The Nebraska State College System’s Board of Trustees voted 4-2 Thursday to make changes to policies addressing harassment and gender identity.
The revisions are to Board Policy 5007 and the new policy is 5012. According the Agenda Item:
Policy 5007 has been revised to incorporate state law protections against color and race discrimination that were passed in LB451 during the last legislative session. Since Policy 5007 needed to be revised to provide clarification related to color and race discrimination to communicate expectations to employees, we took the opportunity to improve the policy by including definitions for all types of prohibited discrimination. Except for the addition of pregnancy, no changes are being made to the current list of protected classes of employees approved by the Board 2015. The list of protected classes aligns closely with those listed by
other higher education institutions in Nebraska, both public and private. Current federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance related to protected classes was used to develop the definitions depicted in Section B. The current language in Policy 5007 reflected in Attachment I has been updated since the original posting of this item in response to constituent feedback
Policy 5012 is a new policy to address chosen names and gender identity issues for employees, similar to the policy provisions that were adopted for students when Policy 3660 was approved in July 2021. The policy is intended to address recent changes to the PeopleSoft SAP platform (current Human Resource information system) which added the functionality for permitting employees to provide a chosen name, specify their gender identity, and preferred pronouns.
State Senator Joni Albrecht represents District 17th that includes Wayne State College, State Senator Tom Brewer representing District 43 with Chadron State College and State Senator Julie Slama with District 1 representing Peru State College asked the State College Board of Trustees to halt the revisions.
Senator Albrecht had told KLIN News she spoke with the chancellor directly about this. She says, “Wayne State College, do they have an issue with this. Does Chadron or Peru? Do they have problems right now that need to be addressed dealing with this and he said ‘no’. There is no law at the federal level that says they have to write anything. What makes them feel they need to do something like this because this is not what the majority of Nebraskans are interested in seeing.”
The Nebraska Family Alliance and the Nebraska Catholic Conference also released a statement showing their opposition.
“Apparently the NSCS missed the conversation from the last eight months. Nebraskans have spoken loudly and clearly that they do not want ideologically driven gender identity policies imposed through our state education systems. Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, but disagreement is not discrimination. These untimely and unnecessary policies will violate the First Amendment free speech rights of students and employees, as well as infringe on the privacy and safety of women on campus by requiring that men have open access to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.”