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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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If you have been even peripherally involved in higher education in the United States, then you've heard of Title IX. But if you haven't, here's the U.S. government's blurb:

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces, among other statutes, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. Title IX states:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Title IX is most famous for requiring equal athletic opportunities for men and women, without regard for whether this makes (among other things) any financial sense at all. But Title IX also imposes a variety of reporting requirements on college and university faculty and staff, such that essentially every campus has a Title IX Coordinator (or similar), and many campuses maintain entire offices of Title IX administrative staff. Do they do real, important work? I would argue virtually never--these are bullshit jobs par excellence--with one enormous caveat: they serve as a lightning rod for both civil liability and federal intervention.

(Well isn't that real and important, then? Yes, yes, it's a fair point. But I still think jobs that exist solely to push unnecessary government paperwork are inescapably bullshit jobs. Hiring government actors--executive and judicial--to punish universities for failing to meet politically-imposed quotas on social engineering goals, so that universities must hire administrators to give themselves cover, is the very picture of government stimulating the economy by paying one group of people to dig holes, and another group to follow behind them, filling the holes back up again. But this is not the point of my post.)

The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights fields several thousand sex discrimination complaints every year. Less than 10,000, but close--the DoE's OCR fielded a record 9,498 complaints last year. But that's not the headline.

Here's the headline:

1 Person Lodged 7,339 Sex Discrimination Complaints With Ed Dept. Last Year

You probably read that right.* More than 77% of all sex discrimination complaints filed with the OCR are filed by a single person, at a rate of about 20 complaints per day--and this same individual was responsible for a similar number and percentage of complaints in 2016, and possibly other years as well. Of this person, the office says:

“This individual has been filing complaints for a very long time with OCR and they are sometimes founded ... It doesn’t have to be about their own experience [but] ... There’s not a lot I can tell you about the person.”

* I reserve the right to rapidly backtrack my commentary if it turns out that this "single person" being reported in their system is named "Anonymous" or "No Name Given" or something equally stupid. I am proceeding on the assumption that Catherine Lhamon is neither that stupid, nor being deliberately misleading, and that she did in fact say the things she is quoted here as saying. But I'm including this caveat because I still find it hard to believe that what is being reported is even possible. Part of me still thinks there must be some mistake.

On one hand, like... I'm kind of impressed? There's someone who has decided to make their mark on the world, clearly. That's some tenacity. On the other hand, what the fuck? Surely in any sane world someone would tell this person, "you are abusing the process, and we are going to change the rules to rate-limit your nonsense."

That is... well, not the plan, apparently:

The surge in complaints comes at a time when the agency faces significant challenges: It shrank from nearly 1,100 full-time equivalent staff in FY 1981 to 546 last year and is dealing with a host of issues that reflect the strain placed on schools and students by the pandemic.

Biden, in his March budget address, sought a 27% increase in funding — to $178 million — for the civil rights office to meet its goals. Lhamon, whose 2021 confirmation Senate Republicans tried to block, said she’s grateful for the president’s support and hopes Congress approves the increase.

In FY 1981 the office was still dealing with the fallout of the American government forcibly engineering feminist aims into higher education. At a current budget of $140 million (an average of $250,000 per employee), with very nearly half of its complaints (across all topics, not just sex discrimination) coming from a single individual, what is that additional $38 million supposed to accomplish?

It seems like no matter how dim my view of the federal government gets, there's always some new piece of information out there waiting to assure me that I've yet to grasp the depth of the graft, ineptitude, and corruption of Washington, D.C. I am skeptical that Title IX has accomplished anything of value that would not have been independently accomplished by market forces and social trends. But even if that's wrong, and the early days of Title IX were an important government intervention, I cannot imagine how this particular situation could possibly exist within a sane regulatory framework.

In addition to the possibility of "Anonymous" or "No Name Given", or ToaKraka's random nutjob, a plausible explanation is that this is someone who's financially charged with producing these complaints. In Accessibility law, this is the realm of ADA testers and their lawyers: a very small group of people who promise that they're at least theoretically interested in going to a far larger space of public or semi-public accommodations and making sure that anyone with similar disabilities can access them (and not coincidentally make a lot of money), who individually have hundreds or low thousands of complaints or even lawsuits. The spread isn't quite as wide... but then again, the return is less direct, too. But you don't have to get money directly from a court case to make a career out of it.

I don't know that this is true. But I can look at the complaints from here and find a name that could hit the 20-complaints-a-day scenario without having to spend all day working on complaints, because he or she has people for that.

