Jauregui Law Office Quora Answer: What are the challenges to and implications of educational legislation on effective educational management and leadership?
I can only answer that based on my opinions of Title IX educational legislation which come from several years of legal work representing college students in sexual misconduct issues. Overall, it depends on what “effective educational management and leadership” means, and on which party’s goals you want to meet.
For Students, Effective Management Means Empathy: Students, both who respond to allegations of sexual misconduct, and those who complain of sexual misconduct, in my experience, overwhelmingly look to the teachers and deans of their schools to manage with empathy the complaint/response and to lead them to a solution. Because college students both self-select to fit into the culture of their institution and then really learn, adapt, and transform themselves to fit into that culture, students expect that their empathetic teachers and deans will behave throughout the sexual misconduct process exactly in the way that they perceived the college’s culture would have behaved. That is to say a student who goes to a school that starts by finding the “best in the other” would expect a peaceful resolution. A student that goes to a school with 40K plus students, would expect an automated resolution, and, perhaps, a student that goes to a very conservative school would expect the school to not get involved. Clearly, the student’s expectation is hard to meet and seldom met. That frustration has, in many ways, fueled the recently issued, and recently revoked, changes to Title IX.
But overall, I think that effective management takes place when the student (who complains or who responds) experiences a processing of the complaint where the managers put themselves in the place of each participant. That is empathy. This is a hope, and one that often succumbs to systemic bias. For example, see this: Jauregui Law Office 2019 Survey of Diversity in Philadelphia Area College and University Title IX Staff — Student Sexual Misconduct and Title IX Discipline Defense Lawyers . The Title IX legislative trends, particularly those under the recently revoked guidance, had practically no empathy for the respondents. So I would venture that when the system settles on granting empathy to all the students, students will find that implementation of the educational legislation will be effectively managed.
For Deans and Title IX staff Effective Management Means Predictability: Educational management and leadership have a personal concern (keeping their job) an institutional concern (protecting the school’s brand) and a risk management concern (keeping the lawsuits down). This creates tension with educational legislation because any legislation applies equally to all, no matter the local concerns.
Education legislation has an additional shortfall to reach predictability: It will never account for the differing levels of passion, intelligence, and hate among the very insular Title IX school staff who implement these rules. That is, some people are just plain evil, and that cannot be legislated over, or controlled for, to achieve effective management through predictability. Just consider two very shocking examples in which different Title IX staff treated respondents to sexual misconduct complaints with no empathy at all, which led to lawsuits. One is the Haidak case, where the Title IX staff actually believed a woman saying her hands were made into a fist—a physiological impossibility (see: Can my School Withdraw my Degree for a Title IX or Sexual Misconduct Allegation made against me either After Graduating or Before Enrolling? — Student Sexual Misconduct and Title IX Discipline Defense Lawyers Footnote 9). The other is in the Harnois case, where the Title IX coordinator (who is of color) treated the (white) respondent in a way that recalls the antebellum south’s treatment of people of color (see: Quora Answer: How can you best tell if a Title IX investigation is using techniques that are based on science and evidence of effectiveness? — Student Sexual Misconduct and Title IX Discipline Defense Lawyers). Evil happens because it is the easiest path. It distorts predictability. It cannot be legislated over. Yet, one potential impact of the upcoming Title IX regulations may be that they will foster a vigorous in-school and in-court complaint resolution process. As with any phenomenon, the more events, the more we will be able to graph results. With those results, Deans and Title IX staff will have predictability. And thus, this legislation will have a good effect on their management and leadership.
Raul Jauregui
I am an attorney and I defend mostly respondents of sexual misconduct in colleges or universities. This is absolutely not my legal opinion or my legal advice, but rather survey of the Title IX topic. If you’re in this situation, in any way, consult a lawyer now.
As posted in Quora:
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-challenges-to-and-implications-of-educational-legislation-on-effective-educational-management-and-leadership/answer/Raul-Jauregui-1