On-Campus DEI Bureaucrats Already Ditching New Loyalty Oaths

Will the last diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrat to leave their office on campus please turn out the lights?

On college grounds today, so-called DEI departments are withering as whistleblowers reveal that the offices have promoted racial prejudice and operated with little transparency—and no measurable results—for years.

School officials and lawmakers in states such as Florida, Texas, and Arizona are closing such departments or ceasing universitywide policies that supported them, and so far, DEI administrators have failed to find support for their discriminatory activities.

Various projects are underway to protect individuals from the racial bias of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

In Arizona, the Goldwater Institute released a scathing report earlier this year documenting that up to 80% of faculty job listings at Arizona public universities required applicants to submit a “diversity statement” (sometimes called “loyalty oaths”) as part of their employment application.

In a formal statement Tuesday, Goldwater said such loyalty oaths “are increasingly used across academia as a political screening test to enforce intellectual and political conformity in support of left-wing concepts aligned with critical race theory (CRT).”

College administrators reject job applications if they don’t include statements conforming to the prevailing woke orthodoxy, according to Goldwater’s report. This process is not unique to Arizona: An investigation by the Reason Foundation found that 75% of applications to join the faculty of the University of California system were rejected in this way.

Arizona public university officials had used the same methods, but Goldwater noted, but lately new job listings from Arizona State University are missing a requirement to complete a diversity statement.

And last month, Arizona State University officials announced that employees “are not forced to sign diversity statements.” Personnel at Arizona’s public universities seem to be quietly erasing DEI’s footprint.

In Texas, the changes have been more noticeable. State lawmakers adopted a proposal in June to prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion operations on the campuses of public colleges and universities.

Leaders at one state school didn’t waste any time: Last week, University of North Texas announced the dissolution of its DEI office, saying the vice president in charge of it would retire.

In Florida, after Gov. Ron DeSantis replaced board members at the New College of Florida, the new appointees immediately shuttered the school’s DEI department. DeSantis, a Republican, then signed a proposal prohibiting DEI departments at state universities from using public funds, signaling the end of the offices at most schools.

Lawmakers in South Carolina and Arkansas also considered proposals to abolish offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, renamed the state’s DEI office, replacing “equity” with “opportunity,” warning that DEI has “gone off the rails.”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs attract critics on both sides of the political spectrum. Research has found that DEI training is ineffective at changing individual opinions; reports in mainstream publications ask whether such training is doing more harm than good.

In the corporate world, businesses are trimming their DEI staff. Some anticipate that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling against racial preferences in college admissions means that when employees find the same prejudice in corporate DEI programs, they could file lawsuits—or worse.

The Free Press reported that a successful educator took his own life after a DEI “trainer” excoriated him during a session. His crime? Saying that Canada actually is a pretty just society, despite the trainer’s claims that Canada is “a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism.”

The educator had questioned the DEI gospel, and for the next two years he faced ridicule. He was shamed and abandoned, ultimately losing all hope.

State and federal officials have policy ideas at their disposal to protect students and educators from the racial discrimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Lawmakers should forbid DEI departments on college campuses from using taxpayer money and expedite their closing. These departments have not demonstrated their effectiveness, yet employ dozens. Some public universities have over a hundred DEI employees.

State policymakers should ban public university administrators from requiring job applicants to complete “loyalty oaths.”

Students and employees are exposing DEI’s biased activities on campus and in the workplace, and lawmakers should close these offices. Americans value diverse opinions—all of them, not just woke ideas.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/09/on-campus-dei-bureaucrats-already-ditching-new-loyalty-oaths

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School District Allowed to Keep Child Gender Transitions From Parents, Court Rules

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that a Maryland school district can continue to keep students’ gender transitions from their parents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed a coalition of parents’ lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools alleging that the district’s gender support plan, which allows students to change their gender without their parents’ permission, infringes on parental rights.

The court ruled that because none of the parents had children who were transgender or were utilizing a gender support plan, there was no harm that allows the court to act, documents show.

“We agree with the analysis of the dissenting judge that parents have a right to complain about this school policy because it allows the school to keep secret from parents how it is treating their child at school and that such policies violate parental rights,” Frederick Claybrook Jr., the attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Parents do not have to wait until they find out that damage has been done in secret before they may complain. Moreover, the policy just by being in place affects family dynamics, as the dissenting judge pointed out. We are actively considering next steps in the legal process.”