This isn't inherently wrong: the most abusive ADA testers tend to bubble up to the top simply because it's easier to find bullshit, but the fundamental of having actual harmed people asking for fixes rather than an army of ill-planned regulators isn't a bad one, even recognizing that most 'actual harmed people' won't have the energy or time to go through the full procedure. (Though I've got my complaints about the extent of both the ADA and modern Title IX/Title VI law).

And it may not be the case here.

This isn't inherently wrong: the most abusive ADA testers tend to bubble up to the top simply because it's easier to find bullshit, but the fundamental of having actual harmed people asking for fixes rather than an army of ill-planned regulators isn't a bad one, even recognizing that most 'actual harmed people' won't have the energy or time to go through the full procedure.

Disagree. Having a government employ people for the express people of stress-testing private actors for whether they're engaged in discrimination when there are no actual discriminated-against people involved in the test is Kafkaesque and provides perverse incentives for the testers.

My first thought after "Anonymous" was a lawyer (perhaps aided by a few paralegals and interns) for whom filing these complaints is just a job. I hadn't made the connection to ADA testers but now that you mention them the idea checks out.

The lawyer thing wouldn't make sense anyway considering the volume of complaints and the suggestion in the article that so few of them had any merit. Fee awards in these kinds of cases (assuming OCR even has the authority to award them) are directly tied to the amount billed in the case, and possibly knocked down if the court finds they aren't reasonable. If a firm screens its cases carefully then it can get away with losing a few and effectively working for free on them since they're by definition making a profit on every hour billed, but filing thousands of complaints in a year suggests that the effort it takes to file them is minimal, and if the effort is minimal, so are the fees. If a firm can reasonably expect to collect 5k in fees for each successful case and it files 5,000 cases in a year then they need to win a lot of cases to justify laying out 25 million in billables up front. Most of the practice areas that make hay on statutory entitlement to fee awards are in areas where it's usually pretty clear that they're going to win. For example, I used to occasionally do Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collections Act stuff, and if a client comes to you with evidence of a violation, you can usually get a quick settlement because they know they'll lose in court and can at least save their own attorney's fees. If I have cell phone records showing that a debt collector called a client outside of the mandated hours, or at a frequency that's well within the unreasonable range, or something similar, then I could usually get a thousand bucks for the client and three grand in fees for a couple days worth of work. But that's because the debt collector doesn't have a defense and usually knows it. If these were tossups my usual rate is halved and if they're real crapshoots then I'm getting peanuts and it's unsustainable. This is obviously different from big personal injury cases where hundreds of thousands of dollars are involved and you only have to hit every once in a while to make your contingency fee worth it.

In Accessibility law, this is the realm of ADA testers and their lawyers: a very small group of people who promise that they're at least theoretically interested in going to a far larger space of public or semi-public accommodations and making sure that anyone with similar disabilities can access them (and not coincidentally make a lot of money), who individually have hundreds or low thousands of complaints or even lawsuits.

There is a SCOTUS case coming on this. Last month the Supreme Court elected to take up an appeal from a 1st Circuit case questioning whether a self-appointed ADA "tester" has standing to sue for damages in federal court if they never intend to actually visit the place they're "testing":

The plaintiff, Deborah Laufer, has brought 600 lawsuits against hotels around the United States. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, hotels are required to make information about their accessibility to people with disabilities available on reservation portals. In this case, Laufer – who has physical disabilities and vision impairments – went to federal court in Maine, where she alleged that a website for an inn that Acheson Hotels operates in that state did not contain enough information about the inn’s accommodations for people with disabilities.

The district court threw out her lawsuit. It agreed with Acheson Hotels that Laufer did not have standing because she had no plans to visit the hotel and therefore was not injured by the lack of information on the website. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit reinstated Laufer’s lawsuit.

That prompted Acheson Hotels to come to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in. The company pointed to a division among the courts of appeals on whether cases like Laufer’s can move forward; indeed, Acheson Hotels noted, courts have reached different conclusions about whether Laufer can bring these kinds of cases. And the issue has “immense practical importance,” the company stressed, describing a “cottage industry” “in which uninjured plaintiffs lob ADA lawsuits of questionable merit, while using the threat of attorney’s fees to extract settlement payments.”

Laufer agreed that review was warranted, although she urged the justices to uphold the lower court’s ruling. The justices will likely hear argument in the case in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime in 2024.

The plaintiff, Deborah Laufer, has brought 600 lawsuits against hotels around the United States. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, hotels are required to make information about their accessibility to people with disabilities available on reservation portals.

What an absolutely loathsome person. Anyone with a shred of common decency would just call and ask whatever question they had about the hotel if it was a genuine question, but nope, the goal here is entirely to antagonize anyone that doesn't comply with Byzantine rules on their websites. Laufer acts more like a misaligned AI than a person that honestly wants to make the world a better place.

