Made slight edits after College Fix inquiry
A new University of Connecticut “Women in leadership” initiative is open to men as well, the school said recently.
The public university in Storrs made a slight edit to its news release about the program the same day The College Fix reached out to the media relations team and general counsel’s office.
“UConn Trustee Creates Breakthrough Women’s Leadership Initiative,” the news release announced. “Gift catalyzes support for women in engineering leadership roles long overlooked.”
But “not just women,” can apply, the university said.
“The Jeanine Armstrong Gouin Initiative provides financial support for leadership programs and activities that are available to all engineering students, not just women,” spokesperson Stephanie Reitz told The Fix on Tuesday.
“The focus of the programming is on empowering women engineers to become confident leaders, but the programming will operate on an ‘all-comers’ participation policy, with men equally welcome to participate,” Reitz said via email. “As such, equivalent programming is not required for male engineering students.”
The Fix had asked if a university attorney had reviewed the program for Title IX compliance or if the school planned to offer an equivalent opportunity for men.
The university added similar “all-comers” language late last week after The Fix’s inquiries.
“Gouin’s gift to UConn Engineering, announced and celebrated at a July 29 event on the UConn Storrs campus, will fund programming to help women – students, faculty, and alumnae – in all engineering fields,” the original news release stated.
The current version, edited on Aug. 30, now states otherwise.
It states:
Gouin’s gift to UConn Engineering, announced and celebrated at a July 29 event on the UConn Storrs campus, will provide financial support for leadership programs and activities that are available to all engineering students, not just women. The focus of the programing is on empowering women engineers to become confident leaders, but the programming will operate on an “all-comers” participation policy, with men equally welcome as women to participate in the programming activities.
Other female-centric language remains throughout the current news release and remains in a post (pictured) on X (formerly Twitter).
“We struggle to keep women in the profession, and particularly, we struggle to recruit them into executive and management positions,” UConn Foundation President Amy Yancey stated. “There’s plenty of talent, but for a number of reasons, it remains a challenge. Today, we celebrate the beginning of Jeanine’s vision, an initiative for women in leadership in the UConn College of Engineering.”
“We are profoundly grateful to Jeanine Gouin for her generous gift, which not only honors her remarkable achievements but also inspires the next generation of women leaders in engineering,” former engineering Dean Kazem Kazerounian stated.
Civil rights expert says program could survive legal scrutiny, but still problematic
A civil rights activist told The Fix the language change is a “legal fig leaf,” that might allow the university to escape Title IX sanctions.
“In my opinion,” Mark Perry said, the language change “will largely protect the university from a legal challenge, even if they keep the same name and focus the program on women.”
The fig leaf is a “crafty and mostly disingenuous change that allows a university to continue to discriminate based on sex while pretending the program is open to everybody,” Perry said via email on Tuesday.
The University of Michigan Flint emeritus professor has filed 950 civil rights complaints, including hundreds for women leadership programs that are “similar to UConn’s.”
He said the Office for Civil Rights would rule the program is in “compliance with Title IX as a result of the ‘legal fig leaf.’”
This is “common tactic” universities use to avoid legal scrutiny, Perry said.
“Male students understandably know that they are not welcome in a women’s leadership program focused on women’s issues and that the female participants will highly resent their presence,” Perry said. “Of course, the legality of the UConn program will depend on the specific future programming offered which has not yet been announced by UConn.”
He criticized the donor and university for intending to set up a program that discriminated on the basis of sex and only making the changes “when its discrimination was exposed and challenged.”
MORE: U. Buffalo rewrites ‘minority and women’ business program after federal complaint
IMAGE: University of Connecticut/X with College Fix edits
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