ASHE SCHOW: Could the Education Department’s Title IX overreach be nearing an end?

For those working at OCR, Clinton’s loss was a huge blow.

At an event held last week to honor the accomplishments of OCR, attendees were solemn, according to a report from the Weekly Standard’s Alice Lloyd, who noted “tearful sniffling and prayerful entreaties to stay strong and keep the faith” at the event.

Attendees praised the 66,000 investigations conducted during the Obama administration and the 34 “policy guidance documents” issued in the past eight years. The documents mandated rules for sexual interactions, gender segregation as it relates to bathrooms and transgender students and racial equity in disciplinary cases.

Education Secretary John King told the audience that “the work of OCR is just critical to the mission of schools to save lives.”

Former Assistant Secretary Russlyn Ali – who resigned following criticism of the 2011 Dear Colleague letter – provided a video statement to the audience. “OCR’s job is to protect young people, and young people and their teachers and communities need to have faith that OCR will respond to them. So call on it,” she said.

As has been demonstrated numerous times, OCR’s job, in practice, almost exclusively protects young women and LGBT students who accuse others of sexual abuse. For the most part, men need not apply. . . .

While Trump didn’t make explicit demands for Title IX reforms during his campaign, it is assumed by many on both sides of the issue — based on his aversion to “PC culture” and promises to rollback President Barack Obama’s executive overreach — that he will scale back or reverse some of the Dear Colleague letters of the past decade.

Even if that assumption proves correct, addressing inequities on college campuses could subsumed for a time by higher priority agenda items. Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos is an advocate of school choice, which seems to be a more central focus.

And when a Trump administration does get around to overturning past Dear Colleague letters and directives, the culture on college campuses is so ingrained that it could still take years if not decades to reverse.

Actually, I think regulations requiring that sexual assault complaints be directed to police, and mandating equal treatment for male students, could make a big difference, and pretty fast.