News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Don MacMaster works at his desk on Friday at his office in the Besser Technical Center at Alpena Community College.

ALPENA — At its regular board meeting on Thursday night, the Alpena Community College Board of Trustees voted to rescind a Title IX policy vacated in a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Policy 7009A was approved by the ACC Board of Trustees in October. The policy was put in place to comply with new Title IX regulations from the Biden Administration. Now that policy 7009A has been rescinded, college policies will follow the 2020 Title IX regulations.

The 2020 Title IX regulations were introduced by the Trump Administration to amend the Obama Administration’s Title IX policies, said ACC President Don MacMaster.

When the Trump administration took office, they observed that the investigation process for Title IX complaints was slanted in favor of the person making the complaint.

With the 2020 regulations, the Trump Administration changed the investigation process to a court-like proceeding, MacMaster said.

“The complaint would be dealt with in more of a trial-like situation,” MacMaster said. “With a third party arbitrator and testimony from both. Each party would have representation. It became much more legalistic in structure.”

Each administration has a different take on how Title IX should be regulated, particularly when it comes to investigation procedures.

The ACC Board of Trustees approved the Biden Administration’s changes to Title IX in October.

MacMaster said that the Biden changes moderated the Trump changes, but did not completely undo them. The primary modifications from the Biden Administration included adding transgender and pregnancy as protected classes under Title IX and moderating the courtroom-like investigations.

“We were required under the 2020 regulations to have an actual live hearing with cross-examination and so forth,” said Karen Bennett, legal counsel from Wenzel, Bennett, and Harris PC at Thursday night’s board meeting. “We’ve done a couple of those. They’re not fun. They’re extremely expensive.”

The 2024 regulations took that away and gave the school other tools to use such as mediation, conciliation, and facilitated resolution, which are all types of alternative dispute resolution.

Now, after just four months, ACC will return to court-like proceedings to handle Title IX complaints.