Marquette’s Hypocritical Claim to Care For Students

From Rick Esenberg, on Right Wisconsin:

Cura Personalis is a Latin phrase that translates as “Care for the Whole Person.” Marquette uses the term to claim that it will support each student based on their unique talents, challenges, needs and possibilities. But does Marquette practice what it preaches?

This question brings us to the controversy surrounding Marquette’s suspension and termination of Professor John McAdams. Little attention has been paid to the heart of the story: a complaint by a Marquette undergraduate about his Marquette Instructor. How did cura personalis apply to this student?

The student came to Professor McAdams with a complaint about the way he was treated by his philosophy instructor and the way his complaint was handled by Marquette administrators. His instructor, Cheryl Abbate, made it clear to him that expressing opposition to gay marriage was not just mistaken but “homophobic” and “offensive.” As such his views would not be tolerated. There is no dispute about this. The exchange was recorded. The Instructor informed her student that his traditional Catholic beliefs were beyond the pale.

Although the University refers to Ms. Abbate as a “student,” she was a paid employee of the University responsible for delivering a required philosophy course and grading the students who took it. In fact, she invoked her authority as a “professor of ethics” when talking to this student. Her treatment of her student was anything but an exercise of cura personalis.

The student complained to Dr. Susanne Foster in the College of Arts & Sciences, and was sent to the Philosophy Department where he spoke with then-chair Dr. Nancy Snow and Dr. Sebastian Luft. Neither Dr. Snow nor Dr. Luft took any action on behalf of the student. In fact, Dr. Snow referred to him as an “insolent little twerp” in a communication with the College of Arts & Sciences. What Dr. Snow did do was communicate immediately with Ms. Abbate to tell her, in essence, that they had her back. Dr. Snow reported to Ms. Abbate that she told the student that he “needed to change his attitude” and that she would be “monitoring” the situation. Dr. Snow told Ms. Abbate to let her know if the student did anything that Ms. Abbate found objectionable. Ms. Abbate thanked Dr. Snow and said that hopefully the student learned that “oppressive discourse is not acceptable.”

So what we have thus far is the administration at the university calling an undergraduate student names behind his back and circling the wagons against the undergraduate.

But it gets worse. The student returned to Arts and Sciences and spoke to Associate Dean James South. Dr. South recorded the interview without the student’s knowledge or consent. The recording shows that Dr. South lied to the student, telling him he had not listened to the student’s recording of the conversation with Ms. Abbate even though he had. Subsequently, in explaining why he did not tell the truth, Dr. South said that he had “used [his] prudential judgment to try to keep him [the student] at ease.” In other words, he could dismiss the student’s concerns if he pretended not to know the facts.

No one in the University Administration has ever addressed the student’s complaint or publicly (or privately to the student) expressed any concern for the way the student was treated. Dean of Arts & Sciences Richard Holz and President Lovell are both aware of all of these facts and have done nothing. The only person at Marquette who did stand up for the student was Professor McAdams. For this he was suspended, banished from campus and is going to be fired.

And that brings us back to academic freedom. This demonstrates why robust protection of free expression is required. The student has conservative Catholic views that are unpopular with many. Ms. Abbate was part of the faculty with contrary views. Marquette believes that an instructor was entitled to be protected from accurate criticism. It apparently believes the undergraduate student deserved to be told that his views could not be expressed in polite society.

Freedom of speech is an essential remedy for hypocrisy. Sadly, Marquette does not understand that.

Esenberg is the President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, and head of the legal team representing us in our battle with Marquette.

Support for Marquette Warrior from Dan Maguire

We were quite pleased to get the following e-mail, sent to several university officials, copied to us. We are publishing it with the permission of the author.

Dear Doctor Lovell,

[Discussion of two other issues omitted]

L’affaire McAdams:

At a faculty meeting on last Thursday, our theology chair Bob Masson recommended that we write our views on this case to you if we wished.

I was at dinner with several local attorneys when the banishment of Professor McAdams was in the press. From what they read in the press (and the story has gone national) they could not understand, nor could I, how the punishment would be inflicted before the promised “review.” It struck them as a blatant violation of due process legal requirements that exposed the university to unnecessary liabilities and risks. (General Counsel cc’d above)

The AAUP allows for the suspension of a professor, but never without due process. The penalty you imposed on Professor McAdams is, in AAUP terms, “a severe sanction.” According to the norms of the academe it cannot be imposed without well spelled out procedures. Courts are often influenced by the established norms of the organization involved in a case, in this case the academe.

