A recently-filed civil rights complaint alleges Pacific Science Center is breaking the law in its practice of offering single-sex educational opportunities for girls but not for boys. Local news outlets Seattle Weekly and Bellevue Reporter covered this story on Friday, March 12. [Update: KIRO 7 News reported on this story in a 3-minute segment by reporter Graham Johnson on March 19.]
Sean Kullman, president of Global Initiative for Boys and Men based in Friday Harbor, filed the four-page complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
[Note: We we published this story in March 2021. In June 2021 we published a follow-up story: Summer of Discrimination Against Boys Begins at Pacific Science Center]
Washington Initiative for Boys and Men agrees that Pacific Science Center should cease treating children differently based on their sex.
The first of PacSci’s 2021 “girls focused” summer camps is scheduled to begin in June.
What is a desirable solution?
The solution is simple and obvious: Pacific Science Center should treat girls and boys equally. Both girls and boys can benefit from single-sex educational environments. If PacSci offers “girls focused” summer camps, they should offer an equal number of “boys focused” summer camps. (Or at least offer one.) Parents and their children will then decide what suits them best.
Is PacSci subject to Title IX nondiscrimination requirements and Washington’s Civil Rights Act?
Yes, we think so. A non-profit educational organization, Pacific Science Center’s three most recent 990 Forms (2016, 2017, 2018) show government grant contributions in excess of $7.5 million. In other words, they receive public funds. Also, PacSci works with the U.S. Department of Education and various schools around Washington state.
Related: Bellevue College under civil rights investigation for its sex-specific scholarships
Girls 83, Boys 0. A blind spot?
If a search on their website is any indication, Pacific Science Center is more enthusiastic about educating girls than boys. A search for “girls” on March 15, 2021 produced 83 results. Searching “boys” produced 0 results. See the screenshots below.
“Girls focused” summer camps
Pacific Science Center’s 2021 summer camps schedule shows that 120 camps will be offered on-site in Lower Queen Anne. Eight of those camps are designated “Girls Focused”. For PacSci’s summer camps in 2019 and 2020, they used the term “Girls Only” rather than “Girls Focused”.
Are “girls focused” camps different from “girls only” camps?
Where Pacific Science Center says “girls focused”, they used to say “girls only” until March 2021. In substance, there appears to be no difference between how PacSci regards their 2021 “girls focused” camps and how they regarded their 2019 and 2020 “girls only” camps. In both cases, boys could technically register if they wanted to, but the focus is on helping girls. To our knowledge, Pacific Science Center has not said whether a boy ever attended a “girls only” camp, nor have they said whether a parent ever attempted to register their son for a “girls only” camp.
PacSci’s summer camps webpage says [7/16/2022 note: content of the webpage has changed]:
Girls focused camps are a space for youth who identify as female or non-binary to support each other learning in STEAM topics, while also breaking down the social and cultural barriers that can often prevent them from pursuing STEAM subjects and careers.
On this same wepage, PacSci provides responses to the questions “Why do you have girls focused camps?” and “Is it accurate that anyone can register for ‘girls focused’ camps?”
PacSci donors, please support equal opportunities for girls and boys
At the end of the video below is a long list of companies, foundations, families, and individuals who donated to Pacific Science Center. How many of them have spoken up in past years or are willing to speak up this year in favor of PacSci treating girls and boys equally?
What does Pacific Science Center say?
Director of Marketing Liisa O’Neill told reporter Cameron Sheppard last week:
We know that stereotypes, social expectations, and lack of representation dissuade girls from pursuing interests in STEM. The mission of our Girls-Focused Camp Program is to offer unique experiences that help youth identifying as female or non-binary overcome these types of limitations.
Chief Marketing Officer Eleanor Bradley said in an email sent August 28, 2020:
Through our girls-only programming we try to break down the social and cultural barriers that often keep girls from entering and remaining in STEM subjects and careers.
She added:
The curriculum of our girls-only summer camps is designed to create a safe space for exploration outside of traditional gender norms. However, we also know how important coed programming is for portraying female aptitude and success in STEM for their male peers, which is why none of our programming is exclusively girls and only 12 of the 251 virtual and in person summer camps we ran this summer were “girls-only.” We would never, and have never excluded a boy from participating in these programs, should they have the interest.