Pun Salad

One of those little coincidences. First was a University-wide e-mail from the president of the University Near Here, Mark Huddleston. The subject line:

President Huddleston Addresses Title IX and Campus Culture

Anyone who's followed recent news can only read that with a sinking feeling of dread.

You can read the President Huddleston's letter right here yourself. But I'll excerpt here:

With commencement and other end of academic year celebrations behind us, it is a good time to look ahead to the upcoming year. At the end of March, I shared the findings of an independent investigation, which in part evaluated Title IX efforts across the University System of New Hampshire. The report, among other findings, specifically identified the need for stronger coordination and collaboration related to all our Title IX efforts.

You can see the report to which President Huddleston refers here, which details alleged institutional failings in dealing with employee misbehavior at UNH and Keene State. To a certain extent, it's a natural bureaucratic response: we'll solve this (perceived) problem by creating new bureaucracy.

But wait, there's more:

However, as I said in March, our work around Title IX must move beyond rules and simple compliance. While these things are important, we must address the broader and more complex factors in our culture that keep us from becoming the kind of community to which we aspire. A safe and healthy campus is one grounded in widely shared values and deeply rooted norms of behavior wherein people respect and take care of one another.

Bottom line: UNH is getting a "task force", starting out as a "working group" which will develop an "action plan" to… Oh, I'm sure it will involve above-average arrogance and self-righteousness in service to the latest buzzwords, all wrapped up in who-could-possibly-be-against-that language.

I, for one, welcome our new Title IX overlords who will be in charge of enforcing "widely shared values" and "deeply rooted norms". Nothing could go wrong there.

The second part of the coincidence mentioned above: Jessica Gavora (Jonah Goldberg's readers know her as "the Fair Jessica") writes in the WSJ today on "How Title IX Became a Political Weapon"

Since its passage 43 years ago, Title IX has proved to be a remarkably elastic law. It has been stretched and warped from its original intent to end discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding. As long as Title IX’s victims were wrestlers or swimmers from low-revenue men’s sports that were jettisoned to achieve participation-parity with women’s sports, nobody much cared. But now that the law is being turned into a tool to suppress free speech on college campuses, even liberals are starting to cry foul.

Ms. Gavora's article should be recommended reading for anyone on President Huddleston's task force. Fearless prediction: it will not be read by anyone on President Huddleston's task force.