UChicago’s Institute of Politics Instructs Women To Cut Men In Lines At Events

On October 24th, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP) hosted U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski for an hour-long dialogue about her stances on current events and issues. The conversation, moderated by David French, was followed by a roughly 20-minute Q&A session with UChicago students. University-organized events like these are an invaluable opportunity, even as mere college students, to pursue truth and hold elected American officials accountable to their constituents through precise, thought-provoking, and often difficult questions. However, the IOP seems to think that this opportunity should be partially contingent on gender.

As the moderated discussion wrapped up, IOP staff placed a microphone near the stage and allowed students to line up. Like most IOP events, the opportunity to ask a question was clearly indicated to be first-come, first-served. As students interested in asking Sen. Murkowski about topics important to the well-being of the country, several Thinker members, including ourselves, lined up behind the microphone. However, as the first few questions got going, a female student, as directly instructed by an IOP staff member present, marched from the near end of the line to cut every male in front of her, including all of us Thinker members, to get to the front and ask the very next question.

Surprised by this, one Thinker member asked the IOP staffer responsible why this particular student was allowed to cut all of us in line, to which the staffer directly told us that it was because she was a woman, and that the IOP wanted more female students asking questions to visiting speakers. The staffer further clarified that this decision was made by higher-ups in the IOP and that they were only enforcing the measure. 

Right as I (Christopher) finally reached the microphone, the Q&A concluded. Thus, because I was pushed one spot back in line, despite having gotten in line soon enough, I lost the opportunity to ask a sitting U.S. senator a pressing question purely on the basis of my gender. In the following days, I discovered that this discrimination was not a one-off instance. Based on discussions with other Thinker members who have witnessed the same thing happen at other IOP events, this is a routine occurrence.

The IOP’s behavior here is concerning on a multitude of levels. First, from our judgment, this practice should be illegal under federal law. The University of Chicago’s own Equal Opportunity Programs website states that “Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and its implementing regulations, prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance.” Instructing female students to cut in front of male students, an action purely based on the protected characteristic of gender, should be viewed as a clear violation of this principle.

Second, implementing specific measures to increase the number of female students asking questions to speakers at the expense of male students is logistically absurd. Gender has no effect on peoples’ ability to walk up to a microphone and stand in line. It’s not a race to get to the microphone at these IOP events, and it’s not as though the IOP was giving the microphone to someone in a wheelchair who legitimately couldn’t get to the microphone. Any individual, male or female, is equally capable of asking their question if they want.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the IOP making an active effort to include female questioners over male questioners is prejudicial to both genders. It implies that they believe there to be some fundamental quality in questions from women as a whole that should be prioritized over questions from men. In reality, while the lived experiences of men and women do certainly differ, the sociopolitical perspectives that may shape what or how someone asks a question do not split across gendered lines. If the IOP truly cared about “diversity of perspective” in the questions asked at their events, they should be tripping over themselves to rush conservative students to the front of these lines.

This problem of identity-based discrimination by the IOP is not just insignificantly confined to speaker events at the university, however. It is emblematic of a broader ideology that has infected nearly every department of every university across the country: that academic institutions must be focused on guaranteeing equality of outcome at the direct expense of equality of opportunity. In this instance, when faced with one group of individuals (male students) tending to ask questions more frequently than another group of individuals (female students) in a fair format of first-come, first-served, rather than allow the results of equal opportunity to persist, they saw an issue that had to be “corrected.” Despite there being an equal opportunity for either group to make it to the microphone, the IOP felt that it’s appropriate to trample on what should be a fair first-come, first-served structure to ensure greater gender parity among questioners, discriminating against male students in the process. In these situations, discrimination is transformed from a marker of failure in achieving equal opportunity to a required tool in achieving equality of outcome.

When the IOP was asked for comment on a several questions, such as whether they acknowledged that this practice exists, whether it’s a systematic policy, why they do this, and if they will discontinue this practice going forward, the IOP had the following to say: “The Institute of Politics takes seriously students’ ability to engage at IOP events by asking questions. Attendees at University or IOP events should have equal opportunities to participate in question-and-answer sessions. The IOP will work to ensure that this practice is applied consistently.” 

Scripted and non-informative. However, should we truly be surprised by a statement like this coming from an institution with three separate student civic engagement groups explicitly defined on the basis of race, sexuality, and gender, but zero groups based on ideological perspective and actual diverse thought? A Title IX complaint has been filed against the IOP for this incident, and we will provide future updates should anything come about it.