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Tuesday, October 05, 2004 

My university is suing Donald Rumsfeld. Really!

Here's a heads-up on how the issue of gays in the American military has finally decided to rain down upon yours truly. The story goes like this (in a short paraphrase of what I heard while packing up after Civil Procedure): long ago, say in 1978, a humble school called NYU decided to bar any outside employers or agencies that discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation from using any campus career offices or buildings. A little over a decade later, the US government introduced the Solomon Amendment, which withdrew Department of Defence funding from any university faculty that dared to say no to military recruiters.

Sidebar: the US is also one of the few remaining countries in the world that refuses to ratify an international agreement banning military recruitment of youth under 18 -- just in case you though this was just about university students trying to pay for tuition.

A couple of mutations later, and now the Solomon Amendment (under Monsieur Rumsfeld) is written such that any school refusing to admit military recruiters loses all federal funding to the entire university, including moola from education, science, and other worthy areas. All for sticking to a university's own anti-discrimination policy, which, call me simple susan, sounds like a spiffy thing.

So maddening, so outrageous, and SO the reason I decided to come here.

About me

  • I'm daft
  • From Arlington, Virginia, United States

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