Your Monday morning amazing words are from Stephen L. Hall!
***
Several weeks ago there appeared an article at The Daily Caller, Titled “West Virginia University: Calling Someone The ‘Wrong’ Prounoun (sic.) Is A Title IX Violation” which not merely caught my attention but provoked my ire.
Part of my ire was the sheer stupidity of the declaration, but party of my ire was the problematic circumstance that this idiocy originates in one of my alma-maters, not merely an alma-mater, but an idiotic legal opinion from the very institution from which I obtained my law degree.
When the institution which issued to you an academic degree puts forth a public display of stupidity, it is not merely an embarrassment being associated with the stupidity, but it devalues the very degree for which you paid with your intellect, hours of study, as well as your financial resources. Other people see such stupidity, remember the name of the foolish university, and when they see that name in your background they come to the natural conclusion that your education must be lacking and your ability second rate.
Peter Hasson reports, “Referring to someone by the ‘wrong’ gender pronoun is a violation of federal anti-discrimination law, according to West Virginia University’s Title IX office.” This is claimed to be the pronouncement of federal law, “as interpreted by WVU” coming from their Title IX office, Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 pretends to provide equal opportunity in education applying the so-called “civil rights” laws to educational institutions.
WVU even offers useless guidance in pursuit of this non-sense. This guide provides such unhelpful advise as, “Remember that people may change their pronouns without changing their name, appearance, or gender identity.” If you think that you have freedom of speech, rest assured that the university has already waived that freedom for their employees and even people who do business with them.
“The departments have resolved Title IX investigations with agreements committing that school staff and contractors will use pronouns and names consistent with a transgender student’s gender identity.”
The obvious problem is that if you use pronouns “consistent with a . . . student’s gender identity” as they have stated, then you may have already violated their rule, because the student “may change their pronouns without changing their . . . gender identity”. So if you follow the rules you may still violate the rules.
But how can a pronoun be “wrong” if the test for being wrong is totally subjective in the mind of the person making the accusation? Administrative law judges do not have any objective measure as the jury of one, not that administrative law judges are prone to be objective. Even asking for documentation of the student’s subjective gender identity is deemed a violation of the law.
I could go on about the stupidity of this standard, but something in this article struck me as wrong, and it was not the stupidity, it was the lies.
The article cites the WVU officials as claiming that the university made the determination regarding pronouns being a violation of Title IX. But, two words caught my eye, the “dear colleague” letter. WVU pretends that they have the authority to make such a legal determination. Legal determinations are traditionally the function of the courts, not school employees. But this determination did not come from the school, despite what they said.
A “dear colleague” letter is a guidance issued by the US Department of Education explaining how the Department plans to interpret the law. As an executive agency it is under the direct control of the President’s appointee in making its own “interpretations” of the law.
It was the Department of Education, in the “dear colleague” letter, which made the “interpretations” which WVU pretends it made. Everything that WVU pretends it determined or interpreted is right there in the letter, dictated by the US Department of Education, including stating that, “[b]ecause transgender students often are unable to obtain identification documents that reflect their gender identity . . . requiring students to produce such identification documents . . . may violate Title IX . . . .”
That provision of staff and contractors? “. . . school staff and contractors will use pronouns and names consistent with a transgender student’s gender identity.” What about those bathrooms and dressing rooms? “. . . transgender students must be allowed to . . . access such facilities consistent with their gender identity.”
How does the government through the Department of Education become such an absolute dictatorial tyrant? Follow the money. “As a condition of receiving Federal funds, a school agrees that it will not . . . treat differently on the basis of sex any person in its educational programs or activities . . . . The Departments treat a student’s gender identity as the students sex for purposes of Title IX and its implementing regulations.” (The departments are Education and Justice, this “Dear Colleague Letter” is signed by both..)
For profit, primarily technical or occupational education, schools, as opposed to four year institutions, are required to document each year that at least 10% of their income is from sources other than Title IV funding. Title IV funding, for those unfamiliar, includes federal PELL Grants and Direct Student Loans. Written into Obamacare was a complete federal takeover of the Student Loan program; where previously the government had merely guaranteed the loans provided by the banks, now the government provides the funds and the banks have been squeezed out of the equation.
Other schools, like WVU, are not limited to only 90% of their income coming from tuition provided through PELL Grants and Direct Student Loans.
A lawyer might be inclined to simply think that such provisions are so glaringly stupid that the school could easily win any such contest in court and overthrow this tyranny. Legally they might be correct, if the courts actually follow the law, for which there is no reasonable expectation; but financially such attorneys would be way out of their depths.
Contrary to the idiotic notions of the 99%ers regarding the “big corporations” in the educational industry they are not just sitting on large piles of cash. If the were sitting on such a pile of cash, it would make more sense to simply close shop and retire rather than constantly fight bureaucrats at the Department of Education.. The biggest expense by a wide margin of any school is the salaries of the educators, then of course there are overhead expenses such as property rent, maintenance, and/or building depreciation, plus various operating expenses.
The income to continue operations comes overwhelmingly from student tuition, and the overwhelming majority of that tuition comes from Title IV funding mentioned above. So when the government turns off the tap, no matter how legally indefensible the government’s position, those expenses, the teachers’ salaries, continue. Long before the time a school actually got to a real court, after what I’m sure would be “unexpected” delays, , the school would be bankrupt.
In order to avoid bankruptcy, the school would have to lay off all of its teachers and employees during the long court battle, with no revenues for the business, and a negative income for keeping on a minimal staff. Suppose they did this, and eventually prevailed in court, say it takes perhaps a year. Then they could try to recall all of the laid off teachers, presuming that they had not found another gob in the intervening year. They could try to re-attract students left in the lurch, presuming they have not enrolled in another school.
Far fetched you say? This is the very thing which happened two weeks ago to ITT Technical Institute. Over 40,000 students across 39 states are suddenly without a school; 8000 employees are suddenly out of work. ITT claims that they have done nothing wrong, but they cannot afford to fight the Department of Education which has cut off all of their students’ funding.
Is ITT innocent, or is the Department of Education in the right in this instance? I do not know, and there will be no court case to find out. We certainly know that the Dept. of Ed. is wrong about forcing schools to accept pretend genders. But no one can afford to contest the government monopoly on education funding.
I was told by my law school professors that your real employer was not your clients, but it was the person paying your legal fees. The employer is always the one who is paying the money. Once education began to be paid by the government, and not by the students’ parents, the customer of those schools became the government, not the students.
What strikes me? The question of why the government would engage in such blatant extortion of such a stupid and ignorant position as genderish pronouns. Why would they create an infraction without objective standards thus forcing schools to submit to ridiculous insanity?
It seems to be the sole purpose of making people conform and obey. I recall a story years ago about police training in some oriental country where the trainees were required to do silly things like put bananas on their heads, to teach obedience and following orders.
I am reminded, oddly enough, about the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, where the emperor was fooled into thinking he was getting a fabulous new suit, when he was really naked, until a child too young to duplicitous spoke out loud what everyone was too afraid to day because their livelihoods depended upon the emperor’s favor.
It appears to me that the emperor is getting his revenge for being called out as a fool and using his power of our own tax money to force the peasants to proclaim and support idiocy as if it was their own independent thought. Mentally to force them to parade around naked. WVU did not “interpret” the law to be stupid, they were commanded under the threat of losing their phoney-baloney jobs to “interpret” the law to be stupid. Kow tow to the emperor.
