was about,” she said. “As an African American woman, I could not say that this white man had done this to me and be believed.”****

            The women all went on to have successful lives and careers. Despite the defeat, they’d made their point. They’d stood up to a powerful university.

            “We attend college to study, not to be playthings or sex objects for male faculty members,” said Phyllis Crocker, then of the grievance committee of the Yale Undergraduate Women’s Caucus.*****

            Sadly, sexual harassment and violence still occurs on college campuses, but thanks to these five women, it is now recognized — and can be addressed — as discrimination under Title IX.  

                                                __________________________

* Nicole Allen, “To Break the Silence,” senior thesis on Alexander  v. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale, 2009).

** “To Break,” p. 4.

*** “To Break,” p. 6.

**** “To Break,” p. 6.

***** Excerpts, Alexander v. Yale: Collected Documents from the Yale Undergraduate Women’s Caucus and Grievance Committee (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 1978), p. 19.

Photo: Ronnie Alexander, Ann Olivarius, Pamela Price

Title IX branches out

It took 20 years and the courage of one teenage girl to expand the reach of Title IX into the realm of sexual harassment.

            In 1986, Christine Franklin was a freshman at North Gwinnett High School in Suwanee, Georgia. She had a boyfriend, played in the school band and eagerly accepted an offer from her economics teacher, Andrew Hill, to help him in the classroom, grading tests and running errands.

            She said Hill, who was also the school’s football coach, began bringing up references to sex and questioning her about her sex life. Eventually, he — a married man — called her at home, asking her on a date. Finally, in her sophomore year, she says, he forcibly kissed her in the school parking lot and pressured her into having sex on three occasions.

            Christine and her boyfriend told her band teacher about Hill’s conduct, but she says he advised her to drop the matter. She went to the school’s guidance counselor, who she says also downplayed her claim, although the school did open an investigation.

Skipping over the school

            Hill resigned in 1988, citing the football team’s poor performance. But that wasn’t enough for Christine. She filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights, which oversees Title IX. OCR ordered the school to create procedures for reporting sexual harassment. Still, Christine went on, bringing a $6 million lawsuit in U.S. district court against the school district, saying it failed to protect her from Hill, in violation of Title IX.

            This wasn’t the first time Title IX had been applied to sexual harassment in a lawsuit, but none so far had been successful. And it was the first time compensation was attached to a Title IX claim.

            With Hill gone, and reporting procedures in place, the school thought everything was hunky dory. The court agreed, dismissing Christine’s suit in 1989, and again on appeal in 1990.

            But Christine persisted, and in 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

            Christine was not only challenging one school district. She was standing up to President Bush, whose administration opposed expanding the reach of Title IX. The president said it would expose school districts to a massive financial burden.        

            Apparently, in his mind, a school’s welfare trumped a student’s welfare.  

            Not only that, but the case was being heard by a court that included Justice Clarence Thomas, who, during his Senate confirmation hearing, was accused of sexual harassment. He was confirmed anyway.*

A lifelong nightmare

            In February 1992, the high court ruled unanimously in Christine’s favor, clearing the way for her to seek compensation.

            “We intend to ask for substantial damages in the amount of $1 million or more to compensate for the trauma that she has to sustain for the rest of her natural life,” said Michael Weinstock, Christine’s attorney.**

            Christine had gone on to college but dropped out after one year, saying she suffered from eating and sleep disorders. She married her high school boyfriend, Douglas Kreeft, and had a child, but struggled with crushing fears. She found it difficult to leave her home.

            “To be honest, it’s been a nightmare,” she said.***

            Meanwhile, Hill was supported by a large circle of former students, football parents and fellow church members. He made a living selling building supplies and steadfastly maintained his innocence, saying Christine had initiated their encounters.

            For its part, the school district claimed that Christine had made up an ever-changing story and that she had a habit of befriending male teachers. The alleged sexual encounters, they say, were consensual.       

A wide-ranging victory

            In the end, the Gwinnett school district settled with Christine for an undisclosed amount. Her lawsuit became the starting point of a new era for Title IX.

