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Key Takeaways
- UC San Diego's mandatory training states that disagreeing with transgender ideology creates a 'hostile environment.' Students must use preferred pronouns, failing to do so may be considered sexual harassment.
- The training is part of California's legal requirements to educate students on sexual violence, harassment, and discrimination, and students must complete it to avoid academic holds.
- Critics argue the training infringes on personal beliefs, labeling it as an imposition of radical ideology on students.
A mandatory training for University of California, San Diego students teaches that disagreeing with transgender ideology creates a “hostile environment.”
A student sent images of the training to Young America’s Foundation with “concern that agreement with leftist gender ideology was being forced on [UCSD] students,” said Spencer Brown, chief communications officer at YAF, in an email to The College Fix.
The screenshots illustrate the training teaches students that refusing to call a transgender student by their preferred name is “prohibited conduct” referred to as “dead-naming.”
The training also tells students that not using a peer’s preferred pronouns or requiring them to use bathrooms that align with their biological sex may be “sexual harassment.”
“Hostile Environment may be created when someone demands that others use a particular bathroom that does not correspond to their gender identity or uses the incorrect pronoun. Intentionally calling someone their name used prior to transition, as opposed to their lived name, is called dead-naming; and may be a form of sexual harassment,” the training states.
Students who do not complete the training will be placed on academic hold that prevents them from registering for future course, according to the university’s website.
“This means even students whose deeply held religious beliefs of adherence to biological fact must say that men can become women and must be treated as the sex of their choosing,” Brown told The Fix.
UCSD has not responded to The College Fix’s requests for comment.
The hour-long training is part of UCSD’s Sexual Violence and Harassment, Anti-Discrimination, Prevention and Education, or SHAPE, trainings.
“California law now requires all students to take an annual sexual violence and sexual harassment prevention training, and it also expects students to be trained about other forms of discrimination and harassment, including hostile environment based on other Protected Categories,” according to UCSD’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment & Discrimination’s website.
California Assembly Bill No. 2683 requires all California state community colleges and public universities to conduct trainings on sexual violence and harassment. The bill was signed into law in 2022 and took effect in 2024.
This training must include how students experience this conduct “based on their race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity,” according to the bill.
UCSD students must pass the training with a 100 percent on the quiz that follows by Oct. 31, according to the Office for the Prevention of Harassment & Discrimination’s website.
Brown, in flagging the training, stated it “is not sexual harassment to require students to use the restroom, locker room, or other facility that corresponds with their biological sex, but it is egregious to require female students to use bathrooms with biological men and force all students to agree that such a policy is normal or safe.”
“The situation is downright Orwellian as USCD attempts to force radical ‘newspeak’ on its students,” he added.
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