Things may be as bad on college campuses as they are because some administrators don’t understand how the U.S. Constitution works.
At Michigan Tech, Vice President for Student Affairs Les Cook claimed that the anti-gender discrimination statute known as Title IX trumps the Constitution.
“[The Constitution] doesn’t supersede it,” Cook said. “Title IX is a federal compliance policy. Those policies supersede anything else.”
The statement from Cook comes after a student satire paper, the Daily Bull, published an article titled “Sexually harassed man pretty okay with situation.” The article included a list of “Signs that she wants the D,” that contained such entries as “she only screams a little” and “she’s underage and you’re 21.”
Disgusting? Yes, both for the nonchalant treatment of male harassment victims and the rape jokes aimed at women. But does it rise to the level of actual harassment or hate speech not protected by the First Amendment? No.
Schools do have some responsibility and leeway in determining how their students should act, just as private employers do. The problem here is this idea — in the hands of an educator — that a federal statute is more important than our founding document.
The Bull retracted and apologized for the article, yet the school proceeded to put the publication on probation for two years and required staff members to attend cultural sensitivity training. The school’s student government also withdrew some funding and threatened to withhold more if the paper’s staff members didn’t attend sexual discrimination training.
Even though the paper and the article were obviously satire, Cook said the article “could be construed as advocating sexual violence.” He also seemed to speculate that students at the university were too dumb to know the difference. “Because there are people out there that do take it literally,” he said.
Gregory S. Baylor, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, litigates cases involving religious freedom and free speech at our nation’s higher education facilities. He told the Washington Examiner in an email that, as is obvious to everyone else, federal statutes such as Title IX do not supersede the Constitution.
“The Constitution, including the First Amendment, restrains the power of government officials who implement and enforce Title IX,” Baylor wrote. “The contention that the Constitution is somehow subordinate to a statute, its implementing regulations and bureaucrats’ enforcement decisions is simply incorrect. Public university officials are state actors, and their conduct is thus subject to scrutiny under the Constitution.”
As colleges across the country restrict the free speech and due process rights of college students, we can expect to see more statements like Cook’s.