If the administration believes that the conduct of a faculty member, although not constituting adequate cause for dismissal, is sufficiently grave to justify imposition of a severe sanction, such as suspension from service for a stated period, the administration may institute a proceeding to impose such a severe sanction; the procedures outlined in regulation 5 will govern such a proceeding.” (Policy Documents & Reports: American Association of University Professors, 1990 Edition, p. 27)

The sanction you imposed is not just a “severe sanction.” In almost half a century in the academe, I have never seen a similar punishment imposed on a professor in this “blunt instrument” fashion. The banning of the professor from campus unless he gets permission from the dean strikes me as bizarre, demeaning, and unjust. It announces on the public record that Professor McAdams is some sort of threat to the persons in this academic community.....leaving volatile suspicions in the air as to what that threat could be. Is he less a threat when he has the dean’s permission to be on campus? If the unavoidable inference that Professor McAdams is so threatening as to merit banishment is true, has campus security been alerted to protect us from Professor McAdams?

Over the years Professor McAdams and I have disagreed on many issues–and he has excoriated me on his blog—but all my personal interactions with him have been uniformly civil and urbane. Again, as Cardinal Newman said, in a university many minds are free to compete. That’s the glory of it.

This “unnecessary roughness” to borrow a term from the NFL, has already inflicted damage on Professor McAdams’ professional reputation. I am not surprised at the report that he has retained counsel.

I believe you owe us more explanation that you have given on your decision on this matter. Since reports on this situation have gotten national attention and stirred up remembrance of the Dr. Jodi O’Brien contract violation Marquette’s reputation is affected. We are all affected. The incident has a chilling effect on all members and staff since it implies that due-process protections may be brittle and uncertain at this university and specifically under your presidency. It is certainly not an aid in recruiting quality faculty.

Finally, I have not heard the possibility broached that better mentoring of graduate student teachers re handling student inquiries and requests could have obviated this brouhaha. Experienced teachers know that there were better ways the student teacher could have handled this situation.

As a courtesy, I will copy in those referenced in this letter.

Daniel C. Maguire

Professor

Given our disagreements on various issues, one might say this is support from “an unexpected source.” But it isn’t really.

Maguire has enjoyed the benefits of academic freedom at Marquette while supporting abortion and gay marriage, and calling on the President of Marquette to resign.

So in supporting our academic freedom, he’s being consistent. Yes, people coming from very different ideological perspectives can support the right of free expression for those who differ.

We, of course, published the form letter that Marquette sent to people who wrote demanding that Maguire be fired. We characterized it as “a rather good letter that makes a cogent case.” We also insisted that people disappointed in the increasingly secular direction of Marquette “get clear on the areas in which the University has been derelict, and those in which the University has done the necessary thing in protecting academic freedom.”

Failures in Philosophy

Maguire raises “the possibility . . . that better mentoring of graduate student teachers re handling student inquiries and requests could have obviated this brouhaha.”

Indeed it could have.

In the wake of the after-class discussion, in which the student was told that any class comments opposing gay marriage would be homophobic and would “offend” any gay students in the class, he talked to a university employee who advised him that he had a right to complain. A complaint to the Arts & Sciences Dean’s office got him referred to Nancy Snow, Chair of the Philosophy Department. According to The College Fix (which interviewed the student):

The student said he only wants Marquette to acknowledge the instructor was wrong to tell him he couldn’t bring up gay marriage, and ensure that students in the future will be allowed to speak in similar classroom situations.

But not having received any redress at all, the student told us about it.

Snow, of course, could hardly be expected to be sympathetic.  In 2008, Snow was talking about “racial profiling” in her class and a student chimed in with a police perspective on the issue.  Snow not only tried to shut him up in class, but after class she insisted he write an e-mail of apology to two black students in the class, whom she presumed were offended.

Marquette, in other words, blundered in allowing someone like Snow to hear the complaint.

So what we have here is a blatant case of the political correctness that increasingly dominates academia.

