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U. of Northern Iowa pledges broad sex bias review

News, Sports

December 18th, 2011 by Ric Hanson

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The University of Northern Iowa has announced plans for a wide-ranging review of the way its athletics department and other offices handle sexual harassment and assault complaints. All three of Iowa’s public universities are reviewing policies for preventing and reporting child abuse after coaches at Penn State and Syracuse have been accused of using their positions to meet victims. But UNI is going further than the others, performing a review and audit to determine whether its practices comply with the federal law known as Title IX that bans gender discrimination in public education. A Davenport woman suing the university for the way she was treated after two football players sexually assaulted her in 2004 has been seeking precisely such a review in her pending lawsuit, which was filed in 2007.