“We don’t know what we can talk about. That’s the biggest issue right now,” student Martha Smith tells Rolling Stone. “I have a friend who is writing a paper about Roe v. Wade. Now the professor is apprehensive to even grade it.”
And while nothing in any of the laws technically barred employees from directing students to “private groups or agencies of another state” — a reference, some believed, to the Planned Parenthood in Pullman — the email advised employees that they ”must remain neutral on the subject of abortion” in virtually any circumstance in which it might come up, or else risk criminal prosecution, fines, jail time, and a lifetime ban on state employment.
In the weeks since the memo was sent out, the student club dedicated to sexual and reproductive health has debated whether or not they needed to use a Sharpie to cross out the words “to prevent pregnancy” on the condoms they hand out on campus every Friday. Campus groups that would normally turn out for rallies in support ofin Moscow were suddenly cowed by the idea that they might get their faculty sponsor in trouble.
Why did the memo include a mandate to remain neutral in classroom discussions, when the law itself didn’t, professors wanted to know.
Luigi Boschetti, a professor at the university and president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, believes the university has been put in a difficult spot by state lawmakers. “This is the situation we live in in Idaho, with the extreme Idaho Legislature. The law is extreme. This is something that criminalizes state employees for expressing opinions,” Boschetti says. “Had we not had the memo, we would not be as aware of the law. But the law would still be there.
But administrators sidestepped the questions of whether the university would refer professors found violating the law to local police, and did not say whether it would defend them if they were targeted for criminal prosecution, writing simply: “The university does not impose criminal charges nor conduct criminal investigation.”
“There was zero thinking through of the cultural, psychological, and political consequences of instructing faculty to not address reproductive health at risk of prosecution,” Gosse says.
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