A public university in Ohio will pay $400,000 in damages and attorney fees after punishing a professor for declining a male student's demand to be referred to as a female.
Nick Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University, responded to a male student's question during a January 2018 political philosophy class by saying "Yes, sir."
When the class ended, the student identified to the professor as transgender, and demanded to be referred to as a woman in the future, along with "feminine titles and pronouns," according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the professor in court.
Doing so, Meriwether maintained, would have violated his convictions as a Christian.
Meriwether didn't agree to the student's request, and court documents state that the student became belligerent and told the professor that he would be fired.
The student filed a complaint with the university, launching an investigation which eventually determined that Meriwether "effectively created a hostile environment" for the student because he would not use the preferred pronouns.
Meriwether did offer to call the student by any name requested, but the student did not accept the offer. READ MORE...
I was almost 25 years old and had spent 21 months in the US Navy on a 2 year enlistment contract, receiving an early out to return to college. I had joined the Navy after taking a leave of absence from college after 2 and 1/2 years and while my grades were right around a "D+" to "C-" range, I just did not want to pursue a college education. I don't know if it was because my parents had forced me to go to college or because I had not learned enough in high school, but I was not interested in anything college had to offer me.
However, after spending a year working before entering the Navy and almost 2 years in the Navy, I quickly realized that college offered me what I needed whether I liked it or not... When I graduated in 1974, four years behind schedule, my grade point average in my major was 3.8 which I thought was pretty damn good, given my previous grades.
Interestingly, looking back on my 45 year career, none of my employers (which included colleges and universities) never once asked to see my grades either before or after being employed.