Even the blind and wheelchair bound need to make a living. Even if it’s parasitic and something a sane society wouldn’t consider a job.

In my non-US university, there were a tonne of 'Women in Defence Intelligence', 'Women's night for networking with accounting company people' events. I imagine these kinds of things still happen in the US but aren't federally funded. Any US university people know anything about this?

In my non-US university, there were a tonne of 'Women in Defence Intelligence', 'Women's night for networking with accounting company people' events. I imagine these kinds of things still happen in the US but aren't federally funded. Any US university people know anything about this?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Such events certainly happen at American universities. Whether they are directly or indirectly "federally funded" will vary from case to case. But for example the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a grant program for "Women and Minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Fields" that could probably be used to fund some such things.

I was trying to get at the contradiction between

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

And giving advantages specifically to women.

The logic (which I disagree with, mind you) is that women are being brought up to the baseline level of accommodation by such programs, not that they are receiving preferential treatment.

My understanding is that men are still allowed to attend such things. However, i have no doubts that an equivalent event advertising itself specifically for men (but still allowing women) would either draw the wrath of Title IX, or else be overwhelmed with women showing up in protest.

edit: What Voxel said below.

I imagine these kinds of things still happen in the US but aren't federally funded. And US university people know anything about this?

The typical workaround is that you can host a "women in [field]" event, but you can't restrict who actually attends. To some extent everyone knows what's expected, but I do recall my local Society of Women Engineers chapter was pretty explicit about recruiting all comers, so it's not all a wink and a nudge.

I regularly attend my institutions Women in X meetings and the spin off social events such as the book club. There are usually maybe 1 or 2 men for every 10-15 women on average. If anything we get effusively welcomed and praised for being brave in joining. I suspect should I be in the market I could probably parlay this into a dating strategy.

I suspect should I be in the market I could probably parlay this into a dating strategy.

I am not sure about that...I would suspect that this is only a viable option for people who are neurotypical and at least average-looking. Anything less than that seems likely to get unceremoniously booted at best and tarred and feathered at worst. Good luck finding work as an engineer if you've got a reputation for harassment or something...

Not that there is anything wrong as such with this; the idea that awkward or unattractive men people need to "know their place" and never express interest in sex or romance in exchange for ordinary social inclusion isn't exactly new or terrible.

I still find it hard to believe that what is being reported is even possible

Back in 2021, one person said that he had filed 1,000 complaints (with no timeframe given) regarding violations of Title IX and Title VI at 330 different colleges. In 2022 he said the total was 1,200 complaints against "almost 300" colleges over three years. 7,300 complaints in a single year is a big number, but I hesitate to call it unbelievable that somebody could be more dedicated than the linked person.

“In 1972, a crack legal team was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as lawyers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The IX-Team.”

The problem appears to be wider than that - from the same article:

Race, color, or national origin discrimination claims made up 3,329 of all complaints received in FY 2022, according to the civil rights office’s annual report, which was released last week. That’s up from 2,399 the year prior. Disability-related complaints comprised 6,467 of the total compared to 4,870 in FY 2021.

At the same time, age discrimination claims, which made up 666 complaints in the most recent report, were down from 1,149 the prior year. The office notes the majority of these claims were also filed by a single person in both years.

Could this person be the leader of some nonprofit or advocacy group? I’m struggling to imagine how that would be possible.

There are databases of active investigations (server issues?), pending cases, and incidents, but none make the plaintiff’s name public by default. Maybe this database has something? I’m not optimistic—if only a fraction of those 8,000 complaints are founded, they’re not going to be obvious in the active lawsuits.

Why doesn’t the Title IX office disclose this name? For obvious reasons, he or she is unlikely to be personally involved in most, if not all, of the cases. Privacy shouldn’t be an issue. I wonder if this is something that can be FOIA’d.

As I note in response to HaroldWilson below:

I have no idea who that person might be. Charitably: a top-notch attorney at an important law firm in Washington, D.C., who is capturing most of the "Title IX complaint" market, maybe? The right intake process could probably make this happen. I just have a hard time seeing it actually playing out this way; unless their "sometimes founded" complaints turn into outrageously large payouts on a pretty regular basis, it would be very difficult to fund such a venture. Part of the mystery of averaging 20 complaints a day is, who is funding that?

My only other half-plausible idea is that there is someone out there on retirement or disability or something who is doing stuff like collecting data on student athletes and filing a complaint any time they can find the slightest mathematical discrepancy in apparent sex balances in school athletic programs, or maybe faculty sex ratios or something. I don't know what else they could possibly find 20 complaints a day to file on, or how else they could be funded.

