A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

SB 34: Prohibition on Medical Services to Minors Related to Gender Identity

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Sen. Kruse has introduced SB 34 prohibiting medical services to minors related to gender identity. It contains some exceptions where “the minor has a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development, including having: (A) both ovarian and testicular tissue; or (B) external biological characteristics that are ambiguous3 resulting from having a 46,XX karyotype with virilization or 46,XY karyotype with undervirilization.” The other exception is for situations where “(2) The minor has an abnormal sex chromosome structure that has been diagnosed using genetic testing by a physician licensed under IC 25-22.5.” I don’t know what those technical terms mean. But, notably, there is no exception for situations where the minor, the minor’s parents, and the medical provider all agree that the medical services are in the best interest of the minor.

This bill would prohibit the following:

[A health care professional may not] attempt to change,14reinforce, or affirm a minor’s perception of the minor’s own sexual attraction or sexual behavior, or attempt to change, reinforce, or affirm a minor’s gender identity when the identity is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex, by performing or causing to be performed any of the following procedures on the minor: (1) Castration. (2) Vasectomy. (3) Hysterectomy. (4) Oophorectomy. (5) Metoidioplasty. (6) Orchiectomy. (7) Penectomy. (8) Phalloplasty. (9) Urethroplasty. (10) Vaginoplasty. (11) Mastectomy. (12) Lobotomy. (13) A surgery to remove a healthy organ or body part.

The bill would also prohibit:

[A health care professional may not] attempt to change, reinforce, or affirm a minor’s perception of the minor’s own sexual attraction or sexual behavior, or attempt to change, reinforce, or affirm a minor’s gender identity when that identity is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex, by engaging in any of the following activities: (1) Prescribing, administering, or furnishing to the minor a drug to stop or delay puberty. (2) Prescribing, administering, or furnishing to a female9minor testosterone or estrogen-suppressing drugs. (3) Prescribing, administering, or furnishing to a male minor estrogen or testosterone-suppressing drugs. (4) Subjecting a minor’s genitals to an electric current. (5) Penetrating the minor’s fingers with needles. (6) Restraining and placing ice on the minor’s hands. (7) Wrapping the minor’s hands in heat coils. (8) Subjecting the minor to an ice bath. (9) Injecting drugs into the minor to induce vomiting. (10) Restraining the minor with ties or harnesses. (11) Inflicting any physical pain or suffering.

Back in the old days, I would have joked about Sen. Kruse going to wilder parties than the ones I get invited to. But I don’t have the heart for it. Questions about gender identity and what to do about it when a person’s identity differs from their biological sex are difficult. I think they’re especially difficult because puberty can be a kind of ticking clock where the release of hormones is going to make the inconsistency more difficult for the person to navigate and also difficult because making the wrong decision — either by taking action or by not taking action — can have significant impacts for the rest of the person’s life. I do not think these questions are ones the General Assembly is well equipped to answer on behalf of these families.

SB 62: Tax Sale Properties to Non-Profits for Low and Moderate Income Housing

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Sen. Young has introduced SB 62 which permits properties listed for tax sale to be sold (prior to the tax sale) to non-profits for the purpose of developing low and moderate income housing. As I read the bill, I think he has Habitat for Humanity as well as community development corporations in mind. I haven’t bothered to do the additional research, but I think the provisions of the chapter this new section is in would require the non-profit to pay the amount of the delinquent taxes to acquire the property, but by selling it prior to the tax sale, it would avoid the likelihood of the price being driven up by bidding. Not more than 10% of the tax sale properties listed could be sold in this fashion.

I suppose the owners who are delinquent in paying their taxes that this artificially lowers the amount their property would receive at tax sale. (The owners are entitled to the tax sale surplus after delinquent taxes and some other fees are paid.) But, even if that’s a valid complaint, there would still be a redemption period during which the owner could get the property back from the tax sale purchaser — the owner has to pay the delinquent tax amount plus 10% or something which goes to the tax sale purchaser (in this case the non-profit.)

Someone’s ox is always getting gored with legislation, but on its face, this strikes me as a positive initiative.

SB 18 and SB 68: Dog Days of the General Assembly

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They’re good dogs, Brent.

