When Title IX Stopped Being About Equal And Started To Be About Oppression
Jessica Gavora writes in the WSJ about the elasticity of Title IX, meaning about how it's been strrrrretched from its original intent to end discrimination on the basis of sex (in schools receiving fed funding):

As long as Title IX's victims were wrestlers or swimmers from low-revenue men's sports that were jettisoned to achieve participation-parity with women's sports, nobody much cared. But now that the law is being turned into a tool to suppress free speech on college campuses, even liberals are starting to cry foul.

A tipping point was reached earlier this year when a Northwestern University film professor and feminist, Laura Kipnis, dared to criticize new Title IX regulations governing campus sex. The regulations, promulgated in the name of preventing a "hostile environment" for women, broadly defined sexual harassment as "any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature." An unwelcome touch or comment was grounds for a Title IX investigation, with college administers forced to be police, judge and jury in allegations of sexual harassment from offensive speech to rape.

In February Ms. Kipnis wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the new rules infantilize women by encouraging them to "regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education." Instead of preventing a hostile environment, she wrote, such rules instead have created an atmosphere of "sexual paranoia" that is spinning out of control. "In the post Title IX landscape," she noted, "sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound."

For her candor about the overreach of Title IX, Ms. Kipnis was hit with . . . a Title IX investigation. In an argument that would have made Joseph Stalin blush, two Northwestern students charged that Ms. Kipnis's criticism of Title IX violated Title IX. The university launched an investigation and subjected Ms. Kipnis to what she has called an "inquisition."

The idiocy is the blanket notion that laws and rules are protections. The more laws and rules you have, the more abuse you are likely to have, subject to another law -- the law of unintended consequences.

WSJ commenter Stephen Graham on the initial ugly use of Title IX:

I don't care at all about sports, but I care about fairness--that's why I hate Title IX. When I was in college, I saw our wrestling team at Bucknell disappear due to Title IX. Apparently football was considered a sport, but the cheerleaders that cheered at those games didn't count as being athletes. So something had to be cut, even though anyone could attest to how easy it was for girls to get involved if they so chose.

I was angry, and I even wrote an article for a friend's publication explaining why. I didn't know this until today, but apparently Bucknell agreed with me, because they along with Marquette and the National Wrestling Coaches Association sued the DoE in 2002. They lost. Fortunately for Bucknell wrestlers, they got a multi-million dollar donation from an alum so that they could re-instate the sport without expending college funds, and they've been back ever since.

I suppose I should feel inspired by his generosity. But a triumph of money over legality feels...cheap.