Tag: universities

California college axes women’s locker rooms to boost transgender inclusivity

A California university is doing away with traditional men’s and women’s locker rooms in an effort to support transgender students – even as the state’s governor condemns transgender athletes in women’s sports. 

The University of California, Davis announced plans last month to renovate the locker rooms at its Activities and Recreation Center, citing student feedback as the motivation for the $5 million project.

‘We value inclusive, accessible environments that accommodate the diverse needs of our community,’ schools officials said at the time, according to Fox News. 

‘We are pleased to announce that we will be remodeling the current locker room facilities to implement universal locker rooms.

‘All campus and recreation members can use our universal locker rooms, regardless of who they are and how they identify,’ they continued, noting the space will be ‘inclusive of members with disabilities and all gender identities.’

But after some students expressed concerns about the safety of the ‘universal’ locker rooms, which were seized upon by critics of the transgender movement, the university revised its statement, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.  

It now says, ‘All Campus Recreation members will be able to use our new locker rooms. These spaces include ADA-accessible facilities for members with disabilities.’

Under the plans for the new locker room, the university would offer a handful of private cabanas, changing rooms and toilet rooms with floor-to-ceiling walls and doors.

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Status Panic on the Campus

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is “fighting back against efforts to intimidate professors into silence,” which—for many of us whose memories of college lecture halls are not uniformly pleasant—is yet another ACLU cause we might not support. The issues here, however, are of more momentous social and political consequence than our initial reaction might suggest.

The ACLU’s efforts—they’re raising funds to support them—are a response to lawsuits brought against students and faculty at Columbia University and elsewhere for their opposition to the war in Gaza. 

The issues are complicated, but the ACLU says it is fighting against attempts to “weaponize our legal system to punish and silence constitutionally protected speech.” Such lawsuits “have become a common tool for intimidating and silencing criticism—including from whistleblowers, journalists and political protestors… not necessarily to win in court, but to entangle people in expensive litigation, using the prospect of mounting legal fees and a potentially ruinous financial penalty to chill speech. In other words, to bully people into silence.” 

The plaintiffs in the Columbia case say statements by faculty supporting student protestors “somehow injured them by causing Columbia University to move classes online, restrict campus access, and cancel commencement.” Three defendants in the case are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman—members of the notorious Capitol Hill “Squad”—which might be about all most conservatives will want to know before making up their minds.

Personally, I have no dog in this fight. Both sides—all sides—seem intent on dragging their opponents into court, a strategy that seems unlikely to improve matters. This conclusion that the atmosphere on campuses will only get more poisonous, tentative as it is, was reinforced the other day in a casual conversation with a college professor friend at a public university more than 300 miles from Columbia. 

This professor and I have a mutual friend who was hoping to land a job at the university, and I asked what he might do to help make that happen. 

“I have no influence here,” the professor said. “I’m just a content provider.”

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USU student felt unsafe in dorm with trans resident assistant, testifies to legislature

A young female student at USU, who lived in a women’s dorm suite where a purported transgender resident assistant was assigned after Christmas break, called the RA placement unacceptable and said she did not feel safe.

In her first interview, Avery Saltzman said she felt compelled to speak up for herself and “to protect girls.”

When asked if it was an assignment she could have lived with, Saltzman said no.

“No, not at all,” the 19-year-old freshman said. “It’s unacceptable, really, feeling unsafe in your own private spaces.”

Saltzman’s mother first raised concerns weeks ago, and after initially defending its housing policies, USU suddenly announced an “external review” of the programs.

GOP legislative leaders said lawmakers would address the concerns — and Thursday, Saltzman testified in favor of HB 269, Privacy Protections in Sex-designated Areas.

Among other things, the bill says, “to preserve the individual privacy of males and females, a degree-granting institution that provides student housing may only rent to, assign, or otherwise place an individual in a dwelling unit that is sex-designated within the institution student housing.”

Saltzman said she is not anti-trans, she supports inclusive housing, and moved rather than share the women’s space — which has a shared bathroom — with a transgender RA.

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Repression vs. Activism – Colleges Crack Down While Gaza Solidarity Persists

Last spring, campuses across the country became flashpoints of anti-war resistance, as thousands of students mobilized in a powerful demonstration of moral conscience and collective action. Their demands were clear: an end to U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza and the dismantling of the war machine that sustains it. This wave of activism commanded both national and international attention.

