Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools system is signaling that the eyes of “Big Brother” are upon our children. The district’s school board members are currently considering an Orwellian “bias incident reporting system” in changes to the code of conduct. With the new system, students, parents, and staff members would anonymously report “any incident of inappropriate conduct, including, and without limitation, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, bullying, other violations of civil rights.”
Bias incident reporting systems are on the rise in our nation’s universities, doubling in the last five years. These systems are the administrative apparatus used to chill free speech and are facing many legal challenges, including in neighboring Loudoun County Public Schools.
A bias incident is anything and everything that an administrator, usually a so-called “equity” officer, claims it is. Bias incident reporting systems and blocking conservative speakers on campus prohibit not only free speech but free thought. It is insidious that educational institutions foster environments, in part with bias incident reporting systems, in which students protest the right to speak of their ideological opponents.
SFSU’s Bias Incident Reporting System
On April 6, Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer at the University of Kentucky, was held for ransom and assaulted when she spoke at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Despite protests outside the room, Gaines was able to finish detailing her harrowing experience swimming at a Division 1 level against, and sharing a locker room with, a male claiming to be a female. Her message was simple: Keep women’s sports female. Protesters claimed Gaines’ mere presence on the campus was so traumatic that