A politically-correct instructor told a student that his views were homophobic and “offensive.”  A politically correct department chair not only failed to respond to the students complaint, she reacted in a hostile manner.  And when we blew the whistle on this whole fiasco, we were suspended.

Politically Correct Marquette Faculty Attack Marquette Warrior

Out over the weekend, a nasty attack on this blog by several Marquette Arts & Sciences Department chairs – and signed onto by a handful of Marquette faculty – posted on a blog that has been dedicated, for the last few days, to harassing us.

It resulted from our reporting of the misconduct of a Philosophy Department instructor who told a student who wanted to discuss gay marriage in class that his views were “homophobic,” and that any airing of opposition to gay marriage should not be allowed since it would “offend” any gay students in the class.

The list of department chairs who signed on is interesting.

Lowell Barrington, Political Science
Nancy Snow, Philosophy
James Marten, History
Jane Peterson, Social and Cultural Sciences
Krista Ratcliffe, English
John Grych, Psychology
Anne Pasero, Foreign Languages and Literatures
Robert Masson, Theology

With just a couple of exceptions, it’s pretty much a roll of the politically correct department chairs. Masson, for example, is a big proponent of the doctrine of “white privilege” which holds that white people owe what they have to the exploitation of black people. It doesn’t matter if you never owned slaves. It doesn’t matter if an ancestor died fighting on the Union side in the Civil War. You should feel guilty.

Snow was the lesbian philosopher with the bullhorn heading protests demanding the hiring of aggressively lesbian Arts & Sciences Dean job candidate Jodi O’Brien.

Snow, Marten, Ratcliffe, and Pasero all signed a petition to hire O’Brien. Barrington wore a button at the commencement following the hiring fiasco supporting O’Brien’s hiring.

Who’s Not There

Notable are departments not included: Economics, Math, and the natural sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics). Those departments are in “hard” disciplines where there is much less room for political correctness. And indeed, every one of the few people who have signed onto the statement in the comments section is (as of this writing) from one of the departments whose chairs signed, with the exception of Sharon Chubbuck in Education. Chubbuck wrote an essay where she demeaned two students who did not want to use the classroom to indoctrinate pupils saying they were showing “ the blinders of their common white, middle- to upper-middle class experiences.”

Of course, if the signers generally represent politically correct departments, it doesn’t follow that everybody in their departments is a politically correct leftist. There is a substantial number of more conservative and traditionalist scholars in the Philosophy Department. But they are a dwindling number, since the politically correct faction controls hiring.

Political Science leans clearly left, but isn’t very politically correct, Barrington’s signature to the contrary.

And it doesn’t follow that departments not involved in attacking us support us. More likely they simply haven’t been following this brouhaha, and/or don’t really care. But it remains the case that this is a tempest in a teapot, involving a very few faculty in the humanities and social sciences.

Evaluating the Claims

The illogic of the Department Chairs statement is not only evident when it is taken as a whole, but also in virtually every sentence. Let’s take them one at a time:

We support Ms. Abbate and deeply regret that she has experienced harassment and intimidation as a direct result of Prof. McAdams’s actions.

All we did was to report, accurately, the inappropriate actions of Abbate in demeaning a student, and claiming that gay students should not be exposed to any arguments against gay marriage. It is true that, when the story went national, she was subjected to some nasty e-mails and blog comments (although nothing required her to read the blog with the nastiest comments).

But then we got nasty comments too. When one does something that gets national publicity, some jerks are going to say nasty things. Neither we nor anybody at Marquette can help that.

Prof. McAdams’s actions—which have been reported in local and national media outlets—have harmed the personal reputation of a young scholar as well as the academic reputation of Marquette University.

If accurate reporting harms someone’s reputation, that is fair enough. And if accurate reporting harms Marquette’s reputation, that is also fair enough. The argument here seems to be that certain information needs to be concealed to protect reputations. No journalist would accept that. The rule should be “tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.”

This, of course, is a classic case of blaming the messenger. It was Abbate’s actions toward the student which caused the problem, and even then it was not newsworthy until Marquette officials failed to address the problem.

