by Brian Dahle
1st District Assemblyman
By one count, California needs more than 1 million additional college graduates — above current trends — by 2030 to keep up with the economy’s demand for highly skilled workers. The very last thing our state government should be doing is making it harder for students to pursue higher education.
Yet that is precisely what a bill pending in the California Senate would do.
In the name of fighting discrimination, Assembly Bill 1888 would end Cal Grants for students who attend religiously affiliated colleges and universities that have waivers from the federal Title IX nondiscrimination laws. Recognizing the importance – and the constitutional protections – of the religious traditions that have built so many universities, the federal government has long allowed exemptions to Title IX so colleges can offer single-sex programs, maintain codes of conduct, or otherwise build a community of shared faith. That’s why a student chooses to attend a religious college.
As legal protections and social acceptance have grown for gays and lesbians, as well as transgendered persons, these faith traditions are increasingly out of step with liberal California. The members of the Legislature promoting this bill argue that the state shouldn’t be funding discrimination.
I do not support discrimination against anyone. But tolerance in a society as large and diverse as California cuts both ways.
For the Seventh-Day Adventists who built Loma Linda University into a respected health-sciences campus, their mission is to train doctors and nurses – not only to make a good living but to build a healing ministry based on their Christian values. You don’t have to share all of their beliefs to see that they are making the world a better place.
In Northern California, Simpson University in Redding is the only accredited stand-alone university in Shasta County – and for that matter in the entire 1st Assembly district, which spans seven whole counties and parts of two more. In the more than 160 years since statehood, the State of California has not built a university in this region, but the Christian and Missionary Alliance did.
The university serves not only church members but the broader community. Many of my constituents could never have finished their college degrees without Simpson. Rural shortages of nurses and teachers would be far more acute without Simpson’s pipeline of graduates. Its undergraduates do not live in a stereotypical ivory tower but serve the community with a passion that is rooted in their faith. The university is a blessing to the region, not a problem the state needs to solve.
And if Cal Grants did not help students earn their degrees at these universities, where would they go? To the overcrowded California State University system? To the University of California, which is far more costly and cannot come close to accommodating the demand from in-state students? The fact is our higher-education system needs all hands on deck. We shouldn’t be purging universities because we don’t like their values.
Society is becoming more tolerant. Faith-based universities themselves are changing — at their own pace. Whether or not we share their beliefs, I believe we should respect their traditions and their good works, and the critical service they provide to California students, not use the law to bully them.
Brian Dahle represents California’s 1st Assembly District, which includes Lassen County along with all or parts of Butte, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou counties.