Yet, in recent months, despite the ongoing slaughter and the White House’s egregious proposals to further orchestrate the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, mainstream coverage of the student movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people – and in opposition to what Martin Luther King Jr. condemned as “the madness of militarism” – has steadily faded from the headlines.

Despite the relative media silence, and amid an intensifying campaign of institutional repression, the campus-based fight against the intolerable status quo has not ceased. Students remain at the forefront of the struggle for a more just, less militarized, and truly democratic world.

What coverage remains has largely functioned to reinforce the narrative that universities – initially caught off guard by the spontaneous protests of the spring – have successfully reasserted control over their campuses from what they have long framed as unruly agitators.

In November, The New York Times framed administrators’ crackdown on campus protests as a success, reporting that their efforts “seem to be working.” These draconian measures have had a chilling effect on campus expression – undermining free speech, stifling dissent, and betraying the university’s role as a laboratory for democracy and social change.

Nonviolent civil disobedience – a cornerstone of student activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the anti-Vietnam War and anti-Apartheid struggles – is now being met with the heavy hand of repression, as both the legal system and university conduct boards enforce arbitrary, vague, and inconsistently applied punitive measures.

These crackdowns have disproportionately targeted advocates for Palestinian liberation and their allies. This assault on Palestine-related dissent has already prompted multiple complaints over civil rights violations.

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Department of Education Cuts $15 Million in DEI Grants at Three Universities

Although Democrats are melting down over Elon Musk and President Trump’s attempts to downsize the federal government and ending woke DEI programs, throwing tantrums will not stop what’s coming.

Just days after taking office, President Trump signed a Memorandum placing all federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) employees on administrative leave, pending the termination of these programs under Trump’s “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” Executive Order.

President Trump has also made it clear that the Department of Education (DOE) is set for major changes, if not complete closure.

The Gateway Pundit reported that Democrats, angry that an agency with an abysmal record for student achievement may actually have to face questions about its failures, attempted to barge their way into the DOE building in their latest publicity stunt.

Despite their petulant mewings, on Friday, the DOE announced it had canceled $15 million in federal grants that were used to fund diversity programs at three universities in order to align with the President’s Executive Order.

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NCAA Had The Power To Keep Men Out Of Women’s Sports This Whole Time

The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced an about-face on its 2022 “participation policy” for transgender-identifying athletes this week: No longer are men allowed to self-identify their way into women’s sports.

“The new policy limits competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only,” the NCAA said in a press release, forced to acknowledge the genetic differences between men and women while bitterly clinging to the anti-science trans-speak “assigned at birth,” as if chromosomal makeup is arbitrary.

Regardless of the continued language manipulation, however, the policy change stands — and it’s a direct result of female athletes demonstrating the myriad ways male athletes have harmed them, plus a strong leader in the White House who is willing to listen and act.

On Wednesday, just one day before the NCAA policy reversal, President Donald Trump signed an executive order (titled simply “Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports“) that stripped all funding from educational programs that let men and boys infiltrate women’s and girls’ athletics. “It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly,” the order reads, not only for reasons of “safety” and “fairness,” but also to preserve “dignity, and truth.”

The NCAA allowing males to compete against females “is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports,” Trump’s order says.

The president is clearly listening to the many brave women who have risked their reputations and much more to share their stories of discrimination and danger. One of these women, NCAA Division 1 athlete Sia Liilii, then the captain of the University of Nevada, Reno, women’s volleyball team, led her teammates in protesting and then forfeiting a game against San Jose State University’s women’s team because it included a trans-identifying male player. As IW Features highlights in a documentary about Liilii’s experience, her school refused to support its own women’s team.

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Former UPenn Athletes Sue To Expunge Trans Swimmer Lia Thomas’ Records

Three former swimmers for the University of Pennsylvania have sued the Ivy League college to expunge the records of transgender athlete Lia Thomas.

Alums Grace Estabrook, Margot Kaczorowski and Ellen Holmquist filed the suit on Tuesday, alleging they suffered emotional trauma after Thomas competed as a woman, destroying everything they’d worked their entire lives to achieve. The lawsuit was filed one day before President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning biological men from competing in women’s sports, the Fox News reports.

