JURISDICTION

This is a Title IX complaint against the University of Louisville. As the University receives funds
from the Dept. of Education, there is no extended discussion needed to establish OCR’s
jurisdiction in this matter.

SUMMARY
The University of Louisville is a public university within a state university system, and they
discriminate on the basis of sex in almost every facet of university operations. The University is
under the mistaken impression that diversity does not include men, and that discrimination against
men is okay. The implementation of diversity and student help programs shows a clear gender bias
that is not aligned with the demographics of the students. We ask OCR to find that the University’s
actions which clearly imply “diversity is when more women” to be harmful and discriminatory.

This is a coalition complaint and is being issued to the public for signatures after submission to
OCR.

ARGUMENTS
Argument 1. The University incentivizes differential treatment of students based on gender.
The University provisions the Dr. M. Celeste Nichols Professional Development Award 1. On the
referenced page is a word document stating the requirements of the award. The award states:

Winner(s) will be chosen according to how well the applicant’s 1-page description
meets the intent of the award as explained below.

The intent of the award is stated in the document to be:

by offering support and resources to empower women with the goal of promoting
an inclusive and equitable campus community and to develop engaged and
compassionate leaders.

This is the University giving awards to students only if they help women. Creating an incentive to
treat students differently based on gender is a violation of Title IX.

The University also provisions and handles nominations for the Tachau Gender Equity Award
which is given to people who have done 2:

1. Work that promotes women’s equality and gender equity

2. Work that increases women’s self-reliance
3. Work that highlights women’s contributions to all cultures and societies

As the school is not allowed to treat people differently based on gender, nor show preference in
who they support, this is a violation. There are no scholarships advertised by the Universities

1
https://louisville.edu/womenscenter/awards-and-scholarships/awards
2
https://louisville.edu/facultysenate/committees/university-wide-committees/commission-on-the-status-of-
women-cosw/reports/2020/cosw-102020
Women’s Center that incentivize empowering men, their equality, self-reliance, or contributions.
The University has failed to take an even-handed approach to their choice of whose needs they
support.

Argument 2. The University has a gender bias in student diversity goals.

The University runs and sponsors the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in STEM event. The
Goals are:

 Highlight and honor women’s accomplishments in the STEM Fields

 Bring awareness on the barriers to women in STEM
 Provide skills and tips to dismantle these barriers
 Provide networking and connections with professional women in STEM

The University has been predominantly women for over two decades 3. Since 2015, the percent of
students identified as male as begun dropping drastically. Based on the 2020 student data, the
University is 45% men, 55% women. Of the “Common Majors” with the largest gender disparity
in 20194, four out of five of the programs have men as the underrepresented gender. The two most
dramatic disparities are in nursing and social work, both of which are over 80% women.

The school provides data going back to 2012. For every year provided, nursing and social work
have had gender gaps similar to the 2019 data. The school’s data also shows that across all IPED
race categories, women have a 5 to 20-percentage point lead on graduation rates in 2018 (most
recent data provided). When it comes to the stats, women are more the dominant demographic,
and are the most likely to graduate.

Despite all of this, there is no clearly advertised support or empowerment for males in programs
such as social work or nursing and University has center entirely dedicated to their female students.
Taking a look at their actions in nursing, the school houses Health Science students at the
Community Park dorm5. They favor the over-represented gender by reserving 18 spots for women,
and 2 spots for men. There is no indication that the Health Sciences center takes any steps, nor

3
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Data.aspx
4
https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-
louisville#:~:text=Enrollment%20by%20Race%20%26%20Ethnicity&text=The%20enrolled%20student%20popu
lation%20at%20University%20of%20Louisville%20is%2069.8,Hawaiian%20or%20Other%20Pacific%20Islanders
.
5
https://louisville.edu/nursing/academics/bsn/louisville/llc
even considers, the gender disparity as part of their diversity initiatives 6. Their most recent
demographics report7 makes no mention of the gender gap in their highlighted statistics, instead
only focusing on race. In fact, they go out of their way to conceal this information. The referenced
report has demographics info, where they leave off totals for men, but include totals for women.
Based on this data, the school of nursing is 11% men.

