Several months back, Catholic University President John Garvey announced in this WSJ opinion piece that the school was eliminating coed housing for incoming freshman this term.
Why? Garvey believes the move will help reduce binge drinking and casual hook-ups at the school.
In June, John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington University Law School, told the Law Blog that he intended to sue Catholic University, contending that the same-sex plan violates D.C.’s Human Rights Act.
One of the worst mistakes colleges and universities made was creating co-ed dorms. Everything I have read and heard about the goings on in these dorms is a tragedy. Young men and women that still have a shred of morality and moral dignity (after growing up being propagandized by a morally depraved mass media) wind up being virtually physically assaulted in many dorms in that they get ridiculed, derided, and harassed for not joining in the hook-up culture so many dorms have.
If busybody and publicity seeking Professor Banzhaf doesn’t like what CUA is doing–then he needn’t send his kids there.
As an alumnus (PhD, 2001), I marvel at the fact that Prof. Banzhaf feels this to be the most pressing human rights issue in the city. Are there not other causes to which he might more profitably devote his time?
I have known Banzhaf for thirty-five years. He is the most egotistical blowhard I have ever met–universally despised by those who know him. Sadly, this is par for the course for him.
You can no more have separate dorms for men and women than you can have separate athletic programs for men and women. Oh, wait a minute…
Most of this stuff is just anti-Catholic harassment. Local “civil rights commissions” are prime venues for this kind of nonsense, because for political correctness reasons they can’t say “no” to any complaint, no matter how bogus.
Professor Banzhaf has clearly exhausted the supply of worthy causes.
More basically, what is the human rights violation we are talking about? I know I sometimes like to get into arguments, but not this time. I just don’t understand. Things like concertration camps, I get. Dorms, I don’t get.
In looking at the bathroom sign on the article, I recalled a case in California, I think Berkley, where a lesbian filed a human rights compalint against the University because the figure on the bathroom sign had a skirt on, which she felt was discriminatory against her since she didn’t even own, much less ever wore a skirt. Not even the California courts bought that one.
re: “John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington University Law School… intended to sue Catholic University…”
What a wasteful and socially irresponsible thing to do: sue a private party, with which he has no reasonable connection, for clearly treating men and women the same (incidentally in a traditional manner he finds personally distasteful), but not in accord with his notions of new world order (and assuming, of course, that one group is so frail as to be disadvantaged by the treatment.)
Though I admittedly have no interest in researching DC’s idiosyncratic laws, ISTM that this lawsuit is likely to be more about the attorney, and less about the merits…
🙄
Another reason why we should adopt the European system which has the loser of all lawsuits paying the costs of the winner. (That would include attorney’s paying cost of “contingency” cases they lose).
Clueless,
Local councils in Britain just love to use that provision against ordinary citizens who seek to challenge their decisions; often they can intimidate people into giving up public interest suits because of the fear that they might lose.
Jeremy–noone should bring a lawsuit unless they are absolutely, 100% sure they are right and will win under the law. America is a lawsuit horror show with too many lawyers allowed to practice before the bar (every other American who can’t make a productive living seems to go into law to bloodsuck from other’s productivity.)
It was John Adams –one of the writers of the Declaration of Independence who once said that the worst thing that could happen in America is for there to be too many lawyers–and he was a lawyer himself, so he ought to know.
Make the lawyers (not the plaintiffs) responsible for paying all fees, etc. for contingency fee cases they lose. They are the ones who deserve to pay if they give bad advice to people that encourages them to bring almost certain losing cases to court.
Why should CUA have to pay even one thin dime (instead of probably tens of thousands of dollars) to defend itself and pay court costs to protect itself from a guy who apparently is a crank pushing a paricular political agenda. That’s not justice, but a corruption of justice.
In otherwords, there has got to be a better way to ensure justice other than through the jackpot for lawyers contingency fee system we now have.