All right, the title is lame, but you get what you pay for. Sen. Doriot has introduced SB 18 and Sen. Alting has introduced SB 68. Sen. Doriot’s bill prohibits local government from imposing bans or similar restrictions that are focused on a specific breed of dog.I’m generally supportive of this, I think. I’m not one to generally embrace state restrictions on local government, but I think the breed-specific prohibitions end up being a little arbitrary. This is typically directed at pitbulls who can be very sweet dogs. I don’t think the problem is with the breed so much as with the people who seek out the breed and treat them in a way calculated to make them mean and destructive. Ideally, you’d go after the people abusing the dogs.

Meanwhile, Sen. Alting’s bill would require animal shelters to make reasonable efforts to contact owners before destroying dogs or cats. It suggests time frames and measures that would be considered reasonable. The “shall” language is that “An animal care facility shall adopt written policies and procedures to ensure that the animal care facility makes a reasonable effort to quickly and reliably return a lost or stray companion animal to an owner.” Some of the “may” language in the bill focuses on checking for microchips, checking reports of lost animals it has received, making efforts to notify the owners within 48 hours, posting notices on the shelter’s website, having available hours on weekends and/or weeknights, and double checking before euthanizing the animal.

Sen. Alting’s bill reminds me of a tragic incident I’d been told about my Aunt and Uncle’s cat, “Chester.” At some point Chester got lost or — there may have been allegations of him being turned over to the shelter by a neighbor who didn’t like Chester in his yard. The way I heard the story, they found the correct shelter just as Chester had been given the euthanasia but before he was dead. (In retrospect, I wonder if I heard this correctly — I’ve had to put several dogs down over the years, and once the chemicals are injected, the death takes place incredibly quickly.) So, obviously a very tragic story. On the other hand, I work a bit with one of our local shelters. It’s a no-kill place, so euthanasia hasn’t been an issue. But, it’s clear that some animal owners are incredibly bad pet owners. And they don’t answer their phone, they promise to show up then don’t, and otherwise end up being indifferent and difficult to contact. None of this makes Sen. Alting’s bill bad, but hopefully shelters can implement reasonable efforts without being unduly burdened by irresponsible pet owners.

 

My Remarks to the West Lafayette Community School Board on the subject of new superintendent compensation

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My remarks to the West Lafayette Community School Board, December 13, 2021. The background is that IC 20-26-5-4.3 requires that, prior to entering into a contract with a superintendent, a school board must hold public hearing to take public comment on the proposed contract with the superintendent at least 7 days before entering into the contract. The statute permits the identity of the potential candidate to remain confidential during these negotiations. Because many potential candidates would prefer not to alienate their current employers by having their interest announced in public, this is the process followed by our school board (and, it’s my understanding, by most Indiana school boards.) I offered the following as public comment.

(This transcript is based on my notes and may not have come out as coherently!)   

First of all, thank you all for your work in the superintendent selection process. When the General Assembly adopted the law requiring these hearings a few years ago,  I got the sense that the intent was to put school boards in an uncomfortable position.  Public hearings put downward pressure on superintendent compensation which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But it’s also part of a theme where the General Assembly makes schools justify every dime spent on public education.

One problem you face is that it’s hard to know what a position like this is actually worth. For example, the Mayor of West Lafayette is a big job that affects us all and pays something like $105,000 plus benefits. I’m a county government guy, so I happen to know that some of our local county elected officials make quite a bit less. On the higher end of the scale, the State of Indiana has set compensation for our judges, prosecutor, and chief public defender at close to $160,000 plus benefits. The Exponent reported that the average salary for Purdue’s top 100 employees was close to $350,000/year. I read in recent news that Purdue’s President was paid something like $900,000 last year. So is the superintendent job more or less valuable to our community than a judge or a professor or mayor? Is it a harder or easier job? That’s tough to say.

We’re proposing to pay this individual a base salary of $160,000 and a total package in the range of $240,000 per year. Is that the right salary? Again, it’s difficult to say. I can Google salaries for various school districts or various kinds of jobs, but ultimately there is enough range in compensation and variety in circumstance that, beyond a certain point, it’s a judgment call as to what the relevant metrics should be.

