Jay Bauer, a Northwestern University doctoral graduate and former University of Wisconsin assistant professor of Communications Science, has filed an interesting lawsuit alleging that females are given unfair advantage in training for special agents. Bauer fell one push-up short of making the cut for agent and was denied a second try that was afforded to female candidates (who are required to do less than half of the push ups).
Bauer is currently an intelligence analyst for the FBI in Chicago and passed a fitness test before entering new-agent training at Quantico, Va. He had done well at the academy — scoring at the top of his class in tests and was chosen by his fellow trainees to be their class leader. However, one fitness test required at least 38 situps in a minute and do 30 untimed push ups as well as running times. Bauer could only do 29 push ups and was forced to resign from special agent training. However, a female trainee who scored near the bottom of the class in firearms proficiency was given another attempt at the fitness test — an option given women rather than men. Moreover, while females are only required to do
14 untimed push ups — men are required to do 30. The lawsuit cites a study that shows that 14 female push ups are the equivalent to 27 to 29 for men.
I am not sure that the study is a big help when it is short one push up on the equivalent scale. Courts are reluctant to micromanage such tests and give a fair degree of deference. The requirement of a couple more push ups may not seem arbitrary and capricious.
The option of a second chance for females would seem a stronger claim. Why should females get a second chance but not males?
What do you think?
What would Jack Bauer do?
This is how he does discovery:
Source: Chicago Tribune
Who cares what is an “equivalent” level of fitness between males and females? What is the amount of strength required to do the job? That is the amount that should be tested for, gender should never be considered. Taking gender into account at all is, by definition, discrimination.
One more thought. Am I the only one who asked if Jay has a brother or cousin named Jack after reading the first sentence?
I feel bad for the guy, but only 30 push ups?? Depending on his age, that is really nothing. I say this recognizing that more than half the population cannot do 30 push ups, but this is the FBI. Still, I think he should have been allowed a retest.
By the way, it is the same in the military. The men complain, but it is what it is. I haven’t seen anyone suing West Point because a “D” for a man on the physical fitness test is equivalent to an “A” for a woman.
Thanks for the post, Professor Turley!!
“Bonnie is promoting a gender war.”
No.
People in the other thread are literally calling for an armed conflict between races. People are saying human beings should be killed based on skin color.Lives should be ended, because of an accident of birth. These people aren’t speaking figuratively, they’re calling for bullets to be loaded into guns and then fired into living human beings with the intent of stopping their hearts. No more brain function. Nothing.
Bonnie is saying that she can’t work up sympathy for an individual.
Bonnie might be wrong, but there is a world of difference between apathy and violence.
“Bonnie speaks from the one that historically has been oppressed?”
Hate, stereotype, and bigotry is hate, stereotype, and bigotry. And anyone can hate. The claim “I cannot be a bigot for I am a X” is nonsense unless X is an element of (baby, toddler, corpse.)
“speaks from the one that historically has been oppressed?”
We’ve all been oppressed in different ways, including the bigots from the other thread. Very few men really live any sort of life of power that Bonnie and apparently you believe. And I am sure if we examined Bonnie’s life it would be a life where the biggest hindrance to Bonnie’s success and self-actualization was Bonnie and not society or men.
“there’s a far cry between calling for a race war and being unsympathetic.”
Bonnie is promoting a gender war.
“To hell with that though. Frankly, I see little difference between Bonnie and the racists in the Baltimore thread. ”
You mean other than the lack of calls for violence, vile language, dehumanization, and the fact that while the bigots in the other thread speak from the dominate and privalaged side of the divide Bonnie speaks from the one that historically has been oppressed?
I mean, yeah I disagree with what Bonnie said, however there’s a far cry between calling for a race war and being unsympathetic.
Bonnie thinks its important for us to know how evil males are. And she believes it’s the cultural norm here that misandry is tolerated and encouraged.
I think it’s important to stand up to bigotries, even fashionable, trendy, politically correct ones.
In the corrections thread, the regulars are very understandably concerned with the ugly expressions of bigotry in the thread about the attack in Baltimore. And that thread really has become terribly ugly.
Luckily we have Bonnie here to help us understand that disgusting displays of hate and bigotry can come from anyone.
Here’s Bonnie http://jonathanturley.org/2012/04/07/pet-of-the-week-meet-my-dearly-departed-cat-abby/#comment-354897 pretending she’s a sensitive and caring human being and not a worthless craptastic piece of ass. See that’s what people like to do. It’s others who are racists, sexists, but not us! We mean too well!
And I am sure the rest of us will want to pretend that to the extent that Bonnie otherwise reflects are viewpoints at other times in other threads, well in this thread she must’ve meant her comment ironically, or we can see how she has been oppressed by the man for so long we can sympathize with her “understandable” misandry.
To hell with that though. Frankly, I see little difference between Bonnie and the racists in the Baltimore thread. Well, there’s one difference, it’s easy to disclaim the racists and harder for us to admit that Bonnie is just as sick a nutjob.
“Excuse me if I don’t get overly exercised about a man being discriminated against. I was always told it made me a better person.”
Excuse me when I laugh hilariously at rape jokes. I was always told women were cold selfish bitches.