(07-20-2017 03:30 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote: (07-20-2017 02:54 PM)kinderowl Wrote: (07-18-2017 11:26 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote: (07-18-2017 11:22 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote: (07-18-2017 11:17 AM)Frizzy Owl Wrote: Basing hiring and firing decisions on an employee's personal beliefs is illegal if not relevant to the job.
No one said based on personal beliefs; rather, based on inappropriate and politically incorrect comments. That is not only legal, but has been a cause for employee dismissal not only sports and broadcasting, but all across industry.
Was his statement on the bathrooms inappropriate and/or politically incorrect?
he was a part of ads run against an anti discrimination ordinance in Houston in a campaign that largely was based on fearmongering via statistically unsupported assertions that the law would give license to perverts (lance later claimed that he did not mean that to include trans people and just meant voyeurs) to go in the wrong bathroom where they would attack women and girls.
The anti-discrimination ordinance is much like Rice's policies. So, his POV apparently would not coincide with Rice policy.
I'm sure Walt is grateful for you answering the question I asked him.
Not being a Houstonian, I didn't follow the HERO stuff, and don't know what the ordinances in question said or how they would be interpreted and enforced. Personally, I would have no problem with all-gender restrooms. What I don't understand is what would be actual practices allowed/disallowed in Houston under the HERO ordinance. Would all restrooms be redefined all all-gender, or would they still be labeled "men" and "women"? Should all men be allowed into ladies rooms(and vice-versa, of course), or just trangender men, and how would they prove they were transgender - or not? Asking how it works, not saying what it should be.
More generally, though, I think having a political litmus test for coaches is not a good thing. Your point that his POV would not coincide with Rice's policy sounds to me like anybody who does not toe the line is at risk of losing their job. How does one go about changing the line is one cannot speak in opposition without penalty? For example, back in the early sixties when segregation was the policy, should people speaking out for civil rights be at risk because their position would not be Rice's position?
I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic about me answering the question to walt. that's the danger in many of our posts. either way, i'm game for a few more minutes.
The fact is that people have been going to opposite restrooms "in drag" for a long time. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's not. But, the workability isn't what drove the public debate. The verbalized fear was that perverts would be turned loose. Some churches pushed congregations to say just that. A personal account: I was waiting to board a plane when the line stopped in the confined runway for a while. A United employee standing there began soliciting me about the ordinance and about his church's view of the whole thing. The entire pitch was that to keep my kids, who were with me btw, from being molested in a restroom, etc., I had to make sure that the perverts were kept out-- that god made men men and women women, etc. You can bet that I complained to United that I found that to be entirely inappropriate.
Yes, generally I think that people are expected to follow policies. This board's posts show that many bristle at the idea that their personal points of view can be squashed by an employer. I say welcome to employment. People and their views get squashed plenty for all sorts of reasons.
We likely agree on simple stuff like people should turn in expense reports as required to be reimbursed, or that coaches shouldn't discriminate against white athletes because they're white, or that coaches shouldn't call black athletes by the N word.
The third of these points would have been the subject of some hot public debates 60 years ago (and for many years more recently). But, time has changed our perspective on what is and isn't ok with respect to race. Changing views on sexual orientation and gender identification are happening later than with race, and they are happening now. That leads me to your question, which is a fair one. How do you affect change when you don't like a policy? I probably don't have a complete enough answer to satisfy you. But, I'll try a bit.
Violating policy and attempting to affect change are not one and the same. I might break a rule just because I want to or don't like the rule or don't know that there is a rule. From here, my answer is limited to situations in which someone isn't just breaking a rule, but they are trying to change a rule.
Historically, change has come by combinations of working those systems, working to change society's views, working to change the law, and in some cases, breaking rules or the law to make a point. Of course, the last option may carry unhappy consequences.
One could just break the rule because he didn't agree with it, but again unhappy consequences. If one wanted to create or change policy at Rice, there are mechanisms in place at Rice for setting policy. One could try to participate in those to affect policy change. One also would likely need to understand whether the policy change sought would be viewed as moving forward or backward.
Rice, as an institution, already has begun thinking, and writing policies, about race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identification. Some of those are solidly entrenched (race gender) and not likely to move much in large part because those policies happen to coincide with more of where the law and society generally are on these issues.
If one were a skinhead KKK'er who wanted to change those policies back to segregation, I'd say move on. One could work that system for years and get nowhere. One reason for that is that, on the whole, society believes that it's new thinking has advanced beyond believing that such a policy is moral. Another reason is that it would expose the university to legal risk of discrimination claims.
If we get outside race and gender and talk sexual orientation (which btw really is just advanced gender talk as the issues around it really deal with expectations of genders a/k/a stereotyping as to what we think are gender norms), we now know that (1) society's views on sexual orientation are changing relatively rapidly in the direction of acceptance of new norms, and (2) the Supreme Court has moved in the direction of concluding that there are protected individual rights at stake. If the effort is to change the policies that have been emerging to provide protections around sexual orientation, my answer would be to get ready to wave bon voyage because the ship is sailing. Generational gaps on this issue are big but shrinking, and they are shrinking in the direction of supporting these policies.
So, back to the question about how to affect change when a rule prohibits it - use the available mechanisms to try to change policy and decide if it's worth the consequences to break the rule if one doesn't want to do that or can't get satisfaction.
My 2 cents fwiw.