            “It’s an enormous victory for women and girls across the country because it puts teeth in the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools,” said Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “It means that students who are victims of sexual harassment, who have been closed out of courses, whose athletic opportunities have been denied and who have faced discrimination in so many other ways finally have a remedy that really will make a difference.”****

                                                ___________________________

* Law professor Anita Hill testified that Thomas harassed her when she worked for him at the U.S. Department of  Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thomas was confirmed by a narrow margin of 52-48.

** “Student to press $1 million sexual harassment suit,” UPI (February 28, 1992).

*** “Student,” UPI.

**** Ruth Marcus, “Harassment damages approved,” Washington Post (February 27, 1992).

Claiming her place in the canon

Title IX is usually thought of as a sports law, so we often forget that its original intent was to increase academic opportunity. In 1974, just two years after Title IX was enacted, a woman who wanted to go to medical school brought a lawsuit claiming gender bias.

            Geraldine Cannon was a surgical nurse in Skokie, Ill., who had been practicing since 1955. While serving in Iceland during the Korean War, a doctor had remarked that she had extraordinary skills. She began to think about becoming a doctor.

            “I love nursing and I don’t think it gets the recognition it deserves. But I can do more. I want to go further,”  she said of her decision to pursue medical studies.*

            But soon, Geraldine and her husband started a family. In 1974, she finally got her degree from Trinity College in Deerfield, Ill. She was 39 years old, with five children and a grandchild.

            Geraldine had high grades and a good score on the medical college admissions test. She applied to seven medical schools in Illinois. They all turned her down, including the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine and the Northwestern University Medical School.

            Both schools rejected Geraldine on the basis of age, not sex. The University of Chicago wouldn’t enroll students over the age of 30 who didn’t have an advanced degree. Northwestern wouldn’t enroll any applicant over the age of 35.

            She decided to fight back.

Wait just a minute there

            Geraldine filed a complaint with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, alleging that university officials had engaged in sex discrimination in violation of Title IX.

            Sex discrimination? Shouldn’t her complaint be about age discrimination?

            Geraldine argued that women often have to put off or interrupt their education for childbirth and to raise families. The delays and interruptions increase the likelihood of women pursuing advanced education over the age of 30.

            “I think, if we really put a value on marriage, motherhood and raising a family, then women should also be allowed to choose the sequence of their life,” she said.**

            Geraldine’s husband was a lawyer, and the Cannons filed suit. They lost in district court and on appeal, but took the case to the Supreme Court.

            In Cannon v. the University of Chicago, the high court ruled 6-3 in her favor. But the justices said only that Geraldine had the right to sue, not that she could enroll. The court answered the question of whether an individual, as opposed to an entire class — say, all female applicants who were denied admission to those medical schools — could sue under Title IX. The court said, yes, she could.

            Meanwhile, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 had prohibited age limits in programs that receive federal funds. The two universities said that Geraldine could apply again, but they would judge her qualifications against those of the 1979 class, which were more stringent. Geraldine wanted her application to be compared to the 1974 applicants. She continued her legal fight.

The fight of her life

            That decision to continue fighting likely cost Geraldine her chance to become a doctor. In 1979, the year of the Supreme Court ruling, she was 44 years old. In an interview, she expressed her continuing interest and hope for the future.

            “Each fall I think, ‘I’ll make it to medical school this time,’” she said. “I’m ready. I’m not rusty. I don’t think I’m too old either. Doctors stay on the scene for a long, long time.”***

            But it seems unlikely that Geraldine ever got to medical school. In a court brief I saw from 1985, the year Geraldine turned 50,  it was clear she was still fighting — and losing.

            “Attorneys are expected, even required, to represent their clients’ interests zealously. But they are also expected to know when to give up on an obviously lost cause. It should have been apparent to Cannon’s counsel that Cannon’s cause was dead,” the court sniffed.

            Despite the outcome of her fight, Geraldine has claimed a place in the canon of Title IX warriors. She had the nerve and the persistence to challenge longstanding discriminatory practices against women. In that way, she won her battle. 

                                                _________________________

* Carol Kleiman, “Too Old for Med School?” Chicago Tribune (Lifestyle Section 12, October 21, 1979), pp. 1 and 4.

** “Too Old.”

*** “Too Old.”

**** Cannon v. Loyola University of Chicago, 609 F. Supp. 1010 (1985) Feb. 26, 1985. United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. No. 84 C 8063.