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Canada’s Mizzou? Enrollment plunging at university that investigated gender-neutral pronoun debate

‘”Hard-line, leftist indoctrination” seems to have failed as a marketing strategy’

Wilfrid Laurier University may have thought that its public-relations problems ended in December, when its president admitted it should have never investigated a grad student’s decision to show a gender-neutral pronoun debate in class.

But the Canadian university’s problems are just beginning, as evidenced by new enrollment figures across Ontario institutions.

Laurier Finance Prof. William McNally pointed out the university’s admissions confirmations as of June 7 have declined 15.2 percent from a year ago, while first-place choices are down 12.5 percent, both the worst in the province.

This is in stark contrast to province-wide confirmations, which rose by 0.3 percent, he said: “Failing to stand for truth has consequences.”

David Haskell, the Laurier journalism professor who emerged early as grad student Lindsay Shepherd’s biggest faculty defender, jeered his institution while it’s down: “‘At WLU we practice hard-line, leftist indoctrination’ seems to have failed as a marketing strategy.”

He compared the school to America’s Evergreen State College, whose president predicted it would suffer an 18.5 percent enrollment drop this fall, on top of the 5 percent drop it suffered at the start of the 2017-2018 academic year.

The school became a national punchline a year ago after students and faculty ganged up on husband-and-wife professors Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying for publicly disagreeing with its anti-white Day of Absence.

Laurier’s plummeting enrollment also starts it down the path suffered by the University of Missouri, which has lost a third of freshmen in the past two years, even after a bump coming this fall.

Made infamous by a professor who asked for “some muscle” to remove a journalist who was covering its fall 2015 racial protests, Mizzou had to shutter several dorms a year ago and laid off 30 recently to help plug a $49 million hole.

Read the latest enrollment statistics for Ontario institutions.

IMAGE: Shutterstock

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