The College Fix

Civil rights activist told university to drop program or offer equal opportunities

The University of California San Diego removed some information about its STEM program only open to female high school students following a federal civil rights complaint.

The physical sciences’ department page for “STEM Girl Summer” returns an “access denied” message.

However, the university still lists information on the program elsewhere, including in a social media post last week.

Civil rights activist Mark Perry told The College Fix he believes the university removed the information after he shared a “courtesy copy” of his Title IX complaint. He said in his complaint that the university should open the program to all students or create an equivalent opportunity for male students.

“The information provided in the press release makes it clear that the University intends to continue to offer this illegal girl-only program in the future,” Perry wrote to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Perry shared an email he wrote to the university counsel and chancellor, which stated:

Based on my experience filing almost 1,000 federal civil rights complaints for more than 2,000 violations of Title VI and Title IX at more than 850 colleges and universities, I would have to describe your STEM Girl Summer program as legally indefensible and unable to survive an upcoming investigation by the San Francisco Office for Civil Rights. Therefore, I would encourage you to conduct your own internal legal review of your discriminatory program while OCR evaluates, investigates, and resolves my complaint. I am confident that if this illegal program had been reviewed by your office for legal compliance with federal civil rights laws before it was implemented, funded, and offered, you would not have approved this program.

This likely led to the change, Perry told The Fix via email over the weekend.

He said:

I’m sure it’s another example of hundreds of when a graduate student, staff member, faculty member, administrator, etc. comes up with a new program that discriminates based on sex and/or race, and they don’t realize the program is illegal, and they never think it’s necessary to get legal clearance from the university’s legal office and so the program goes forward. Once the General Counsel reviews it, it takes only a few seconds for the lawyers to realize it’s illegal and they scrub the website (or change the requirements to comply with Title VI/IX). You would think there would be some process in place at universities where new programs would have to be reviewed and given legal clearance by the lawyers before going forward, but that is obviously not the case. You would also think there might be some internal review/audit process in place where the university lawyers would regularly review all existing programs for compliance with Title VI/IX, but that is also not the case.

The physical sciences’ department dean helped fund the program, according to a university news release.

“Originally started with funding from the dean’s office in the School of Physical Sciences, the program is now supported through several on-campus sources,” a news release from Aug. 13 states. “Going forward, she hopes it will be easier for organizations and individuals to make donations to support the program.”

Graduate student Robin Glefke created the program which “brings female San Diego-area high school students to campus for a weekend of hands-on learning, introducing them to career paths in science, technology, engineering and math,” according to the university’s post on X.

Perry is also affiliated with Do No Harm, an anti-DEI medical group. The group recently filed its own federal civil rights complaint against Loyola University Chicago and its nursing program for “students of color.”

Some information about the program, including a YouTube video describing it, has been subsequently removed, as reported by The Fix.

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IMAGE: UC San Diego/X

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