Should we look at schools with similar numbers of students? Or maybe similar academic performance levels? Maybe districts with similar costs of living?

We can point to schools of a similar size that pay less and we can point to some that pay more. But size is just one variable among many.  Small populations can have big challenges. Ask any teacher how much work 2 or 3 challenging students can add to a classroom. Or, maybe the fact that we’re small means that there is less staff at Central Office and, therefore, the superintendent has to do more of the work.

For my part, my view is that our schools are the heart of our community. We’re asking this person to take a job that’s essentially 24/7. Ideally, the person will move into the community and put down roots. West Lafayette is not the cheapest place to live — in part because of the quality of our schools.

It’s a big job. This is not unlike running a $40 million company.  You have something like 150 teachers plus the administration and support staff required to run a school. Between full and part time, I think that gets close to 500 people all told. And, unlike your average company, every year they have to adapt to the pile of new rules the State throws at them.

We have the best school system in the state, and we want to make it better. The position comes with high expectations and a lot of pressure. That’s worth something in terms of compensation.  As long as the salary is in the ball park, it doesn’t make sense to be penny wise but pound foolish with this decision or to nickel and dime every line item.

Ultimately it’s up to you to make this decision. I’m mindful of the fact that I asked for your job, and I didn’t get it.  I haven’t spent months thinking about the question. I’m sure there are any number of variables I haven’t even considered. I haven’t consulted with Ross or Steve or any of the other people who know about the school’s finances or with folks who have expertise about superintendent compensation.

I’m sure we can find people in the newspaper comment sections who are extremely confident in their ability to make these decisions without putting in that kind of work. People who effortlessly know more medicine than doctors and more law than Constitutional scholars. Undoubtedly, they can run a school system without breaking a sweat. But, I’m not as smart as those people, so thank you to the members of the school board for doing this work.

HB 1001-2022: Employer-Vaxx and Pandemic Legislation

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Needle

Recommendation: Get vaccinated whether you’re required to or not. It will make you safer, reduces the likelihood that you’ll infect your friends and neighbors,  and makes you less likely to incubate mutations that will harm more people.

*Tap* *tap* is this thing on? I haven’t posted in awhile, so I can’t imagine many people will be reading this any time soon, but the General Assembly has released the text of HB 1001-2022 for the upcoming session. This was the subject of some hearings the week before Thanksgiving, and there were some rumblings about the General Assembly convening to vote it through at the beginning of the week before Thanksgiving. I’m awfully glad they didn’t do that. I’m not a huge fan of the substance of the bill but I was really unhappy with the idea of them jamming it through at the end of November. That’s basically unprecedented. (Particularly where, as here, the text of the bill had not been released.) The General Assembly is at least notionally a part-time legislature and, as such, they do business beginning of January each year. During odd years, it’s a “long” session and they can go into May. During even years, it’s a “short” session and they wrap up in March or April. (There are rules on how long they can go, so I might be a little off on the end dates — but I’m not of a mind to look anything up at the moment.) Point being that November and December are absolutely, *not* the time to pass anything remotely controversial.

Like I said, I don’t love the substance, but now that the text of the bill has been released, it’s not as horrible as I’d feared. The first couple of sections have to do with being able to access federal funds and administer COVID vaccines even if the Governor drops the COVID emergency declaration that’s been continued month-to-month since March 2020. Another section expands the knee-jerk “immunization passport” provisions the General Assembly passed last year — to make it clear that it is intended to apply to schools and colleges. The existing law prohibits specified governmental entities from issuing or requiring an immunization passport defined as  “written, electronic, or printed information regarding an individual’s [COVID-19] immunization status.” (The law clarifies that this does not prohibit creating or storing medical records of the immunization.) There was some debate over whether existing legislation covered schools and colleges. Under this legislation, that issue would be resolved.

The big controversial bit has to do with whether employers can require COVID immunization as a condition of employment. There was some confusion about the relationship between this legislation and the federal rule coming out of OSHA. They cover similar territory but they are distinct. The federal OSHA requirements are currently held up in court. If they go into effect, I’m pretty sure they’d supersede this state legislation. But, as written, this state legislation would permit employers to require immunization with some caveats. The employer’s policy would have to recognize medical and religious exemptions and, for a period of six months after recovery, individuals who have had and recovered from COVID. The employer could require these exempt employees to get tested not more than once a week but the testing would have to be at no charge to the employee. The medical exemption and the COVID recovery exemption would require the employee to go through a medical provider and supply the employer with documentation. The religious exemption requires the employee to provide a statement in writing declaring that he or she is declining due to a sincerely held religious belief.

