Thursday, September 18, 2014

Clemson Suspends Title IX Training Because of Too Personal Questions


Campus Reform In a campus-wide email late Wednesday night, Clemson University announced the suspension of its mandatory Title IX training program.
As originally reported by Campus Reform, Clemson required its students to disclose personal information about drinking habits and their sex lives as part of an online Title IX training course, which required students’ IDs, names, addresses, and housing details in order to login. All students, faculty, and staff were required to complete the course by Nov. 1 or face disciplinary action. 
“Required Title IX online training has been suspended pending elimination of certain questions that were associated with a training module provided by a third-party vendor,” the email, sent at 11:42 p.m., said. “Clemson University will eliminate these questions. We apologize for any concern and inconvenience this has caused.”
The training course was purchased by Clemson through CampusClarity, "[a] Title IX and Campus SaVE Act education program that combines sexual assault and substance abuse prevention in a comprehensive online training program."
The suspension of the training course came as a relief to some students who were apprehensive about disclosing such personal information to the university and a third-party.

I don't have too strong of an opinion on this, despite the fact that I go to Clemson. Should the questions have been put in the training questionnaire? No, but I'm not about to start rioting and protesting on campus about it. I haven't even clicked on the thing to start my training course. Wasn't a high priority for me. I know how to treat women. I was planning on doing it like late October since the due date was November 1st. What psycho saw that due date and said "let me get this outta the way now"? They send you reminder emails about it every week. You weren't going to forget about it. And if I know one thing about college, it's that students get BOMBARDED with emails from the school. 
But the thing about Clemson is that it's a very prideful university. When the students have a problem with something that they're doing, they listen. They suspended the training until they have the questions eliminated. They're fixing the problem. It's not the first time since I've been here that students have had an issue with something and it's been taken care of. We don't have to do the ePortfolio shit anymore after they got rid of it in the spring. (For non Clemson students, ePortfolio was a graduation requirement that entailed putting work from all gen ed requirements into a portfolio online and submit it before graduation)
We're finally in the Top 20 Public Universities in the country and I'm sure we plan to stay there so Clemson will do everything they can to fix this and make adjustments in the future when requiring students to do certain things. And while the Title IX training isn't on my top priorities, I guess it makes sense to do it. I'm sure they thought it was important for students to be informed. Definitely don't think this is as big a deal as people made it out to be. Especially now that it's getting fixed.
Love my school.










No comments:

Post a Comment