The University of North Dakota is putting new policies in place for students attending the school, including adding “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected from discrimination under Title IX, a federal statute designed specifically to require schools that receive federal funding to protect women and girls from discrimination based on their biological sex.
In recent years, leftists in academia and in the federal government have moved to expand those protections based on “gender identity,” including biological men who want to live as women.
Now UND is joining that movement, according to media reports, putting in place policies that declare that referring to someone by a pronoun they don’t like would be considered discrimination.
The policies will be felt across all areas of campus like, according to a report by the Leadership Institution’s Campus Reform:
University of North Dakota communications director David Dodds told Campus Reform that the policy has completed its comment period and has been forwarded to the school’s Executive Council for further discussion.
For housing, students would therefore be allowed to stay in “housing consistent with their gender identity and expression” — without a requirement that transgender students stay in single-occupancy accommodations.
“UND Housing will continue to work with all students to find living arrangements that are best fit for each student, regardless of reason,” Dodd said.
For athletics, the policy merely notes that the school “maintains practices consistent with NCAA guidelines regarding participation of student athletes.” According to the NCAA’s Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation, “trans female” students — referring to those who “transition” from male to female — are permitted to play on women’s teams following one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.
Legislators in states across the country have been crafting legislation to protect girls and women from the transgender movement, which has resulted in biological men competing in sports against biological women and allowing biological men to have access to private spaces based on biological sex like bathrooms and locker rooms.
An editorial in the Grand Forks Herald suggested that there is a difference between being kind to fellow students and putting in place rules to police students’ speech or political or religious beliefs.
“Should misgendering someone, or failing to use their requested pronouns, be classified as, and punishable as, discrimination? Should a person, born male, be able to use a woman’s restroom or locker room based on nothing other than their declared gender identity?” the author wrote. “According to a proposed policy at the University of North Dakota, that would be the case.”
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