When the student complained to the Dean’s office, he was directed to Philosophy Department Chair Nancy Snow. Snow could have told the student that Abbate was out of line, and that it was not Marquette’s position that opposition to gay marriage is “homophobic” nor that gays should be protected from hearing arguments against it.

Indeed, Snow could have had a little talk with Abbate and advised her against making inflammatory statements to students, and told her that Marquette’s policy is that all students (straight or gay) should equally be confronted in class with arguments they might dislike. No need for even a paper trail on that. But instead, Snow demanded the name of the employee who had advised the student to seek redress.

Having not received any redress, the student came to us.

Marquette’s “Reputation”

Ironically, Snow vigorously attacked Marquette over the issue of its failure to hire Jodi O’Brien. Snow was the lesbian philosopher with the bullhorn condemning Marquette for its action.


 So it seems we have a double standard here: attacking Marquette from the left is acceptable, but any attack from the right is evil since it harms Marquette’s “academic reputation.”

Abbate’s “Reputation”

Does our blog post harm Abbate, for example making it harder for her to get an academic job?

If there are some colleges out there who don’t want instructors who tell students that opposition to gay marriage is homophobic, Abbate might not get hired there. That is appropriate. We feel no obligation to suppress information to help her get a job

But of course, in an increasingly politically correct philosophy profession, hiring in a lot of departments is dominated by people who think pretty much as Abbate does.

Further, she has made no effort to conceal her political views, having on her blog an essay about how all men are responsible for rape.

(She has taken her blog private [https://aphilosophersblog.wordpress.com/] but we got a brief summary of her article from Google cache.)

They have negatively affected campus climate, especially as it relates to gender and sexual orientation.

Just how is this the case? Is the claim that female instructors can’t be criticized, but males can? Is the claim that a good “campus climate” for gays requires that views of which they might disapprove be suppressed? Saying so implies that gays are a bunch of either wimps (if they are fearful upon hearing certain opinions) or bigots (if they get bent out of shape on hearing things they disagree with).

Interestingly, the politically correct crowd cares nothing about the “campus climate” for groups other than their pet victim groups.

How did it affect the “campus climate” for Jews when various Marquette offices sponsored an “Israeli Apartheid” week?

And how about the “campus climate” for conservative Christians who don’t believe in evolution, but get taught about it in a biology class?

(We once had a student who was disturbed that he was being taught about evolution in Norman Sullivan’s Physical Anthropology class. We told him he had to suck it up and accept that if you take Physical Anthropology, you are going to learn about evolution.)

Politically correct people won’t accept these analogies, of course, since they sharply distinguish between victims groups who must be protected, and other groups who must bear the burden of having their beliefs contradicted. But we don’t accept this distinction, and Marquette can’t officially accept it.

And they have led members of the Marquette community to alter their behavior out of fear of becoming the subject of one of his attacks.

We don’t control anybody’s behavior. But if people fear that, when they do something dumb or prejudiced or inappropriate, we will out them, that’s dandy. The politically correct crowd seems to think they have a right to do things that are highly questionable and have them kept secret.

How might we have “altered” people’s behavior?

• In 2006, a graduate student in Philosophy (note how it keeps popping up) put an innocuous political quote on his door. Department Chair James South decided it was “patently offensive” and tore it down. We blogged about it. Will South be less likely to do things like this again? That’s his call, but we hope he will.
• In 2008, and student in Nancy Snow’s class responded to her lecture on “racial profiling” by giving the cops’ view of the issue. Snow tried to shut him up, and then, after class, insisted that he write an apology to two black students in the class. It was assumed they were “offended.” (There is that word again) We blogged about it. Did that make her less likely to shut down certain viewpoints?
• In 2013, the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center sponsored a program called “Femsex” where a variety of sexual issues were discussed (often in ways contrary to Catholic teaching), and participants engaged in a variety of exercises, including coloring pictures of female genitalia in the “Cunt Coloring Book.” We blogged about it. Marquette, insisting that it was contrary to its Catholic mission, removed official sponsorship (although the participants were free to continue sans such sponsorship). Will Marquette bureaucrats think twice before sponsoring that sort of thing again? We hope so.

In short, we have only been able to “alter behavior” when people were doing something that could not stand scrutiny, and could not be defended when exposed.

Perhaps worst of all, Prof. McAdams has betrayed his role as a faculty member by pitting one set of students against another.

