A men’s advocate, known online only as MRA Title IX, has submitted an eight-page complaint against the University of Louisville to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. In his complaint, he alleges gender bias in the school’s various programs, policies, and training. He has also set up a Change.org petition to end anti-male discrimination at the University of Louisville which I invite you to sign.

Key Claims

The complaint makes eleven key claims:

1. The University incentivizes differential treatment of students based on gender
2. The University has a gender bias in student diversity goals
3. The University has a gender preference for faculty in diversity initiatives.
4. The University believes that diversity is achieved when more women are represented, not when there is balance of representation.
5. The University diversity plan is not evenhanded.
6. The University’s chief diversity officer is biased and doesn’t understand what diversity means.
7. The University does not publish an accurate non-discrimination statement.
8. The University is biased in applying their affirmative action program.
9. The University’s Title IX training is insufficient.
10. A significant number of men at the university do not feel empowered (this refers to findings from the University’s campus climate survey).
11. The campus climate survey is biased.

Changes Requested

The complaint ends by requesting the following:

1. That the University will terminate all scholarships, fellowships, or other financial assistance that is awarded on the basis of gender, shows preference for gender, or in any way references the gender of the recipients.
2. That the University will publish an accurate non-discrimination policy.
3. That all University staff, from the president to the unpaid interns, be required to take specific training on non-discrimination in educational activities. Such training should explicitly address anti-male bias with examples of historical violations at the University […].
4. That the University to dedicate at least equal resources to their diversity missions that help men, given that men are, in aggregate, underrepresented in staff and student populations relative to their city.
5. That the University amends their diversity goals to include men when the gender gap is greater than 7% for the University in aggregate, as well as within specific programs, departments or other subsections of the University that have diversity missions.
6. That the University rename the Women’s Center to the Student Support Center and that it similarly changes the programming to be more gender neutral and evenhanded in who it intends to help.
7. That the University explicitly state it will be applying an affirmative action program for men in enrollment and employment to align with the demographics of the city. This statement should be advertised with the same zeal that it advertised its intent to recruit more women.

In lieu of copying and pasting the entire complaint, I invite you to read it for further insight on how his key claims are supported.

At Title IX for All, our stance is that any practice that treats an individual adversely on the basis for sex (i.e., discriminates on the basis of sex) – even if done with good intentions – is discriminatory and must be terminated. This is consistent with the plain reading of Title IX, which emphasizes that its protections are intended for the individual, as opposed to being a tool for social “group” engineering:

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.

I look forward to the outcome of this complaint, and I encourage the filing of many more like it. Thanks to MRA Title IX for his work here.