As I see it, the two most problematic pieces of this legislation are making the employer bear the cost of testing (or at least ensure that the employee does not bear the cost of testing) and the risk that an individual will insincerely declare a religious objection. For example, if the person complains that the COVID vaccine was developed using a fetal cell line but the person uses products also made from fetal cell lines like acetaminophen, albuterol, aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Tums,  Benadryl, and others — one might conclude that their objection to COVID vaccines has its roots somewhere other than religion. Skepticism about people’s sincerity might be offset somewhat by the weekly testing requirement. I have to guess that the insincere would throw in the towel after a few weeks of having to jump through testing hoops.

The Indiana Chamber of Commerce has objected to this legislation which might seem to be a challenge for the mostly Republican group who supports this bill. The Chamber and the state GOP have been fairly well aligned over the years. A fracture in that relationship probably wouldn’t be good news for either. I don’t see it happening, but maybe some kind of state funding for the weekly testing (to the extent it’s not already paid for by other sources) might bridge the divide between Chamber and GOP on this one.

My personal view is that discouraging vaccination is bad public policy that will prolong the pandemic, resulting in additional illness, death, and expense. But, understanding that the political establishment in Indiana has different views on the matter, this bill could be worse.

Friday Night Lights

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Friday Night in West Lafayette

My growing disinterest in politics as an on-line game is spilling over into the real world. Last night, Bernie Sanders came to town. He was speaking less than two miles away from where I live. On the other hand, my kids were playing in the marching band at the high school football game less than one mile away. I don’t have any particularly negative feelings about Sanders himself and, politically, he very accurately identifies some of our problems, and I’m on board with many of his solutions. That said, I’m still pretty raw about the comportment of a number of his followers. During the 2020 primaries, I was mostly supportive of Pete Buttigieg. Too many of Sanders supporters — not Sanders himself — would’ve had me believe that Mayor Pete was a racist corporate stooge who controlled the price of bread and wasn’t that smart, actually. I didn’t see much of this from other candidates’ supporters, so it wasn’t just a generic primary fight issue. It was a strategic, scorched-earth choice on someone’s part — probably more prevalent online than on the ground.

But, truth be told, my lack of interest in the Sanders event didn’t have much to do with the scars of the primary. I actively wanted to be at the football game. I like football, and I love the community. Schools are the heart beat of a community, and this is part of why that is. There’s just something I love about gathering in the stands with people I know, cheering the good guys and booing the bad guys (and eating slightly stale, over salted popcorn from the concession stand). These are people I mostly don’t know well, but who I know well enough. Many of us have been bumping into each other at school events for a decade now. When Twitter and Facebook got going a dozen or so years ago, one of the things they promoted was referred to as “ambient intimacy.” You don’t see that so much any more once the algorithms took hold and the chronological timelines were obliterated. But, it used to be, you’d get a lightweight look into the lives of friends and acquaintances. These people would never call you up to tell you that their six year old did a cool tumble at gymnastics, but you’d see it in passing online and, if you ever did bump into them, you’d know that they had an elementary school kid who was into gymnastics. You get some of that in real life with the crowd you see at the football games. (Yeah, I know, there are people laughing at my framing real life as a spin-off of online life here when the reality should be the opposite.)

Also, let me take a moment to gush about my kids & the marching band. My son is a senior in high school and my daughter is a junior. The band community has become central to their adolescence. When they’re not studying, their primary extracurricular activities revolve around the band. They march, they play at games, their band mates make up their social circle. It’s pretty common for a crew of 10-12 of them to gather in our back yard after football games. (The fun went on past midnight last night). The band parents are a pretty fantastic group — almost all nice people, friendly and dedicated to their kids; they tend to be joiners and volunteers, happy to pitch in for a cause. The whole thing – seeing them wail on their instruments, shouting support to the team, goofing around with their friends – it’s all a source of joy and community. These are the things that bring us together and help make a place good to live in. I’m just thankful to have the opportunity to participate.