I know there are some bits of legislation out there that essentially pay bounties to people for filing lawsuits (there was a lawyer in California who was making a living for a while going to "ladies night" at bars and demanding equal pricing, then suing when denied, here's the one I think I'm remembering) but I'm not aware of any such setup for Title IX cases.

I wonder if this is something that can be FOIA’d.

I don't know, but my first thought is that these things probably fall under FERPA, which is not as strict a piece of privacy legislation as, say, HIPAA, but it's still pretty strong.

there was a lawyer in California who was making a living for a while going to "ladies night" at bars and demanding equal pricing, then suing when denied,

Absolutely based behavior. The only way I can stomach such blatant favoritism in favor of women is if we men were ever allowed to get away with that. But good luck finding a "men's only" event that doesn't attract immediate opprobrium.

Yeah this is ridiculous. The alternatives are:

  1. Sausage fest.

  2. Face checks at the doors which accomplish the same outcome but only the higher status men are allowed inside to mingle with the women.

  3. Invite only parties where any woman is easily invited while only higher status guys are.

I get the feeling that anyone who cheers something like this simply hasn’t had much of a nightlife.

2 & 3 are pretty much swinger's clubs rules.

I simply don't care. Such blatant unfairness raises my hackles, and women get plenty of attention and free drinks from horny men as is.

Is/ought, plus game theory. Women will always have an unfair advantage in this arena because men will always gain an advantage by handing this advantage to women. The man who boycotts the ladies night at the bar, or any other low stakes garden variety simpery, out of offence to his high-minded egalitarian principles will lose out to the pragmatic man who accepts the phenomenon and potentially uses it as a pivot to open a conversation and flirt with those women. ("You women get half price drinks? Nice, that means you can buy me two! No? Ah, so you're a hashtag trad wife. Cool, I'm more of an equal rights feminist. A very thirsty equal rights feminist with an empty glass. Oh okay I get it, maybe those dodgy pick up guys were right about women after all. Hold on a second, are you a pick up artist girl? No? So where did you learn your undeniable skills? In that case I guess it must have come to you naturally. Naturally blessed with half price drinks. Imagine that." Or something significantly smoother and less terminally online, I don't know).

Look dawg, I have a girlfriend, and I don't really struggle to get one with or without the existence of blatantly illegal and anti-egalitarian practises that offend me.

I have nothing against men who willingly buy drinks for women, I simply don't want the implicit lower value of men enshrined in explicit practise.

See my other comment at this level for details if you care.

Such blatant unfairness raises my hackles

"The game" is unfair either way. It will never be fair as long as we are mammals with certain sexual instincts. Hear me out.

What you are objecting is a situation where the unfairness becomes explicit instead of implicit. But this is a horribly bad strategy!! If you are not a "gigachad" and/or "absolute player" type of guy, this is exactly what you want! When the rules of the game becomes more explicit it gives more chances to people who lack the deep social instincts for playing the implicit game. And forgive me for stereotyping, but I have literally never met an Indian guy (from India proper) who had very strong instincts in this regard and I know many.

When ladies get cheap booze explicitly from the bar there is less expectation on you to do the classic move of introduce yourself with confidence, say a couple witty funny things, and ask what she wants to drink. For some guys this is second nature. For many this is nerve wrecking and they will fuck it up. If you are in the group that gets the nerves from approaching a pretty girl like this then you should absolutely welcome a ladies night. It takes some pressure off you.

This is the exact reason why dance classes, blind dating, formal courtship, even arranged marriages etc are all good strategies for men too awkward to just ask a girl out from zero. Each one of these options add an extra dose of explicitness to the interaction.

I have a girlfriend, and even when I didn't, I have little issue in acquiring one, so I genuinely couldn't care less about the marginal change from killing something so explicitly anti-egalitarian.

The constitutions of most liberal democracies, including India and the US, explicitly enshrine equal rights for both men and women, including a ban on explicit and intentional discrimination for or against each. I protest each and every deviation from that rule, be it women getting free drinks, or preference in college admissions, and I'd do the same for men.

Ladies nights are simply one of the more blatant and commonplace violations, and clear violations to boot. I don't need reminder that I, as a man, am inherently less valuable than woman, and I'm content to have it stamped out and establishments who engage in it made an example of. There's already so much implicit discrimination which can't be stamped out that I won't tolerate more explicit forms.

I simply care more about equality of opportunity than equality of outcome, so this argument doesn't sway me. I prefer men and women pay the same amount for the same product, namely time in a bar or drinks, and then what they do with it is up to them, be it the former simping over the latter and handing them theirs.

