BETSY DEVOS/EDUCATION: “US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is planning to make a major announcement on Title IX, the campus gender equality law, on Thursday [9-7-17] at George Mason University, BuzzFeed News has learned.
DeVos will speak at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School, named for the late conservative Supreme Court justice, according to a source with knowledge of the event and preliminary planning reviewed by BuzzFeed News. Federal officials have described Thursday’s event to school officials as focused on Title IX policy ‘centered around equal opportunity and equal protection for all.’
Insiders expect this to be an announcement regarding what the US Department of Education will do regarding Obama-era directives on campus rape. A representative for the department did not immediately return a request for comment about the event. The department is expected to make a public announcement on Wednesday evening about the event at the school’s Arlington, Virginia campus, the source told BuzzFeed News.
People in the education policy world are closely watching what the administration will do with a 2011 directive, called a Dear Colleague letter, issued by the Education Department that prescribed what schools must do when a student reports a sexual assault. The 2011 directive laid out how long campus investigations should take, what standard of evidence to use, and that schools could not simply defer to police to handle reports of sexual assault.”
-Tyler Kingkade, “Betsy DeVos Is Planning A Major Title IX Announcement This Week,” Buzzfeeed News, Sept. 4, 2017 05:25pm