The three actual women claim that their former school, along with Harvard University, the NCAA, and the Ivy League Council of Presidents subjected them to harassment and abuse in violation of federal laws by allowing Thomas to compete on their team.

“The UPenn administrators told the women that if anyone was struggling with accepting Thomas’ participation on the UPenn Women’s team, they should seek counseling and support from CAPS and the LBGTQ center,” reads the lawsuit.

2004 grads Kaczorowski and Holmquist, and Estabrook, a 2022 graduate, say they were “repeatedly emotionally traumatized” after Thomas was allowed to compete with them in violation of Title IX, and say that school officials pushed pro-trans ideology on them the entire time Thomas was on the team.

They also allege that school administrators invited them to a talk titled “Trans 101,” where they were the problem if they had issues with a “trans-identifying male” on their team.

School officials also allegedly warned them against speaking out about Thomas or they’d be labeled transphobes and risk not finding jobs upon graduation.

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Professor says monuments to American pioneers ‘reinforce white supremacy’

A University of North Dakota history professor who studies the American West believes monuments depicting the pioneers “reinforce white supremacy.”

In an interview this week with KJZZ Phoenix, Cynthia Prescott (pictured) discussed her research on pioneer monuments, including a book that argues the artwork promotes “white cultural superiority” and “gender stereotypes.”

Much like with Confederate monuments, the professor said America should re-examine artwork honoring American settlers.

“A lot of people have talked about Confederate monuments in particular, as being monuments that were put up in the late 19th, early 20th centuries for the purpose of enshrining a racial hierarchy. And through my work, I argue that Western pioneer monuments were doing very similar cultural work,” she told KJZZ.

Prescott, who chairs the History and American Indian Studies Department, said the purpose of pioneer monuments was “to reinforce white supremacy over peoples of color.”

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Trump Is “Dangerous” & Racist To Keep Men Out Of Women’s Prisons, Professor Says

President Donald Trump’s executive order to keep men who claim to be women out of female prisons is “dangerous” and hints of racism, according to an anthropologist.

Kate Clancy, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, analyzed the president’s directive that the federal government define sex on biological terms.

He also said prisons should not house men who claim to be transgender with women. The administration has also frozen people from requesting an “X” gender marker, for “nonbinary,” on their passports.

The order is “stupid” and “dangerous,” Clancy told LGBTQ Nation. Clancy disputed the idea that sex is biologically determinable. However, biology experts have affirmed there are only two sexes and it is not possible to change one’s sex.

“I think Trump, in whatever terrible language is available to him, is trying to control women and control people he perceives to be in the woman category,” Clancy told the news outlet.

“A lot of this is keeping the category of women pure—and also, obviously, about doing immense harm to trans people.”

But she also finds a racial element in the executive order.

She stated:

There’s also a very racial, white supremacist thing going on here with this “defending women.”

It’s a very old idea—it appears in travelogs, early writings of Europeans, as well as in the United States when they started encountering North American indigenous folks, and the way that they thought about enslaved peoples.

There was this belief that in the “lower races,” men and women were less different and that in the “higher races,” there were more differences between women and men.

This was about saying men and women are differentiated, clear, non-overlapping categories because that makes us a more evolved people.

Clancy also said “sex is also socially constructed.”

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Leading UK Universities Look to Expand Use of Open-Book Exams to Help Grades of Minority Students

Leading British universities are preparing to lower test standards in a bid to help improve the grades of ethnic minorities and poorer students in a major DEI initiative.

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are among those preparing to implement “inclusive assessments” such as open-book exams and take-home essays rather than monitored in-person testing in the hopes of cutting the gaps between groups of students, The Telegraph reported.

In its annual Access and Participation Plan (APP) — a yearly report into how a university is seeking to improve the lot of disadvantaged student groups — the University of Cambridge said that traditional “assessment practices” may be responsible for varying performances among groups.

Cambridge said that it would specifically seek to “improve outcomes” for Black and Bangladeshi heritage students. The university went on to cite research from its own academics, finding traditional tests represent “threats to self-worth” for students.

Meanwhile, Oxford University’s APP reportedly said that it would seek to “use a more diverse and inclusive range of assessments” in order to “improve the likelihood” of better grades for students from “lower socio-economic backgrounds”.

The Office for Students (OFS), which regulates higher education in England, has reportedly backed the plans, and other Russell Group elite schools are considering following the example of Oxford and Cambridge.

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