So all students are suppose to agree? So undergraduates exposed to abuse by an instructor are not supposed to seek redress? So if it hadn’t been for that troublemaker McAdams everything would be dandy? It would be from the standpoint of campus bureaucrats, but not from that of students who are attacked and demeaned and silenced.

by claiming the protection of academic freedom while trying to deny it to others, and by exploiting current political issues to promote his personal agenda.

Our “personal agenda” is to protect students from the excesses of political correctness at Marquette. The “personal agenda” of those to signed the statement is to subject students to the dictates of political correctness.

It’s deeply ironic that those who want Marquette administrators to shut us up are claiming that we want to deny “academic freedom” to others. We can’t deny academic freedom to anybody. We can only report what they do and say.

Professors have a long history of thinking that “academic freedom” includes freedom from being criticized. They happily say what they want to say, and then whine when others say their positions are wrong, or misguided, or downright evil.

But in a free society, freedom works both ways. The people who criticize the professors have the same free speech rights as the professors. And professors have the right to criticize other professors. The politically correct types, living in the insular little environment of an academic department, have trouble understanding that.

Conclusion

The intellectual shoddiness of the attack on us raises all kinds of questions, the most fundamental one being the lack of tolerance for free speech. Leftist professors who would be quite happy having Marquette attacked from the left on issues like “diversity” and “sustainability” go bananas when their own behavior is criticized.

The notion of a robust free market in ideas is fine when they are the only player in the market.

It’s “free speech for me, but not for thee.” And it’s a symptom of the increasing intolerance of academia.

Nancy Snow, Philosophy Chair, Livid Over Marquette Warrior Criticism of Politically Correct Instructor

Just this past Sunday, we blogged about an instructor in Marquette’s Philosophy Department who refused to allow a class discussion of gay marriage because if any student voiced opposition to gay marriage, that would be “homophobic” and might offend gay students.

We were just at lunch at the Tory Hill Cafe (in the Law School) with some colleagues and a Political Science job candidate.

We were accosted by Nancy Snow, Acting Chair of the Philosophy Department.  She said [paraphrasing] “now you are picking on graduate students” in reference to the instructor, one Cheryl Abbate, who is indeed a graduate student.

She added “I’m so mad at you” and added “your student is lying.”

We responded  “we have the audio, Nancy.”  She repeated “your student is lying.”  She further claimed the student should not have recorded the conversation.  Suspecting that he was going to be called a liar, he was smart to do so.

We do indeed have the audio, and the quotes we attributed to the instructor are exactly what she said.

As for “picking on a graduate student:”  when a department puts a graduate student (or anybody else) in the classroom, in charge of a class, they are responsible for the person acting in a professional manner.  Put somebody in a position of power and responsibility and you are responsible when they abuse that power and responsibility.

Excluding certain opinions because they might offend some special interest group, or labeling a student’s views as “homophobic” is unprofessional.  Indeed, it’s intolerant.

Snow, to whom the student complained, apparently thought she could blow off the complaint.  But then our blog post appeared.

If Abbate in fact told Snow that the student lied about her comments, Abbate is in fact lying.  But we do not know firsthand what Abbate told Snow.

In fact, if anybody wants to make an issue of it, we will share the audio with anybody with the authority to deal with the situation whom we trust to keep the student’s identity confidential.

Aside from the audio, it’s easy to see how Abbate would have said what we reported.  Her blog is titled “Thoughts from a Vegan Feminist Philosopher.”  Some of the stuff seems quirky and bland, such as her criticism for a Catholic parish for having a pig wrestling contest.

Less benign is her essay titled “Yes All Men…Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape.” Yes, it’s a common theme among feminists and Exhibit One of the reality that hard-core feminism is, at root, about sexist antipathy toward males.

Marquette Philosophy Instructor: “Gay Rights” Can’t Be Discussed in Class Since Any Disagreement Would Offend Gay Students

A student we know was in a philosophy class (“Theory of Ethics”), and the instructor (one Cheryl Abbate) was attempting to apply a philosophical text to modern political controversies. So far so good.

She listed some issues on the board, and came to “gay rights.” She then airily said that “everybody agrees on this, and there is no need to discuss it.”