Oh, and you’ll all be happy to know that West Side beat McCutcheon 30-7.

Pretextual Arguments are Cultural Proxy Wars

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I had this thought when I was reading a thread about whether masks work to reduce transmission. I fully believe they do. More importantly, smarter people who study such things believe they do. But the reality of the situation is beside the point. When I read the back and forth in this thread, it occurred to me that, while the anti-maskers in that particular thread were arguing about the various statistics, it wouldn’t matter what the numbers were. The truth of the matter was beside the point. The point was mainly for conservatives* to disagree with liberals.** (*Conservatives are those who are not liberals. **Liberals are those who are not conservatives. They need one another to maintain their respective identities.)

This is not a one sided affair. I’ve seen discussions of, for example, alleged police brutality cases where, as more facts came out, the context showed the use of force was reasonable. That didn’t change anyone’s minds about who the good guys and the bad guys were.

In these situations, people aren’t really arguing about what they’re arguing about. They’re not necessarily worried about the specific case. Rather, they chose the specific case as ammunition (or found themselves on the receiving end of that ammunition) in a larger argument. When that’s the case, getting into the weeds about the details of the specific case isn’t likely to be productive because the bigger issue is simply reflexive antagonism toward the other side.

If someone is arguing in good faith, by all means engage with them. But if they’re just entertaining themselves and will move the goal posts if the argument doesn’t go in their favor, then why bother? (Other than to entertain yourself if you’re into such things.)

The Desperate Desire for a Post-Illness Treatment

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One of the patterns I’ve noticed in the ongoing COVID-19 debates is a resistance to preventative measures and a desperate desire for post-illness treatments. (I have no professional background, but I think this would be a “therapeutic” — something that treats the disease in a remedial way.) You see this in the folks who don’t want to wear a mask or take a vaccine but would rather glom on to hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or whatever the snake oil of the day comes along. They much prefer a pound of cure to an ounce of prevention. The psychology behind this is interesting to me. I guess it has something to do with humans being generally poor at risk assessment. The masks and social distancing are inconvenient — they impose a cost that you can feel and see. The vaccine has a risk that you are choosing to submit to. Voluntarily submitting to risk, cost, and inconvenience is psychologically uncomfortable. These are probably limbic system reactions. Meanwhile, it’s up to the less visceral, rational part of your brain to understand that there exists in the world a risk of catching COVID and that the impact of having the disease is likely to be greater than the risks of the vaccine or the costs of the other mitigation strategies. That rational understanding of risk is even more attenuated when you’re talking about the idea that you might be a vector of COVID that harms other people.

And so the limbic system conjures up all kinds of reasons not to listen to the neocortex. Masks make you breathe poison. The vaccine isn’t FDA approved. Etc. But when it’s demonstrated that masks don’t cause you to breathe poison and the FDA does give full, final approval for the vaccine, you’ll see these folks shift their reasons. The limbic system doesn’t really care. It’ll come up with new reasons to ignore the neocortex. And these folks will continue to be vectors of COVID and incubators for further mutations.

The Rhetoric of “Personal Choice” in a Pandemic

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Needle

You don’t have to take a bullet for America. Just take a needle for your neighbor.

I’ve long slagged on libertarians for not having a good drainage plan. My attitude toward “personal choice” rhetoric in a pandemic is an offshoot of that. A neighbor’s bad decisions about drainage can hurt my property because water doesn’t respect property lines. Similarly, your bad decisions about spreading plague affect those whose air you breathe. There’s a tension between liberty and community.

Locally, we’ve got people talking about “family choice” and whether their kids should be required to wear masks at school. Presumably we’ll get the same kind of rhetoric about “choice” once the COVID vaccine is approved for kids. In these conversations, one of the disingenuous talking points they like to raise is “have your kid wear a mask.” They deeply want individual decisions about risk to impact only the individual making the decision. But, that’s not how things work in a community. Your mask isn’t to protect you from the community. You should wear a mask so that the community is protected from you (you filthy anti-vaxxed plague vector.) The vaccine does have more direct benefits in protecting you from the rest of the community. However, it also helps protect the community from you — you are less likely to pick up viruses and spread them and, importantly, you are less likely to be an incubator for mutation. Another disingenuous talking point is that none of us who are vaccinated should be concerned about their disease status if we “trust” the vaccine. Of course, the vaccine isn’t 100% effective, there are those too young to be vaccinated, and there are those who are immuno-compromised for whom the vaccine is not as effective and/or not recommended.