“I refuse to entertain the subtleties of life because some people some time ago came up with some legal principles on which I shall base my entire thought process” isn’t a very good jumping point for a conversation or deliberation. But you do you

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Legally enforced equality, or legally allowed special treatment. Pick one.

the pink razors are materially different both in the pigment and geometry of the blades. (It's not pricier because of the different geometry, but it's still different).

When were you put in charge of deciding how many choices there are?

I'm not. My statement is a logical truism. You cannot have both. You can of course have neither.

Most of the Title IX complaints have nothing to do with athletics but allege that the University didn't sufficiently respond to complaints of sexual assault or harassment.

Most of the Title IX complaints have nothing to do with athletics but allege that the University didn't sufficiently respond to complaints of sexual assault or harassment.

Where are you getting that? The article seems to suggest that, in both 2016 and 2022, most of the Title IX complains did deal with athletics. The complaints from 2021 (which don't appear in the graph) do appear to fit what you are saying, but also seem to suggest that 2021 saw far fewer complaints overall. Honestly it would be helpful if the author had included more information about each year. I am disinclined to try to dig it all up myself.

In 2016, the more than 6,000 complaints filed by that same individual alleged discrimination in school athletic programs, according to the civil rights office. Fiscal year 2022 followed much the same pattern when the office logged 4,387 allegations of Title IX discrimination involving athletics.

One complaint could include more than one type of alleged Title IX violation, encompassing, for instance, both athletics and gender harassment.

The 2022 athletics-related claims far outpaced the 1,030 related to sexual or gender harassment or sexual violence. The figure also swamps similar claims from fiscal year 2021 when just 2,093 complaints included Title IX-related claims — with just 101 focused on athletics. More than 500 cases concerned sexual or gender harassment or sexual violence that year.

Yeah, sorry, I was looking at examples of cases that were actually filed. Upon rereading the article it's clear that it's usually the case that the majority of the claims are harassment, but the number was skewed by the one person filing a ton of athletic claims.

(Well isn't that real and important, then? Yes, yes, it's a fair point. But I still think jobs that exist solely to push unnecessary government paperwork are inescapably bullshit jobs. Hiring government actors--executive and judicial--to punish universities for failing to meet politically-imposed quotas on social engineering goals, so that universities must hire administrators to give themselves cover, is the very picture of government stimulating the economy by paying one group of people to dig holes, and another group to follow behind them, filling the holes back up again. But this is not the point of my post.

Is this just bullshit jobs or is it just that you disagree with the thrust of the work being done? After all they aren't, in fact, just digging up and filling in holes, they are presumably collecting real data which is checked, setting up grievance procedures which can actually be used etc. and even if you think it's in pursuit of a pointless or harmful goal it is actual things being done and work produced. Indeed in one sense this is no different to say all of the legal/regulatory work a food company must do to ensures that all of its products comply with the regulations of all the relevant agencies, it just so happens that whereas in latter case the goal of the regulations is relatively uncontroversial in the former it isn't.

and even if you think it's in pursuit of a pointless or harmful goal it is actual things being done and work produced.

The definition of a Bullshit Job, as per Graeber's original essay, is exactly as you describe: one in which the product is useless or harmful, not one where there is no work done at all.

If that's the case I don't think the 'bullshit jobs' framework adds anything useful, because then it really just is a substitute for 'I don't agree with the policy goals the work being done aims toward'.

If memory serves, a big component of Graeber's theory was that a bullshit job is, in part, one in which even the person doing it doesn't think they're doing anything important or contributing anything of value. I don't actually know, but I imagine that describes plenty of Title IX administrators.

That just seems like a function of specialisation though, in a highly specialised world is clearly going to be quite difficult for a lot of workers to see how they fit into the entire economy/organisational bureaucracy.

I'm not here to relitigate the entirety of Graeber's theory, and his estimate of how prevalent the phenomenon is is known to be significantly wide of the mark. I just don't accept the idea that any job in which people work hard necessarily needs to exist or serves a useful function. There are plenty of people who are self-aware enough to suspect that their job does not really need to exist, and in many cases they're right.

I don't dispute that the people hired to pump petrol at petrol stations (because the state forbids people from pumping their own petrol) are actually working hard. That doesn't mean that "full-time petrol station attendant" is a job that actually needs to exist, as plainly evidenced by the fact that this is an exception rather than the norm.

I'm not here to relitigate the entirety of Graeber's theory,

Neither am I of course, but on the face it does seem a little silly to suggest that a worker must know the overall significance of their role to make their job worthwhile. I'm certainly not excluding the possibility of bullshit jobs in general, and I do agree that just because someone works hard that doesn't mean their job is at all important or meaningful.

