In recent weeks I’ve submitted several California Freedom of Information Act requests of various entities at San Diego State University (SDSU), and many have been related to training that SDSU entities do regarding transgender students. What I’ve discovered is that apparently no one has been training staff of SDSU’s Associated Students, to include the staff of the Aztec Recreation Center (ARC).
To begin with, the California Freedom of Information Act is actually called the California Open Records Act (CORA), and it’s found in California Government Code § 6250 et seq. (et seq. meaning “and the following”). The act was modified for the Universities of California (UCs), the California State Universities (SUs), and California Junior Colleges (JCs) in 2011 by the Fredrick McKee Act in 2011. For a reasonable fee that can be waived, one can obtain government, university and college system records that aren’t protected by a limited number of exceptions.
Among the requests I asked for were training records and materials from the SDSU Police Department, the Title IX compliance office for SDSU and the Associated Students (AS) and their adjunct ARC. After the alleged incident involving A.T. Furuya, I wanted to determine if the training that police officers and staffers at SDSU are taught are in alignment with Title IX standards that the Department of Education sets regarding transgender students.
The language I used in my CORA request for the SDSU Police training reports stated, “I am requesting obtain copies of training dates and lesson plans for SDSU Police Department training relating to transgender policy during the past two years.” Police Capt. Josh Mays, Custodian of Records, responded by stating in a letter “Our officers receive cultural sensitivity training on a variety of topics, including gender awareness training. In fact, our patrol officers just completed their annual gender awareness training on 01/22/2015.”
Feb. 10, I filed a second request for the information. It appears to me that the response by Capt. Mays neither provided the information requested in accordance with CORA or denied the request based on the limited exceptions. In my opinion, it appears the response signed by Capt. Mays was essentially non-responsive to the initial CORA request.
With AS and SDSU, besides training information, I asked for their transgender related policies. In an email from the SDSU Administration Associate Vice President Jessica Rentto she stated, “I just wanted to clarify that the transgender policy contained in the ARC’s entrance policies is not a university policy.” However, the response from Associated Students signed by Raven Tyson, the AS McKee Transparency Act coordinator, stated that I needed to “submit a Public Records Act request to SDSU’s [Public Records Act] coordinator Nance Lakdawala.”
Apparently AS and their adjunct ARC believes SDSU’s transgender policy applies to them, but SDSU Administration believes they have a separate policy and theirs doesn’t apply.
So, where does that leave training for ARC staff?
It’s too early to draw a definitive conclusion as to whether ARC staff were trained on transgender use of the ARC facilities prior to the alleged Jan. 14 incident involving Furuya – AS has stated in an official letter that they are still searching for the requested records – but my guess at this point is that if SDSU Administration and AS aren’t on the same page as to whether SDSU transgender student policies apply to AS and their adjunct ARC, training for ARC staff is unlikely to have occurred. But, if training did occur, then it’s unlikely to have adequately addressed ARC’s requirements under Title IX that addressed transgender use of gender appropriate locker rooms. It’s already known that ARC didn’t modify their men’s locker room in accordance with the DOE settlement models for the Azusa and Downey School Districts regarding sex segregated facilities.
This week, the South Dakota House State Affairs Committee voted 10 to 2 to advance HB 1195. That bill would void “[t]he transgender policy adopted by the board of directors of the South Dakota High School Activities Association at its meeting on June 11, 2014” by limiting “participation in athletics sanctioned by the association” to the sole determinant of a student’s sex as the “sexual identity noted on the student’s certificate of birth.” That’s apparently not a Title IX compliant potential law.
What happened regarding the DOE, Title IX and the Azusa and Downey School Districts matters beyond California; what happens here in San Diego regarding Title IX and SDSU is going to matter beyond California too.