Montgomery County Public Schools’ gender support plan was adopted during the 2020-2021 school year to help students “feel comfortable expressing their gender identity,” according to the Monday opinion. The gender support plan allows students to record their change in name and pronouns while also detailing which bathrooms and locker rooms the student will correspond with their gender identity.

“MCPS [Montgomery County Public Schools] was successful in the challenge against our Gender Identity Guidelines,” a district spokesperson told the DCNF. “The appellate court returned the case to the district court and directed that it be dismissed. The case is resolved for now. MCPS supports the determination by the court.”

At least 350 students within the district have filled out a gender support plan over the past three years to change their gender at school, The Washington Post reported. The school district said they were not trying to keep student gender transitions from parents but if the student wanted privacy, “then we honor and respect that.”

“That does not mean their objections are invalid,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. said in his opinion. “In fact, they may be quite persuasive. But, by failing to show any injury to themselves, the parents’ opposition … reflects a policy disagreement. And policy disagreements should be addressed to elected policymakers at the ballot box, not to unelected judges in the courthouse.”

Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox Christian parents sued Montgomery County Public Schools in May after the school board alerted parents that it would no longer be notifying families of gender identity lessons and that parents would be unable to opt their children out of such lessons.

The parents allege that the school district’s policy that prohibits them from opting their child out of LGBTQ lessons violates their religious beliefs and their ability to raise their kids.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/15/school-district-allowed-to-keep-child-gender-transitions-from-parents-court-rules

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Is Anyone Vetting Teachers?

If you've been paying attention for at least five minutes to the overall tone of today's society, you may have noticed that fundamental morality and a basic sense of right and wrong have been on a rapid decline.

Among the many questionable positions that directionless people have adopted as rational is that of abandoning our responsibility to protect children and their innocence. Some folks see no reason to shield kids from people who would inappropriately break boundaries with them or intentionally cause emotional and/or physical harm.

Yet somehow, perhaps in the name of "progressivism," there are individuals and groups that view protection of the innocent as oppressive and outdated. As articulated within gender ideology and queer theory, any boundaries regarding the interactions between adults and children are a social construct that unnecessarily oppress children. The protocols that most of society have acknowledged as imperative for the safekeeping of the most vulnerable are believed by these activists to be doing more harm than good.

On the list of safety procedures being abandoned by today's "progressive" movement is the vetting process by school administrators of the individuals they hire for the specific responsibility of teaching children, as well as guiding their academic success and social development.

A glaring example of this abdication of responsibility by administrative staff came to light when Homer Community Consolidated School District was put on blast by the infamous X (Twitter) account Libs of TikTok. It was revealed that the district had hired an elementary teacher who had publicly posted about a personal battle with psychosis and mania, which sometimes led to episodes of violence and harm.

This person ranted: "I am NOT my disease. I am ME! And I know ME! And I LOVE ME!" That was directly above an image depicting symbols that would indicate a predilection for satanism.

Just a few days following the public exposure by Libs of TikTok, a vote was conducted during a school board meeting for the district, and the individual was fired.

The questions that need to be answered are as follows: Why was this person hired in the first place? Had widespread attention not been shone on this person's deeply concerning social media posts, where parents were able to demand the removal of this teacher and force the school board to respond? How long would these students be under this person's care? And what would the consequences have been?

It is understandable that not every potential negative scenario can be considered and planned for in the hiring process. However, in the age of oversharing and the addiction to validation in the form of social media "likes" and followers, there is a lot that can be easily discovered with a simple sweep of Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok that could expose these crucial red flags that there is no excuse to miss.

Teachers have become more brazen in vocalizing their contempt for parents, laws, and boundaries. They are not shy when it comes to creating videos in which they demonstrate their intention to break any rules that might stop them from indoctrinating children into their brand of activism, regardless of what parents want. And they often find it amusing to add a dance or costume to their message, as if to let parents know that they are not concerned about any potential backlash.

Another post on the Libs of TikTok account showed a librarian of a Tulsa Oklahoma Elementary School dancing toward the camera with the message, "POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school."

Hopefully, a vote on the fate of her job will be carried out soon, and the appropriate determination will be made.

These are just the incidents that have been exposed, but this is happening in every school district in the country to some extent.

Schools are abandoning parents, and if we are not the ones demanding and enforcing a vetting process for those who spend hours every day with our children, it looks like no one will.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/99879-is-anyone-vetting-teachers-2023-08-23

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