Looking at the social work program shows similar bias in behavior 8. There is no indication that
their diversity objective includes increasing representation of men in the program, instead, they
only focus on race and LGBT. Their recent progress report has no stated goals for increasing
representation of men.

In contrast, the school of engineering’s first fact table includes gender representation 9. The “Just
the Facts” reports has significant focus on gender10. The first stated goal of the school of
engineering is11,12:

Increase the percentage of underrepresented students and faculty, with particular

emphasis on a more diverse population of races and ethnicities, more women, and
more first-generation college students. [bold added]

To incentivize this goal, the school of engineering has several awards. For example, the
distinguished diversity enhancement award is awarded to faculty and staff who:

Extends mentorship/career opportunities for underrepresented Speed School

students (underrepresented minorities, females, LGBT community)

The University is not allowed to show sex-based preference for the students it chooses to supports,
and this is a financial incentive for staff to violate that.

The University implements diversity initiatives, but only based on who they help. The
overwhelming pattern is that men as a general class are not included in these initiatives, even when

6
https://louisville.edu/hsc/diversity
7
https://rise.articulate.com/share/8rOBp8tGkpel4pTv626MqjJxU2VHIq_W#/lessons/o7kjBycvN4NhmduxgXq5v
49pKrUIhIhe
8
https://louisville.edu/kent/about/diversity-equity-and-inclusion
9
https://engineering.louisville.edu/about/factsandfigures/
10
https://engineering.louisville.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/just_the_facts_2020-web-ada-compliant-1.pdf
11
https://engineering.louisville.edu/about/missionvalues/diversityopportunity/
12
https://engineering.louisville.edu/wp-content/uploads/About/strategicPlan.pdf
their gap in representation is similar (or worse) than the gap for women in other programs. The
diversity initiatives between schools at the university are fairly similar, but when men are
significantly underrepresented, gender is no longer a concern for the University.

Argument 3. The University has a gender preference for faculty in diversity initiatives.
In 2019 the University deployed a “strategic plan” that used gender to discriminate what groups
they would focus on in employment gaps13. Surprisingly, they chose “female” despite the official
government data showing faculty at the University was 45.7% men in 2020; this value is stable
as far back as the data goes (2012)14. The moment they choose to classify people based on sex,
they require an exceedingly persuasive justification, and by only choosing to look at employment
gaps that disfavor the gender that is over-represented in aggregate, they have lost any possible
justification.
Still, the strategic plan focuses on both hiring more “females” as well as analyzing the
compensation gap. No mention is made of looking for compensation or employment gaps that
disfavor men. The choice of which gender they choose to help is not only arbitrary, it is
unaligned with the actual demographics of the University and clearly ignores individuals of the
excluded class who are similarly situated. There is no reasonable basis for choosing to ignore
wage or employment gaps simply based on the gender it favors.

The strategic plan states what success will look like, one of the bullets is:

Representation of underrepresented groups increasingly matches or exceeds the

demographic diversity of the city.

Which is perplexing, as it is means success would include the demographics of the University
being unaligned with the demographics of the city. As it is clear the University is trying to boost
the number of women enrolled and employed, they must consider a gender imbalance favoring
women as a success of this initiative. This goal, as well as initiatives, don’t align with the
demographics of the city, which is currently 51.5% female 15. If the University was being honest
in their initiative, employing more men to a representation greater than 48.5% would be a
measure of success. The words the university uses show the duplicitous intent of the initiative. It
isn’t about diversity, or aligning demographics with the city, it is simply about favoring women.
They put a lot of effort into making it seem like they have an exceedingly persuasive
justification, but even a little bit of research into their claims quickly shows their actions are not
aligned with their statements. It is an impossibility that the University is not aware of this.

They still have a mission to continue to increase the number of women (but not men) they
employ despite all this. In an email sent on 4/18/2022 10:27 PM the University states:

[T]he University seeks to promote campus diversity by enrolling and employing a

larger number of minorities and women

13
Slides 39 and 41 (as numbered on the actual slide) of “Strategic Plan [PDF]” located on:
https://louisville.edu/strategic-plan
14
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Data.aspx
15
https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/louisville-ky-population
Argument 4. The University believes that diversity is achieved when more women are
represented, not when there is balance of representation.