So we end up with a quadrant:

  1. People who think their jobs are meaningful/important, and they are

  2. People who think their jobs are meaningful/important, but they aren't

  3. People who think their jobs aren't meaningful/important, but they are

  4. People who think their jobs aren't meaningful/important, and they aren't

"Bullshit jobs" originally referred to those in Q4, but really ought to encompass those in Q2 as well: if a job is meaningless or pointless, the fact that the person holding it doesn't realise it's meaningless or pointless doesn't change that. It's entirely possible for a person to think that their job is meaningless or unimportant, and for their appraisal to be inaccurate (Q3).

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Is this just bullshit jobs or is it just that you disagree with the thrust of the work being done?

More the former than the latter, though I am less certain than you seem to be that these are meaningfully different things. I regard most administrative positions in higher education, as well as most federal regulatory positions, as bullshit jobs--specifically, "box tickers" and "taskmasters." When you say "actual things being done and work produced," you're assuming something for which I see no evidence. You can say "those administrators are not just filling holes" but that's very nearly all I ever see them doing--filling out paperwork no one ever likely read, just in case someone else files a lawsuit that will make no substantial difference to anyone except, maybe, a successful plaintiff in search of an easy payday. If it is your position that the litigiousness of American society, and its attendant bloated insurance market, is actually a good thing, then sure--we have a real, substantive value disagreement. But if that's not your position, then your argument here is ill-aimed.

(The "bullshit" part is also substantially demonstrated by 77% of the complaints being made by a single person. I have no idea who that person might be. Charitably: a top-notch attorney at an important law firm in Washington, D.C., who is capturing most of the "Title IX complaint" market, maybe? The right intake process could probably make this happen. I just have a hard time seeing it actually playing out this way; unless their "sometimes founded" complaints turn into outrageously large payouts on a pretty regular basis, it would be very difficult to fund such a venture. Part of the mystery of averaging 20 complaints a day is, who is funding that?)

Part of the mystery of averaging 20 complaints a day is, who is funding that?

Autistic cell dwellers don’t tend to swing that way, politically, but you kind of have to be one to do that, or be the staff lawyer for an NGO dedicated to filing title IX complaints.

just in case someone else files a lawsuit that will make no substantial difference to anyone except, maybe, a successful plaintiff in search of an easy payday

I'm not settling on either side here, but this seems a little uncharitable. For one, in one sense even if no-one ever reads most of the stuff produced, and if (and I accept this may not be the case but nevertheless, if) lawsuits filed are on relatively substantive grounds rather than trivial procedural matters then the work is still important. Because, presumably, if a Title IX coordinator felt that a particular aspect of college administration did not comply the college would be anxious to make the appropriate changes, which if one agrees with the thrust of Title IX is a good thing.

This is a bit of a cumbersome explanation so here's a instance of a Title IX lawsuit that came up in a cursory google search. James Haidak was a student who recently sued his university for having a biased procedure when it expelled him following accusations by his ex-girlfriend, and on appeal he won on the grounds that he was never given a chance to defend himself in any kind of hearing etc., and now presumably it is the role of Title IX coordinators to ensure the their own universities have adequate procedures in this regard so they don't get hit by similar suits. So even if all their work now sits in a drawer forever they were actually doing something.

The key question of course is whether that many of the lawsuits they spend their time protecting against are substantial, or mostly trivial. Now this seems very hard to assess given that presumably the ones covered in the media are selected for the most interesting and meaningful ones, but a cursory search does throw up lots of cases that do seem at least somewhat worthwhile. Plenty of cases on the need for a fair shake to be given to accused students prior to expulsion, one about a kid who died from alcohol poising following an initiation (the parents demanding tighter restrictions on such) and yes lots of cases about women's athletics. Not, I appreciate, a life or death issue but a 'real' thing in the sense that Title IX cases etc. did actually increases access to college sport for women, which seems to indicate that more than box-ticking is being done, even if in some instances the work is over something that one could consider rather trivial in the grand scheme of things.

This is a bit of a cumbersome explanation so here's a instance of a Title IX lawsuit that came up in a cursory google search. James Haidak was a student who recently sued his university for having a biased procedure when it expelled him following accusations by his ex-girlfriend, and on appeal he won on the grounds that he was never given a chance to defend himself in any kind of hearing etc., and now presumably it is the role of Title IX coordinators to ensure the their own universities have adequate procedures in this regard so they don't get hit by similar suits. So even if all their work now sits in a drawer forever they were actually doing something.

