Enacting Prevention, Negotiating Power: Prevention Staff as Critical Agents of Title IX Policy

• In Event: Unforgetting Professional Ethics: Educators Resisting Policy Mandates Misaligned with Justice

Abstract

By framing this study within Critical Feminist Legal Theory, this research acknowledges that Title IX higher education implementation is not politically neutral. Instead, it is a site where power is negotiated, contested, and reproduced—often in ways that either uphold or undermine the law's intended goals. This framework positions prevention staff not just as implementers of policy but as agents embedded within and shaped by broader structures of legal, institutional, and social power. This research found that College Prevention Staff play a key role in navigating gendered power structures embedded through the focus on lived experiences as crucial evidence for understanding how Title IX federal policy operates.

Author

• Elizabeth Lopez, Claremont Graduate University