What's new
If Title IX's not broken ...
Washington The Department of Education and Office of Civil Rights agreed last week that there should be no changes in Title IX, the 31-year-old landmark prohibition of discrimination based on gender that attempts to level the field for women in funding and participation in college athletics.
The law applies to colleges and universities that receive federal funds and affects all programs.
To be in compliance, a school must provide intercollegiate-level opportunities for men and women proportionate to their respective full-time undergraduate enrollments; have a "history and continuing practice of program expansion" for the underrepresented sex; or be "fully and effectively" accommodating.
Little Rock, Ark. A teenager disciplined by his school district for talking about being gay will get $25,000, an apology from school officials, and his disciplinary record cleared.
Thomas McLaughlin of Jacksonville settled his lawsuit last week against the Pulaski County Special School District, which disciplined him for telling classmates about his sexual orientation.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in April, alleging teachers disciplined the teen for his remarks as well as preached to him from the Bible and told his parents he was gay. The settlement requires that the school district not disclose a student's sexual orientation or punish a student for discussing it outside class.
Louisville, Ky. Backstreet Boy rapper Kevin Richardson and childhood friend and songwriter Keith McGuffey hope to help aspiring singers, songwriters, and producers break into the music business while in Kentucky. The duo will open the Music Workshop in Louisville in August.
The workshop will offer classes on how to tweak the knobs on a sound board, strum a guitar, negotiate a sweet royalty rate, and record and sell an album directly from a recording studio.
"When [we] were growing up in central Kentucky, there wasn't any real outlet for us," Mr. Richardson says. "If we wanted to get information about the music industry, we had to travel."
