Education

‘Unacceptable:’ State Lawmaker Aims To Defund University After It Suspends Church Elder

(Screenshot/YouTube/University of Wyoming)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Alexa Schwerha Contributor
Font Size:
  • The University of Wyoming (UW) responded to a letter from 25 state officials asking it to reverse course on issuing a one-year suspension to a church elder who displayed a sign which read “God created male and female” and named a biological male student who is in a sorority.
  • UW said it understood the lawmaker’s concerns but it has a responsibility to protect its students.
  • “Higher education does not respect 1st Amendment rights, that’s clearly evidenced by the situation here,” Republican state Rep.-elect Jeanette Ward of Wyoming told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Republican state Rep.-elect Jeanette Ward of Wyoming is turning her attention to higher education after the University of Wyoming (UW) suspended a church elder from operating a table within its student union for one year after he displayed the name of a transgender student on a sign defending biological sex.

UW issued a one-year suspension to Laramie Faith Community Church elder Todd Schmidt after he displayed a sign earlier this month which read “God created male and female and [student’s name] is male,” referencing a male student who is currently in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority chapter. Ward, along with 24 other lawmakers, sent a letter to UW asking that it “reverse the direction that the culture of [the] university is taking.”

UW responded to the letter, obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, on Dec. 14 and claimed that while it understood the lawmaker’s concerns, the suspension would be upheld as its investigation concluded Schmidt’s sign violated the school’s harassment policy despite the student’s name being removed upon request.

“I have given [UW] a chance,” Ward told the DCNF. “We have given them a chance, I and the 24 other signatories of that letter. We gave them a chance to choose a path of peace, but they have declined that option.”

The letter then claimed that Schmidt was not banned from the university or the union and mentioned that he “has been on various locations around campus in the last two weeks, including at the Union this last Friday, engaging the community.”

“It is unacceptable that the University persists in violating the 1st Amendment rights of Todd Schmidt,” Ward wrote back to the university in a Dec. 14 email obtained by the DCNF.

Ward told the DCNF that she intends to use funding against UW once she takes office in January, and she specifically stated her intent to defund the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Office as well as gender studies programs. (RELATED: Major University Medical Center Gets An ‘A’ For Wokeness In Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Survey)

“Higher education does not respect 1st Amendment rights, that’s clearly evidenced by the situation here,” she said. “The best that I can do here is to try to hit them in their pocket books.”

Ward said that while the ultimate decision of how to respond to the university after the letter will be left up to Schmidt, she “stand[s] ready to help him in any way [she] possibly can.”

Schmidt told the student newspaper The Cowboy Daily that he hasn’t decided if he wants to pursue legal action to challenge the suspension, but that he hopes the pressure from the lawmakers will push the university to reverse the suspension.

The letter also tried to clear the air about how the male student was accepted into the sorority. UW confirmed that decisions about who is accepted are made by the chapter and do not involve the university itself.

“Any decisions related to offering bids to pledges, membership, and residence privileges within a particular house are made by local members in compliance with their national charters and policies,” the letter read. “Having said that, in the interest of correcting the record, I thought you would want to know that the student targeted by Elder Schmidt does not currently live in a sorority house.”

The University of Wyoming, Laramie Faith Community Church and the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel