Can't use { title } in an {{ if }} in a grid in a {{ member:listing }}

Here's a full explanation of my use case:

I have Statamic membership configured for employees in my company. Being a university, their most common classification is either Faculty or Staff. Each employee has a primary appointment in a unit (which you can think of like a department in a private company - also, you will also see a field called program below which is practically synonymous with a unit for the purpose of this explanation).

In addition the primary appointment, an employee may be affiliated with two or three other units, so I put all their affiliations into a grid field.

Here is a relevant sample YAML snippet from a member file:

affiliations:
  - 
    job_title: Director
    unit: Speech and Hearing Clinic
    program: ""
    classification: Staff
  - 
    job_title: Adjunct Professor
    unit: Department of Educational Psychology
    program: School Psychology
    classification: Adjunct Faculty
  - 
    job_title: Directorly Professor
    unit: Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education
    program: Special Education
    classification: Faculty

Within the template, I need to setup two sections on a page... one for "Faculty" and one for "Staff" and list all the members affiliated with the current unit, which I'm identifying from the URL. Here's a snippet of the first section, for members classified as Faculty:

{{ get_content from="/directory/{ segment_3 }/{ segment_4 }" }}

  <h2 id="faculty">Faculty</h2>
  {{ member:listing sort_by="username" conditions="affiliations" }}
    {{ if no_results }}
      <p>No matching profiles.</p>
    {{ else }}
      {{ if first }}<p>{{ total_results }} total results. Check the current title: <strong>{{ title }}</strong></p>{{ endif }}
      <p><small><em>Checking affiliations for <strong>{{ username }}</strong>...</em></small></p>
      {{ affiliations }}
        {{ if classification=="Faculty" }}
          {{ if unit=="{ title }" || program=="{ title }" }}
            <figure>
              <div class="portrait">
                {{ get_files in="/assets/img/directory" match="{ username }.jpg" }}
                  <img src="{{ file }}" alt="Portrait of {{ first_name }} {{ last_name }}" />
                {{ /get_files }}
              </div>
              <figcaption>
                <h3 class="name"><a href="/directory/profiles/{{ username }}">{{ first_name }} {{ last_name }}</a></h3>
                <div class="title">
                  <em>{{ job_title }}</em>
                  <br>{{ unit }}
                  <br>{{ program }}
                  <br>{{ classification }}
                </div>
              </figcaption>
            </figure>
          {{ else }}
            <p><small><em>if statement doesn't match: unit=="{ title }" || program=="{ title }"
              <br>Checking title: [{{ title }}]
              <br>Checking unit: [{{ unit }}]
              <br>Checking prg: [{{ program }}]</em></small>
            </p>
          {{ endif }}
        {{ else }}
          <p><small><em>if statement doesn't match: classification=="Faculty"
            <br>Checking classification: [{{ classification }}]</em></small>
          </p>
        {{ endif }}
      {{ /affiliations }}
    {{ endif }}
  {{ /member:listing }}

{{ /get_content }}

Here is my output:

Of the 6 members pictured, only 2 actually meet all the criteria (aagrooms and acohen) and should display the figure block which includes their picture and contact information. The breakdown is happening when I reference { title } in an IF statement in a grid in a {{ member:listing }}.

edit: Curtis Blackwell suggests below using the var add-on to give the title variable a different name. I tried it but got a PHP syntax error, so I stopped trying it.

Any other suggestions?