Let my school—Notre Dame—speak for itself on restrooms and other contentious social issues.
By JOHN I. JENKINS
Sept. 25, 2016
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has gotten ahead of its member universities and its own constitutional principles. On Sept. 12, the association pulled all 2016-17 national-championship events out of North Carolina to protest a state law there overriding local antidiscrimination ordinances that, among other things, allowed transgender people to use the public restroom of their choice.
House Bill 2 (H.B. 2) requires that “multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facilities” in public schools or maintained by public agencies be used according to a person’s biological sex, not gender identity. The Atlantic Coast Conference—to which my school, the University of Notre Dame, belongs—followed the NCAA’s lead and pulled all its 2016-17 championship events at “neutral” off-campus sites out of North Carolina. That includes, for example, the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
Heightened respect for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens is a signal moral achievement of our time, and harboring reservations about any retrenchment is natural. Yet some citizens may wonder about the implications of substituting gender identity for biological sex in public restrooms. While attending to the rights and sensibilities of transgender persons, it’s important to also take into account the feelings of those who might be uncomfortable undressing in front of a member of the opposite biological sex.
Our society has become inured to public disputes over neuralgic moral and social questions. These debates will continue as the legal and political process takes its course. In May, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed suit against the state of North Carolina, arguing that H.B. 2 is “in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013.” The federal government argues that discrimination based on “sex,” which is illegal, includes “gender identity.”
North Carolina filed a counter suit, accusing the federal government of “baseless and blatant overreach.” The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., deferred to the Justice Department’s position in an April decision subsequently stayed by the Supreme Court.
In the interim, it is not the role of the NCAA to employ the economic power it derives from member universities to attempt to influence the outcome of the legal process or change legislation. When it comes to complex, contentious social issues, universities have a critical role to play in fostering reflection, discussion and informed debate. No matter how popular or profitable certain college sports become, athletic associations should not usurp that role. I was particularly disheartened that the NCAA took action without consulting its member universities.
The role of such associations is to foster athletic competition that is fair and serves the well-being of student-athletes. There is plenty of work for them to do in that sphere without assuming the role of spokesperson for their members on contentious political and social issues.
In “The Idea of a University,” the 19th-century Catholic cardinal and theologian John Henry Newman wrote eloquently of colleges’ responsibility to raise the intellectual tone of public conversation. Universities, he believed, were for purifying the national debate by being places of reflection and deliberative, informed discussion. He wrote of “supplying the true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration,” and “giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age.”
At a time when tweets, slogans and sound bites seem to define the substance of our political discourse; when respect for truth seems a casualty of the campaign; and when ideological polarization often hamstrings responsible governing, the nation needs universities to raise the intellectual tone of Americans’ discussions more than ever. We must strive to do a better job of providing this service. We will certainly fail if we delegate the work to athletic associations.
Father Jenkins is the president of the University of Notre Dame.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ncaa-is ... 1474841413Statistics: Posted by KingCoug — Tue Sep 27, 2016 9:11 am
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