During the summer, the Office of Civil Rights notified coordinators of the University’s long-running Project Saferide that they would need to restructure the program or shut it down. The OCR, a Department of Education agency whose mission is to “ensure equal access to education and to promote education excellence throughout the nation through vigorous enforcement of civil rights,” said that because the program receives federal funding, yet serves only women, it violates provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
To preserve the valuable transport service, the project will shortly merge with Night Ride — a program established in 2001 as a unisex counterpart to Saferide — forming the new “Assault Prevention Shuttle” service. However, our biggest complaint is: Why didn’t this happen sooner?
There are several legal and philosophical problems with a public university offering sex-dependent benefits or services without offering effectively equal services to the other sex. The most glaring is the violation of regulations cited by the OCR; Title IX states that, barring certain exceptions that don’t apply to programs like Project Saferide, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
So, Saferide is illegal, for the same reason that offering a disproportionately small number of female sports at a state school is illegal.
But the program’s very existence creates a more subtle, fiscal problem. As of spring 2003, 18,421 students attend the University; last spring, the ASUO Programs Finance Committee allocated $42,619. Thus, every male student would have paid about $2.31 for a service offered only to females. This may work out to a small amount per capita, but collectively, about 8,500 men across campus paid nearly $20,000 for a program they couldn’t use.
Finally, the very reason for Saferide’s gender restriction is unfair. According to Saferide’s Web site, the program “remains a safe space for women who fear sexual assault and are uncomfortable riding with men.” That one person fears a group of people is a poor justification to limit that group’s rights. If a hypothetical white person had a negative experience with a Hispanic person and isn’t comfortable, say, with sharing a vehicle with any Hispanic person, that’s hardly a reason to limit a University transportation program to whites, and is moreover unfair to potential Hispanic riders. Furthermore, charging all Hispanics at the University to help pay for such a service would be absurd. Likewise, disqualifying men from riding with Saferide is unfair to them, particularly those men who have lived a life respecting and avoiding harassment of women.
Now, surely the framers of the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX didn’t intend for women to feel uncomfortable, or worse, subject them to dangerous situations. But combining Night Ride and Saferide into a single program protects men and women alike from assault in a way that is fiscally fair, constitutionally cogent and socially responsible.