The University’s view of diversity is to increase the number of women across all components of
their operations. They ignore gender gaps that disfavor men, and address gender gaps that disfavor
women. Despite women being the majority of students and instructional staff, the University still
considers enrolling and hiring more women to be a contribution toward its diversity objective.

Argument 5. The University diversity plan is not evenhanded.

The University diversity plan16 does not consider gender for students, only faculty and staff. The
data the University uses is from 2016, and their report says 42.5% of faculty are women, and 39.5%
of staff are men. The only strategy for employee recruitment that mentions gender is when it favors
women:

Use best practices in recruiting female and diverse administrators, including:

 Reaching out to personal and professional networks
 Networking at conferences and professional development programs such as
HERS and NCORE
 Hiring search firms that have a proven record of identifying qualified
women and diverse people in their applicant pool.
 Providing training to search committees to reduce the incidences of
unconscious bias

Their approach is not aligned with the diversity of their staff. They are trying to recruit more
women despite being 60.5% women, and they are doing this by recruiting from women-only
organizations.

The only places where gender of students is addressed is when it favors women. They state that
the women’s center “works to empower women faculty, staff and students.” They also talk about
the INSPIRE program that “is offered to female and minority students.” There is also the school
of medicine which has a goal to increase recruitment of women, despite being 60% female
students17. Again, affirming that the University chooses who to support based on gender, not based
on need.

Argument 6. The University’s chief diversity officer is biased and doesn’t understand what
diversity means.

In emails sent to students sent at 3/21/2022 10:05 AM:

[Lee Gill, chief diversity officer] currently is a member of the president’s leadership
team at Clemson, where he is credited with building a sustainable infrastructure to
incorporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts into the campus culture and with

16
https://louisville.edu/diversity/diversitypolicy/diversity-plan
17
https://louisville.edu/medicine/admissions/ulsom-class-profile-2020
 creating programs that support and address the challenges facing women, Black and
Hispanic students and the LGBTQ community.

The chief diversity officer himself doesn’t even take an evenhanded approach. To him, diversity
doesn’t include men. The University can not legally discriminate in implementation of diversity
initiatives based on who it impacts, and in this email, they make it clear that they do.

Argument 7. The University does not publish an accurate non-discrimination statement.

In an email sent on 11/10/2021 6:34 AM they said:

Further, the university seeks to promote campus diversity by enrolling and

employing a larger number of minorities and women where these groups have
historically been and continue to be under-represented within the university in
relation to availability and may extend preference in initial employment to such
individuals among substantially equally qualified candidates, as well as to veterans.

Similar non-discrimination statements have been issues for several years, all of them are factually
incorrect. There is a long historical trend of underrepresentation of men in several of their programs
in massive excess of underrepresentation of women in STEM, yet the school does not have
diversity initiatives for men in those programs. They do have the occasional one for men, but it
includes race and overall impact isn’t nearly comparable to the massive amount of effort the school
puts into diversity initiatives for women. The underrepresentation for men is a decades-long
historical trend, and it is current, so where are the initiatives?

Argument 8. The University is biased in applying their affirmative action program.

In an email sent on 10/14/2020 5:30 PM they said:

To ensure that equal educational and employment opportunity exists throughout the
university, a results-oriented equal opportunity/affirmative action program will be
implemented to overcome the effects of past discrimination and to eliminate any
artificial barriers to educational or employment opportunities for all qualified
individuals that may exist in any of our programs. The university aims to achieve,
within all areas of the university community, a diverse student body, faculty, and
staff capable of providing for excellence in the education of its students and for the
enrichment of the university community. [bold added]

It is completely clear that the University does not implement this when it benefits men. Their
choice to implement affirmative action programs depends on the gender it helps and ignores
similarly situated individuals who are not the “correct” gender. Courts – including SCOTUS –
have ruled18, 19, 20 that to classify individuals on the basis of their gender required an “exceedingly
persuasive justification.” The Court applies the justification standard not just to the outcome, but

18
Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982)
19
Personnel Adm'r of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979)
20
Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 U.S. 455 (1981)
to decision-making methods of the party. An “exceedingly persuasive justification” for
discrimination is needed the moment they classify people based on a protected class, and they are
not evenhanded in when they choose to do this. This affirmative action program is not based on
need as is stated by the University; it is based on the gender in need. As the University has a female
majority overall, they lack an exceedingly persuasive justification for only helping the women and
ignoring men.