The student, a conservative who disagrees with some of the gay lobby’s notions of “gay rights” (such as gay marriage) approached her after class and told her he thought the issue deserved to be discussed. Indeed, he told Abbate that if she dismisses an entire argument because of her personal views, that sets a terrible precedent for the class.

The student argued against gay marriage and gay adoption, and for a while, Abbate made some plausible arguments to the student — pointing out that single people can adopt a child, so why not a gay couple? She even asked the student for research showing that children of gay parents do worse than children of straight, married parents. The student said he would provide it.

So far, this is the sort of argument that ought to happen in academia.

But then things deteriorated.

Certain Opinions Banned

Abbate explained that “some opinions are not appropriate, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions” and then went on to ask “do you know if anyone in your class is homosexual?” And further “don’t you think it would be offensive to them” if some student raised his hand and challenged gay marriage? The point being, apparently that any gay classmates should not be subjected to hearing any disagreement with their presumed policy views.

Then things deteriorated further as the student said that it was his right as an American citizen to make arguments against gay marriage. Abbate replied that “you don’t have a right in this class to make homophobic comments.”

She further said she would “take offense” if the student said that women can’t serve in particular roles. And she added that somebody who is homosexual would experience similar offense if somebody opposed gay marriage in class.

She went on “In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.” She then invited the student to drop the class.

Which the student is doing.

Shutting People Up

Abbate, of course, was just using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed “offensive” and need to be shut up.

As Charles Krauthammer explained:

The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced.

The newest closing of the leftist mind is on gay marriage. Just as the science of global warming is settled, so, it seems, are the moral and philosophical merits of gay marriage.

To oppose it is nothing but bigotry, akin to racism. Opponents are to be similarly marginalized and shunned, destroyed personally and professionally.

Of course, only certain groups have the privilege of shutting up debate. Things thought to be “offensive” to gays, blacks, women and so on must be stifled. Further, it’s not considered necessary to actually find out what the group really thinks. “Women” are supposed to feel warred upon when somebody opposes abortion, but in he real world men and women are equally likely to oppose abortion.

The same is true of Obama’s contraception mandate.

But in the politically correct world of academia, one is supposed to assume that all victim groups think the same way as leftist professors.

The “Offended” Card

Groups not favored by leftist professors, of course, can be freely attacked, and their views (or supposed views) ridiculed. Christians and Muslims are not allowed to be “offended” by pro-gay comments.

(Muslims are a protected victim group in lots of other ways, but not this one.)

And it is a free fire zone where straight white males are concerned.

Student Seeks Redress

The student first complained to the office of the Dean of Arts & Sciences, and talked to an Associate Dean, one Suzanne Foster. Foster sent the student to the Chair of the Philosophy Department, saying that department chairs usually handle such cases. The chair, Nancy Snow, pretty much blew off the issue.

Interestingly, both Snow and Foster have been involved in cases of politically correct attacks on free expression at Marquette.

Foster took offense when one of her colleagues referred to a dinner which happened to involve only female faculty as a “girls night out.” He was reprimanded by then department chair James South for “sexism,” but the reprimand was overturned by Marquette.

Snow, in a class on the “Philosophy of Crime and Punishment” tried to shut up a student who offered a response, from the perspective of police, to Snow’s comments about supposed “racial profiling.” The student said talk about racial profiling makes life hard for cops, since it may make minorities hostile and uncooperative.

Snow tried to silence him, claiming “this is a diverse class.” This was an apparent reference to two black students in the class, who were, Snow assumed, likely offended on hearing that.

The majority of the class, contacted by The Marquette Warrior, felt the comments were reasonable and relevant, but Snow insisted that the student write an apology to the black students.

So how is a student to get vindication from University officials who hold the same intolerant views as Abbate?

Conclusion

Thus the student is dropping the class, and will have to take another Philosophy class in the future.

But this student is rather outspoken and assertive about his beliefs. That puts him among a small minority of Marquette students. How many students, especially in politically correct departments like Philosophy, simply stifle their disagreement, or worse yet get indoctrinated into the views of the instructor, since those are the only ideas allowed, and no alternative views are aired?

Like the rest of academia, Marquette is less and less a real university. And when gay marriage cannot be discussed, certainly not a Catholic university.