Column: Title IX can also help high schoolers

T itle IX is having a moment. The federal law, which prohibits gender-based discrimination in any school that receives federal funding, is no longer just thought of as the law that increased girls’ access to athletic programs.

Due in part to the work of student-based organizations like “Know Your IX,” the law is now associated with campus responses to sexual assault cases. Because of this great work by students and administrators, Title IX is everywhere at this university.

But all of these great developments tend to leave one big group of students out: high schoolers. Most high school students I talked to while writing this told me they had no idea Title IX applied to them.

I wish I’d known about Title IX during driver’s education. A boy from my school and I took turns driving in Charlotte, at dark, oftentimes in the rain. I gripped the wheel, terrified, and listened to my partner and the teacher tell jokes about women drivers.

“Why don’t women drive?” my partner asked, chortling.

“Why?” responded the teacher.

“Because you don’t need a license to get from the bedroom to the kitchen.”

As if learning to drive in a big city isn’t hard enough.

I wish I’d known about Title IX when a teacher stopped my friend in the hallway to tell her she should wear a longer skirt because “teenage boys have thoughts.” Or when the same teacher joked that girls shouldn’t wear v-neck shirts to class because he’d end up looking down our shirts.

I wish I’d known about Title IX when my friend and I went to the principal and were told that in the future, female teachers would correct dress code violations. No mention of the fact that she was never violating dress code in the first place.

Today I found out from UNC administrators Christi Hurt and Howard Kallem that my school’s driver’s education program was covered under Title IX. It took almost five years for me to find out that I had an actual, legal right to demand my driving partner stop making jokes about making me dance on the pole of a stop sign. At the time, I knew something was wrong. I knew that I shouldn’t have felt so much fear in that car, but I didn’t tell anyone. I was afraid my teachers at school would laugh at me or treat me like I was wasting their time.

Title IX can make our schools safer spaces where students are free to learn, free from fear of discrimination or harassment.

The past several years have seen a flood of Title IX investigations across the country, but they’ve mainly been restricted to higher education. This isn’t because harassment and discrimination don’t occur in high school, but because many students don’t know how Title IX applies to them. Some organizations are doing work around this, most notably New York City-based organization Girls for Gender Equity, but more needs to be done.

High school is hard enough without harassment based on gender or sexuality. Students need to know they can do something to stop it.