People sometimes ask me what it’s like to work with the biggest bunch of unhinged lunatics in higher education in America. I used to be able to give them a serious answer. But I can no longer do that because the title of most unhinged institution has slipped away from the UNC system and landed in the great State of Ohio. This is all thanks to administrators at Shawnee State University who have now been sued for punishing a professor because he refused to provide public affirmation to an emotionally unstable student. Specifically, he refused to heed to a male student’s demand to be referred to as a woman, complete with feminine titles and pronouns. The story of how the lawsuit unfolded is simply astonishing.
Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether handled the situation exactly the way I would have. When a student first informed me she was attempting to be a male, I simply made sure to use her preferred first name, thus avoiding the pronoun issue altogether. Similarly, Meriwether offered to use his student’s first or last name instead of using gendered titles or pronouns. But neither the student nor the university was willing to accept that compromise, thus forcing the professor to join in the student’s denial of reality.
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