EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Both Trump administrations and the Biden Dept. of Ed. have allowed the university to discriminate against males
A university program aimed primarily at junior high girls is now at least nominally open to the other sex.
Sometime in the past month or so, the University of St. Thomas altered its “Science, Technology, & Engineering Preview Summer,” also called STEPS, to suggest that boys could apply.
The change came seven years after the Department of Education first opened a federal civil rights investigation into the program, although it has yet to issue a final resolution, as The College Fix previously reported. That means both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration have left the discrimination continue without punishment.
As first noticed by civil rights activist Mark Perry, the program at the Catholic university in Minnesota no longer says it is only open to girls.
The earlier version, which drew a federal complaint from Perry way back in 2018, read:
Igniting an interest in STEM for girls in grades 6th and 8th
This one day program is available at no cost for girls who are currently in 6th, 7th or 8th grade.
Girls will have the opportunity to make new friends and learn from college students and teachers about engineering.
The STEPS program one-day camps for 6th and 8th grade girls help to spark an interest in STEM.
The new version says “all students” can apply, though still makes clear the program prefers females:
Igniting an interest in STEM for students in grades 6th, 7th & 8th
This one-day camp is designed to inspire girls in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade to explore engineering, though all students in these grades are welcome to participate.
Students will have the opportunity to make new friends and learn from college students and teachers about engineering.
The STEPS one-day camps for 6th – 8th grade students help spark an interest in STEM.
Perry told The Fix that the change may satisfy the Department of Education.
“I’m sure that [Office for Civil Rights] would find UST’s ‘correction’ acceptable, though it’s still not exactly gender-neutral or boy-friendly,” Perry wrote in an email.
“But given universities like UST’s determination to discriminate based on sex (or race), and OCR’s general acceptance of these types of partial corrections/’legal fig leaves,’ these are usually the best outcomes that can be expected, and are at least minor victories,” he wrote.
Perry, who has filed hundreds of race and sex-discrimination complaints, previously criticized the Dept. of Ed. for not resolving issues fast enough.
In particular, he identified 44 colleges who have been under investigation for an average of five years, according to emails he shared with The Fix.
He criticized “unacceptably long delays in processing, investigating, and resolving clear and unambiguous violations of federal civil rights laws,” as The Fix reported in March.