This is a great example, which very much supports my position over yours. Why the hell was Haidak kicked out in the first place? Because Title IX has been interpreted to require universities to referee adolescent relationships! Title IX created the problem (via campus administration), and Title IX "fixed" the problem (via the judiciary)--an exceptionally clear case of digging a hole, then filling it in.

The key question of course is whether that many of the lawsuits they spend their time protecting against are substantial, or mostly trivial.

No. The key question is whether the benefits of Title IX outweigh the costs.

Title IX cases etc. did actually increases access to college sport for women, which seems to indicate that more than box-ticking is being done, even if in some instances the work is over something that one could consider rather trivial in the grand scheme of things.

In a hypothetical world where there was no such thing as Title IX, how do you think college sports would look today? Universities have undergone all sorts of changes in response to cultural revolutions and the realities of supply and demand. Did Title IX just make obligatory something that would have happened organically? Did it hasten an ongoing process? If so, then the regulatory cost was onerous and the fact that we're still paying it is stupid. Did Title IX instead fundamentally re-engineer a piece of American society, forcing a change to which Americans would have otherwise never consented? If so, then the price was even more onerous, paid in liberty instead of dollars. As far as I can tell, Title IX itself can only either have been unnecessary (in which case: it spawned mostly bullshit jobs), or necessary, in which case it is seriously objectionable on other grounds.

No. The key question is whether the benefits of Title IX outweigh the costs.

My question goes back even a bit further than that - how the hell is the business of the United States federal government? Regardless of whether the legislation and its enforcement mechanism creates some downstream utilitarian good, I cannot fathom why correct university policies and procedures for handling disputes regarding sexual harassment needs to come from the federal government.

14th amendment, baby!

Unlike most of the bill of rights, the Equal Protection Clause specifically, unambiguously, constrains the states. Given that sexual harassment disparately impacts women, it falls under the umbrella of Things Congress is Allowed to Legislate.

Because Title IX has been interpreted to require universities to referee adolescent relationships! Title IX created the problem (via campus administration), and Title IX "fixed" the problem (via the judiciary)

Worse: the requirement was codified by a now-rescinded Dear Colleague letter from the Obama administration requiring schools adopt these policies.

Doesn’t that just require schools to consider rape and other sexual violence, even if it happened off-campus? I think it’s fair to say a frat-house rape is potentially part of the school environment even if said house is not school property.

The problem arises when schools engage with more nebulous definitions of harassment and hostile environments. I’m not seeing where that comes from this letter.

(Though it does predate A Rape on Campus by several years. I wonder when it was rescinded?)

It was rescinded by Betsy DeVos in 2017.

IIRC the controversial "refereeing of adolescent relationships" portion was driven by a requirement to review sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations with a preponderance of evidence (civil) standard, which put school administrators in a position of having to establish parallel judicial systems because an act that didn't meet "beyond a reasonable doubt" in criminal court can absolutely meet a preponderance of evidence.

IMO punishing students with things like expulsion needs higher than a 51% standard of evidence.

That’s a good point. What you’re saying also matches the conversation I remember from my time in school. Preponderance of evidence definitely came up.

Why the hell was Haidak kicked out in the first place? Because Title IX has been interpreted to require universities to referee adolescent relationships!

Can't say for certain of course but I am fairly confident that universities would want to punish rape/sexual assault quite harshly even without Title IX.

The key question is whether the benefits of Title IX outweigh the costs

Well sure but that doesn't really address the question of the bullshit-ness of the jobs, that's then just an ordinary policy debate.

Did it hasten an ongoing process? If so, then the regulatory cost was onerous and the fact that we're still paying it is stupid. Did Title IX instead fundamentally re-engineer a piece of American society, forcing a change to which Americans would have otherwise never consented? If so, then the price was even more onerous, paid in liberty instead of dollars. As far as I can tell, Title IX itself can only either have been unnecessary (in which case: it spawned mostly bullshit jobs), or necessary, in which case it is seriously objectionable on other grounds.

I suspect that as you suggest the growth of women's sports was happening anyway but nonetheless Title IX accelerated and shaped those changes (same for the other areas that Title IX impacts).

Why the hell was Haidak kicked out in the first place? Because Title IX has been interpreted to require universities to referee adolescent relationships!

Can't say for certain of course but I am fairly confident that universities would want to punish rape/sexual assault quite harshly even without Title IX.

What does this have to do with anything? First: no, in cases of rape and sexual assault the universities would be best off letting the police handle it. Universities should not in general be in the business of punishing criminal activity. They don't even generally have the expertise to reasonably investigate it. Not even the people running Title IX offices are, as a rule, trained to investigate and prosecute crimes. (Frankly it would be preferable for higher education become completely sex-segregated, than for us to ask a bunch of academics to hold the kangaroo courts they generally hold on such matters.)

