Department of Education investigates Western Carolina University for potential Title IX violations
The Department of Education has opened an investigation into Western Carolina University for allegedly failing to ensure female privacy in locker rooms.
The department is also investigating a student who reported a male for using a female-only place.
The Department of Education has opened an investigation into Western Carolina University for allegedly failing to ensure female privacy in locker rooms and further investigating a student who reported a male for using a female-only place.
The department announced the investigation on May 8, and cited emails from university administrators obtained by the advocacy group, Speech First, which were published by National Review earlier this month. The emails appear to show that administrators refused to follow a Trump executive order protecting women’s sports.
The investigation also concerns Payton McNabb, a former Western Carolina student, who faced a civil rights investigation for confronting a man using a women’s locker room. She later posted a video of the encounter to social media.
The university’s “reported contempt for federal antidiscrimination laws and indifference to, and retaliation against, girls who have spoken up about males invading their intimate spaces is simply unacceptable,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in the department’s press release.
“After fighting for years to secure Title IX protections, women must again fight hostile institutions to ensure their right to equal protection and opportunity in sports, living spaces, and intimate facilities is respected,” he continued.
The press release also quotes McNabb, who is now a representative of the Independent Women’s Forum and has testified before Congress about protecting women’s sports. McNabb received a significant head injury in high school while playing volleyball against a team with a male player.
“Western Carolina University has perpetrated a policy that is not in full compliance with Title IX,” McNabb said in the release. “The violation has impacted not only me but many other female students at the university that deserve our rights to single-sex space.”
McNabb also warned that her encounters with transgender-identifying individuals are not isolated, and that she plans to fight against what she sees as unjust policies.
“In addition to my experience discovering a male in the women’s restroom on campus, men who self-identify as transgender are entering other women’s intimate spaces like restrooms, dorm rooms and locker rooms,” she noted. “Female college students will not sit idly by as men take over our spaces.”
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Since President Trump took office, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has been cracking down on universities that allow men to compete in women’s sports. The office has also investigated the University of Pennsylvania for potential Title IX violations and ordered the school to eliminate female athletic awards that went to men.
Campus Reform contacted Western Carolina University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
