Title IX

Again, it's not fair.

She filed a Title IX complaint.

Now, that's serious.

On April 19th, 2025, and was fired on May.

Now, the interesting thing, from February to May, she got paid.

Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs, including unequal athletic opportunities and retaliation.

So she filed that in April of 2025.

She got fired in May of 2026.

They had decided that he should be taken out of clinical duties based on this complaint.

Title IX was also initiated.

So they were trying to figure out what to do with that.

And ultimately, they told Vaibhav, listen, you will not be seeing patients, we have to take you out of clinical duties.

And then he had a brain fart moment where he just followed her.

I think it was as innocent as that.

And then it was just weaponized and blown up into this huge mountain of like Title IX and sexual harassment and sexual assault and all of the things is, yeah, like you said, the power differential.

I think the recognizing, I bet that moment hit him so hard where he's like, oh my gosh, I am one mistake away from losing everything.

there are any students that listen to this, I want you to know my heart goes out to you.

But seeing how the administration handled it was somewhat shocking, just because there's, you know, with the Title IX investigations, and with the, you know, I mean, the initial sort of most high profile case that initially came through, you know, was in 2016, with the sexual assault cases that happened at Harvard, you know, which really kind of sent the ball rolling with, you know, leading to just sort of this massive wave of people coming out and, you know, women saying, I don't feel safe on my college campus.

And this has happened to me.

I mean, when we poll students now, you know, close to 25% of women report having been sexually assaulted in some

I mean, first of all, what are we doing to our women to allow men to be in their sports? It's crazy.

You know, Title IX was this thing that gave women the rights to have the same rights as men.

And now we're throwing that away because transgenders want to be in their sports.

I love the guy, I don't know his name, who was a professional basketball player, you know, 6'8", looking kind of like this.

He said he'd kill himself if I did.

The next day, he was waiting for me outside my dorm room and told me that if I didn't stay quiet, he'd report my TikToks for harassment to the Title IX office.

I grew afraid.

Would he watch my every move for the rest of my life? I asked a Hillel administrator for the previous day's security footage as evidence of his physical intimidation.

She urged me to send Columbia's Title IX office a detailed report.

I didn't know reporting to Title IX meant immediately opening a bigger investigation.

I asked the office not to do anything, fearing he'd only harass me further.

The administrators swore they would protect me from him.

And that's really exciting.

And it started out heavily on the side of women's rowing with the explosion of Title IX, fueling new women's programs.

cropping up and needing a pipeline for a lot of those programs to fill the ranks of the NCAA Division I teams and actually all through Division I, Division II, Division III.

But I think that had some benefit for young boys and young men who wanted to get into the sport that I think is helping create more opportunities, more exposure for the sport and greater pipeline of athletes with experience coming into college.

It started as a four mile race with the starter lining everybody across a wide Poughkeepsie River, firing a gun and everyone would go flying.

gangbusters for four four miles and see who the champion was to ultimately getting to a six lane olympic format in the 1960s and becoming more representative of what you see here today in olympic rowing on the women's side most women's programs started to emerge in the 1970s and it wasn't until in the 1990s that the NCAA adopted women's rowing as a recognized sport.

They were certainly finding their way to have a true national championship before then, but the NCAA gave it a lot of legitimacy in the 1990s And I credit Title IX and the legislation and the case law that ultimately yielded a balance of opportunities for women and men in collegiate sports to really fuel the growth of women's rowing and to get it into the NCAA as their governing body and ultimately their national championship.

In Title IX is federal legislation saying that public institutions, public money has to be spent equally between the men and women.

And that shift has meant that sports are much more serious for kids, starting at younger ages.

I mean, when I played, I only, I'm a Title IX, beneficiary of Title IX, and didn't start playing until like, I don't know, sixth grade maybe, on a team.

And it just wasn't that intense.

And even in high school, I mean, it was serious, but it wasn't all, it wasn't life or death.