I’m not breaking any new ground with these thoughts. These counterarguments have been advanced ad nauseum. Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers mostly ignore them or pretend not to understand them. I suppose it’s related to Upton Sinclair’s quip that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” For the most part, (a few grifters and political strivers notwithstanding) there is no financial incentive to the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. I think there’s a lot of tribal identity at play. They certainly don’t see themselves as vectors of disease, harming their neighbors. They don’t see themselves as the asshole unvaccinated who will be the reason our community events have to be shut down. Rather they fancy themselves bold defenders of freedom. Independent thinkers who see more clearly than the rest of us sheep. But, at the end of the day, it’s tough to take seriously the big talk about how they’d take a bullet for their country when they won’t take a needle for their neighbors.

My buddy who is a doctor in southern Indiana and has been living with the harsh realities of treating COVID patients has, from time to time, been chastised about his severe language in relation to people who don’t take the pandemic seriously, who refuse to get vaccinated, and who stand in the way of public health measures to mitigate the spread of the disease. He appreciated my observation that William Lloyd Garrison had a relevant quote:

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

7th Circuit Makes Short Work of Anti-Vax Challenge to IU vaccination requirements

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The 7th Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Easterbrook, made short work of a challenge by anti-vaccination students challenging IU’s requirement that students get vaccinated. Specifically, the policy requires students to be vaccinated as a condition of attending the university unless they qualify for a religious or medical exemption. Six of the eight plaintiffs claimed to have some sort of religious reason for not getting vaccinated. The seventh qualified for the religious exemption but wasn’t claiming it. And the eighth wasn’t eligible for any of the exemptions. Those who claim exemptions have to wear masks and get tested twice a week.  The students were asking for injunctive relief (meaning that they wanted the courts to prohibit the university from enforcing the policy.) At the district court level, the judge issued a long (101 page) opinion denying their motion. On appeal, the 7th Circuit was more efficient (4 pages). (Seriously – go read the opinion, it’s one of the better crafted opinions I’ve seen.)

The legal bedrock for these kind of cases is the 1905 Supreme Court opinion in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In that case, the Supreme Court affirmed the criminal conviction against a man who refused to get a compulsory smallpox vaccination. Citing Jacobson, the 7th Circuit in this case says there can’t be a Constitutional problem with requiring a COVID vaccination. There is no substantive due process right being violated because vaccination requirements, like other public-health measures, have been common in this nation for a long time. In fact, the 7th Circuit says, this case is easier than Jacobson.

First, Jacobson had no exception for adults. IU allows exemptions. Those who claim exemptions have to get tested twice a week and wear masks which, the 7th Circuit observes, are not Constitutionally problematic requirements. Second, where the Jacobson case involved everyone in the community, IU isn’t the only place to get an education. Students can go elsewhere if vaccines and testing are simply intolerable to them. The Court recognized that a University has the right to determine what’s necessary to keep students safe in a congregate setting. Vaccinations protect not just vaccinated persons but also those who come in contact with them. The Court also makes analogy to other rights which are not violated by a University imposing conditions of attendance. A student has a right to property, but it’s not a violation of that right for the University to require the student fork over $11,000 worth of that property as a condition of enrollment. A student has First Amendment rights to expression, but that right is not violated where a University requires students to read something they prefer not to read or write something they prefer not to read “even if the student deems the books heretical.” And, at this point, Judge Easterbrook just seems to be having fun. “A student told to analyze the role of nihilism in Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed but who submits an essay about Iago’s motivations in Othello will flunk.”

If conditions of higher education may include surrendering property and following instructions about what to read and write, it is hard to see a greater problem with medical conditions that help all students remain safe when learning. A university will have trouble operating when each student fears that everyone else may be spreading disease.