(Excerpts from Inside Higher Ed News) 

• The Department of Education began five days of public hearings Monday, during which it expects to hear from 600 individuals about how it can improve Title IX enforcement, following a directive from President Biden to re-examine the controversial regulations put in place by the Trump administration.
• Commenters covered a range of issues related to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 -- from the need for Title IX to address sexual violence prevention to the debate over transgender athletes competing on sports teams -- on the first day, with both supporters and opposers of the regulations released last May under former secretary Betsy DeVos represented among the speakers.
• Those regulations made several notable changes to higher education Title IX practices, such as requiring institutions to allow live hearings and cross-examinations and limiting the scope of off-campus misconduct complaints colleges must act upon to those that occurred in locations used by officially recognized student organizations.
• The latter change received pushback during the hearing from separate comments given by two former students, Delaney Davis and Sara Jane Ross, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. At colleges like UT Austin, many students live off campus, leaving them without protection from sexual misconduct, said Davis.
• “Off-campus sexual misconduct is no less disruptive to a student’s education than misconduct that occurs on campus,” Davis said. “What is the point of even having Title IX if we are picking and choosing which survivors are worthy of protection?”
• Comments about the live hearing and cross-examination requirement were less uniform, with some speakers describing it as burdensome and creating a chilling effect while others argued it was essential to due process for the accused during investigations.
• And while many commenters offered suggestions for Title IX changes, others said things should remain as they currently are with the Trump-era changes, including Phillip Byler, a senior litigation counsel at Nesenoff & Miltenberg LLP who has represented college students accused of sexual misconduct
• “The current Title IX regulations aren’t broken and therefore don’t need to be fixed,” Byler said. “The current Title IX regulations, in mandating due process and fairness in Title IX sexual misconduct proceedings, were well formulated because they were based on well-considered decisional law.”