For an excellent illustration of the way one small bit of federal intervention grows and grows like a malignant tumor, there is nothing better than Title IX. It was supposed to stop colleges from discriminating against women but has become the basis for an amazing array of rules that put Washington bureaucrats in charge of sexual behavior on campus. Two Harvard Law profs, Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk, have written an article (soon to appear in California Law Review) entitled “Bureaucratic Sex Creep” and in this Reason piece, Elizabeth Nolan Brown discusses it.
How is this for lunacy? We read that the feds are pushing schools to set up “bystander intervention training” programs. They’re supposed to train students to recognize the “signs” that someone else might be in a “risky relationship” or might become violent, and then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Talk about the Nanny State! If anyone had “intervened” in a college relationship involving any of the Department of Education bureaucrats behind this, they’d have no doubt said, “Mind your own business,” but now this mania for controlling others gives them something to do, and they relish doing it.
As I have often said, creating the Department of Education was among our worst blunders and we ought to abolish it forthwith.