One of those little coincidences. First was a University-wide e-mail
from the president of the University Near Here, Mark Huddleston.
The subject line:
President Huddleston Addresses Title IX and Campus Culture
Anyone who's followed recent news can only read that
with a sinking feeling of dread.
You can read the President Huddleston's letter right
here yourself. But I'll excerpt here:
With commencement and other end of academic year celebrations behind us,
it is a good time to look ahead to the upcoming year. At the end of
March, I shared the findings of an independent investigation, which in
part evaluated Title IX efforts across the University System of New
Hampshire. The report, among other findings, specifically identified the
need for stronger coordination and collaboration related to all our
Title IX efforts.
You can see the report to which President Huddleston refers here,
which details alleged institutional
failings in dealing with employee misbehavior
at UNH and Keene State.
To a certain extent, it's a natural bureaucratic response: we'll solve
this (perceived) problem by creating new bureaucracy.
But wait, there's more:
However, as I said in March, our work around Title IX must move beyond
rules and simple compliance. While these things are important, we must
address the broader and more complex factors in our culture that keep us
from becoming the kind of community to which we aspire. A safe and
healthy campus is one grounded in widely shared values and deeply rooted
norms of behavior wherein people respect and take care of one another.
Bottom line: UNH is getting a "task force", starting out as a
"working group" which will develop an "action plan" to… Oh, I'm sure it
will involve above-average arrogance and self-righteousness in
service to the latest buzzwords, all wrapped up in
who-could-possibly-be-against-that language.
I, for one, welcome our new Title IX overlords who will be in charge
of enforcing "widely shared values" and "deeply rooted norms".
Nothing could go wrong there.
The second part of the coincidence mentioned above: Jessica Gavora
(Jonah Goldberg's readers know her as "the
Fair Jessica") writes in the WSJ today on "How Title
IX Became a Political Weapon"
Since its passage 43 years ago, Title IX has proved to be a remarkably
elastic law. It has been stretched and warped from its original intent
to end discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive
federal funding. As long as Title IX’s victims were wrestlers or
swimmers from low-revenue men’s sports that were jettisoned to achieve
participation-parity with women’s sports, nobody much cared. But now
that the law is being turned into a tool to suppress free speech on
college campuses, even liberals are starting to cry foul.
Ms. Gavora's article should be recommended reading for anyone
on President Huddleston's task force. Fearless prediction: it will
not
be read by anyone on President Huddleston's task force.