Argument 9. The University’s Title IX training is insufficient.

The University publishes their Title IX training documents on their website 21. Access was allowed
to all of the materials except for the workshop on implicit bias (required a login). Of the training
material assessed, there was absolutely no training on discrimination outside the sexual-
harassment umbrella of 34 CFR § 106. Given that sexual-harassment is only a subset of sex-based
discrimination covered by Title IX, the University training materials are insufficient at properly
training staff on the major components of Title IX.

Argument 10. A significant number of men at the university do not feel empowered.

In the University campus climate survey22, 4.4% of students say women are not empowered at all,
whereas 12.7% of students say men are not empowered at all. This demonstrates the effect that the
differential support and focus has on student’s feelings of empowerment. Furthermore, 8.2% of
students feel their school does not take complaints of unfairness seriously, and 23% feel that gender
discrimination has detracted from their experience as a student. In the executive summary 23, 68.6%
of respondent statements about the diversity and inclusion at the University were negative. For
discrimination, 72.2% of comments were negative.

Argument 11. The campus climate survey is bias.

The campus climate survey24 includes the question:

When appropriate, my professors present the contributions of women in their

course material and readings

But no such question exists for men.

21
https://louisville.edu/titleix/resources/training
22
https://louisville.edu/diversity/campusclimate/2021UofLStudentClimateSurvey_FullReport_web.pdf
23
https://louisville.edu/diversity/campusclimate/copy3_of_Spring2021StudentClimateSurveyExecutiveSummary
_web.pdf
24
https://louisville.edu/diversity/campusclimate/2021UofLStudentClimateSurvey_FullReport_web.pdf
ALLEGATIONS
 The University is not evenhanded in the use of scholarships, fellowships, or other financial
assistance and the overall effect is not balanced in violation of 34 CFR § 106.37(b)(1)
 The University discriminates on the basis of sex in programming by denying the benefit of
their affirmative action program to men in violation of 34 CFR § 106.31(a), and 34 CFR
§ 106.3(b).
 The University does not publish an accurate non-discrimination policy in violation of 34
CFR § 106.8(b)(1). While there is no mention that the policy must be accurate, it is
reasonably assumed that the intent of being required to publish the university policy is that
it is actually the university policy and that the policy is not arbitrarily issued to satisfy the
requirement with no practical application.

RESOLUTION
In resolution we ask:
1. that the University terminate all scholarships, fellowships, or other financial assistance that
is awarded on the basis of gender, shows preference for gender, or in any way references
the gender of the recipients. There is recent precedent for this 25.
2. that the University publish an accurate non-discrimination policy.
3. that all University staff, from the president to the unpaid interns, be required to take specific
training on non-discrimination in educational activities. Such training should explicitly
address anti-male bias with examples of historical violations at the University to align the
training with the current maleficence.
4. that the University to dedicate at least equal resources to their diversity missions that help
men, given that men are, in aggregate, underrepresented in staff and student populations
relative to their city.
5. that the University amends their diversity goals to include men when the gender gap is
greater than 7% for the University in aggregate, as well as within specific programs,
departments or other subsections of the University that have diversity missions.
6. that University rename the Women’s Center to the Student Support Center and that it
similarly changes the programming to be more gender neutral and evenhanded in who it
intends to help.
7. that the University explicitly state it will be applying an affirmative action program for
men in enrollment and employment to align with the demographics of the city. This
statement should be advertised with the same zeal that it advertised its intent to recruit more
women. If they felt it was a justification for women, it must be a justification for men.
Revoking the affirmative action program all together rather than taking actions aligned
with their words should be seen as evidence of insidious discriminatory intent.

25
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2022/04/13/womens-scholarships-and-awards-eliminated-to-be-
fair-to-men/?sh=301f459d7fe2