But second, what do you think this has to do with Haidak?

The plaintiff, James Haidak, and his then-girlfriend Lauren Gibney were both UMass students studying abroad in Barcelona in 2013. There was a physical altercation between them; Gibney said Haidak attacked her, while he asserted that he was defending himself while she was trying to hit and kick him. Gibney complained to UMass, which started a student conduct case against Haidak and imposed a no-contact order between the two. However, despite the no-contact order, Haidak and Gibney continued to have frequent, consensual contact and maintained a relationship over the summer. After learning that Haidak was contacting Gibney, UMass waited 19 days, then issued a second charge against Haidak: for harassment and failure to follow the no-contact order. Less than a week later, Gibney and her mother reported that there was continued contact between Haidak and Gibney. UMass waited another 13 days, then issued another charge against Haidak for harassment and breaking the no-contact order and summarily suspended him.

Neither rape nor sexual assault appear to be implicated here at all. This was a lover's spat--to even call it "domestic violence" would take things too seriously. This is exactly what I said it was: Title IX being interpreted to require universities to referee adolescent relationships, something universities might be even worse at than refereeing charges of sexual assault.

The key question is whether the benefits of Title IX outweigh the costs

Well sure but that doesn't really address the question of the bullshit-ness of the jobs, that's then just an ordinary policy debate.

I feel like you are telling me that you don't understand bullshit jobs without telling me you don't understand bullshit jobs. A job in which the cost of the job outweighs the benefits of the job just is a bullshit job.

I suspect that as you suggest the growth of women's sports was happening anyway but nonetheless Title IX accelerated and shaped those changes (same for the other areas that Title IX impacts).

Agreed: it "shaped" the process by implementing pointless bureaucracy for no discernible benefit. The perceived benefits were coming anyway, without the costs. Now the status quo is so entrenched that nobody will countenance ending those costs; indeed, the discussion is that we should pay more for a process that should never have been started in the first place. This is paradigmatic bullshittery.

Re: Haidak I have to plead ignorance on how much of the UMass grievance procedure is shaped by Title IX requirements, but either way I don't think it is really that important to the broader point.

I feel like you are telling me that you don't understand bullshit jobs without telling me you don't understand bullshit jobs. A job in which the cost of the job outweighs the benefits of the job just is a bullshit job.

If 'government jobs where I feel that the cost outweighs the benefit' comes under 'bullshit jobs' then it's a stupid and pointless framework. Look at it this way, I would say that the work Islamic morality police do in Iran or wherever is an instance where the negatives clearly outweigh the (in my mind, non-existent) positives, but surely calling that a 'bullshit job' makes no sense. They fulfil their intended function pretty well, just as Title IX administrators probably do/did fulfil the function of expanding women's sport, changing sexual allegation grievance procedures etc. etc. There surely has to be some distinction between 'jobs where nothing meaningful happens' and 'jobs where something happens but I don't like the thing'.

Re: Haidak I have to plead ignorance on how much of the UMass grievance procedure is shaped by Title IX requirements, but either way I don't think it is really that important to the broader point.

I mean, it was your example, so to backpedal when it becomes clear that the example cuts against your argument seems like poor sportsmanship, but sure.

If 'government jobs where I feel that the cost outweighs the benefit' comes under 'bullshit jobs' then it's a stupid and pointless framework.

There's nothing about feeling happening here, and it is bad rhetoric for you to sneak that in there. My argument is that the supposed "benefits" of Title IX could have manifested without bringing along the obscene degree of bureaucracy. You conceded that point:

I suspect that as you suggest the growth of women's sports was happening anyway

And that's all you need to concede to agree with me. A bullshit job is not a job where nothing ever happens, or nothing meaningful ever happens, or things happen that I don't like. It's a job that either adds nothing, or is actively harmful, compared to a world where the job was never brought into existence in the first place. And you have already conceded everything you need to concede for Title IX jobs to fit that description. I think someone else has already pointed this out to you elsewhere in the thread, but you seem to have an idea of "bullshit jobs" that does not match with the sociological writing that coined the phrase.

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Indeed, in the country where I went to school, the idea of university being an arbitrator in the personal relationships between the students would be rightly seen as ludicrous. This simply never happens, except, maybe, when you get a criminal conviction (in which case being kicked out of school is probably least of your problems). Even when you get a disciplinary sanction by a university, you can appeal to a regular administrative court (i.e. one ran by the state, not by university) as part of normal process.

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