Title IX: 50 years

Should the booster be required?

Paly opinions on county’s booster vaccine requirement for schools

Santa Clara County changed its definition of vaccination to include booster shots in addition to the first two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine. The mandate goes into effect in July and will be required for students to attend public schools. We approached Palo Alto High School students and staff to gauge their opinions on the revised mandate. Here’s what they had to say:

Photo: Arati Periyannan “I think everyone should be vaccinated and boosted to prevent the spread of COVID. Anecdotally, I do not have any students who are choosing to not get vaccinated and boosted. I know I have students who are not allowed to, so I think it would be positive because they would have to be vaccinated to come to school. That would encourage their parents and guardians to make the right choice for the health of the student.”

— LIZZIE DEKRAAI, English teacher

Photo: Arati Periyannan “People should be vaccinated and boosted so that kids aren’t getting sick, and it’s safer for the teachers who don’t really have a choice. I can understand why people are like ‘Oh, my freedom’ but like, come on, just be safe, you know?”

— MADS ERNST, junior

Photo: Maya Mukherjee “The county requiring a booster shot is just a natural progression. We’ve kind of departed from the two vaccination requirements, and I think definitely by now three vaccinations should be the standard and I feel like its just kind of common sense and it increases my feeling of safety in the community.”

— JONAS PAO, junior

Photo courtesy of Gal Shoval “I think some people might be upset about it, but it’s a smart precaution that should be taken. We’ve seen how many COVID cases we had in the last month alone, so we should be doing everything we can to prevent it from happening again. I don’t think it should affect Paly in any way. As long as people follow the precautions, we should all be able to go on with our lives like we did before.”

— GAL SHOVAL, freshman IX

“I support the mandate because I think it’s important that people get vaccinated. This way, we can keep as many people safe as possible. Especially in the school setting where students are in classrooms together every day, it’s even more important that we stop the spread of COVID. Hopefully after people get their third shot, less people will get COVID, and we can keep more people healthy.”

IX 50 Years When Title IX was first being proposed, Marie Wolbach was a counselor at a college campus. Time after time, her fellow counselors would discourage aspiring female medical students before they even applied. Since Congress passed Title IX 50 years ago, Wolbach has seen more and more women be empowered enough to achieve their medical school aspirations. “There’s the subtle ways that women were discouraged from meeting their dreams,” Wolbach told Anthro Magazine in an interview. “And Title IX gave them a real way to say, ‘not so fast, maybe I do have the capabilities.’” Wolbach is the founder of the American Association of University Women’s STEM camp for girls. She’s working with the AAUW to spread awareness of the law and the rights it provides in light of its 50th anniversary. “There are things that they [young women] may just say, ‘well, that’s the way it is,’ and not really look at the fact that they have some legal reasons to complain about something that happens,” Wolbach said. “I hope that they will see that being their own advocates, or being advocates for other women, has really had an impact in our society in the last 50 years.” Peg Carlson-Bowen, a board member of AAUW’s San Jose branch, also is an

advocate for Title IX. She said that she’s seen a lot of growth in women’s rights and women’s quality of life over the past 50 years as a result of Title IX causing more young women to be educated.

“Title IX hasn’t changed so much as the world has changed because of Title IX,” she said. “I think women’s issues are being addressed much more assertively because women lawyers are taking on the cases. Women’s health is better because women doctors are listening to them, although we’ve got a long way to go there, especially in communities of color.”

Despite this progress, Carlson-Bowen said that she believes schools have progress to make, especially in standardizing how Title IX coordinators handle cases.

“There needs to be more guidance at the federal level on how Title IX should be administered, because I think that the Title IX coordinators that we have talked to in the school system don’t get enough training,” she said. “They all develop different procedures and different forms and different processes and policies, and that just makes it harder

Local AAUW members share their thoughts on equity progress for everybody.” Carlson-Bowen said she’d advise younger advocates to try and understand school administrators’ sides of the story, and to use reverse mentoring (when younger people give advice to their seniors). “We don’t live in your world, so we need to be shown — those of us who are a little older and maybe in a position of authority, like a Title IX coordinator — they need to be shown the reality of what you have to live with, but then you have to acknowledge the reality of what they’re dealing with,” she said. Carlson-Bowen said she hopes that young people will feel empowered to stand up for themselves “Being their own advo- and stand up for cates, or being advocates their rights. “I really think for other women, has real- that the women of ly had an impact in our sotoday are standing up and saying, ciety in the last 50 years.” ‘That’s it. We’ve had it,’” Carl— MARIE WOLBACH, AAUW STEM program consultant son-Bowen said. “And the men who are victims of harassment and assault, and anybody of any gender identification, they’re standing up and they’re saying, ‘That’s it. No more. We’re standing up for ourselves and we’ve got the laws to help us do it’.”