www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-09 10:27:00
Western Carolina University (WCU) is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for alleged Title IX violations related to failing to ensure sex-separated intimate spaces. Credible reports claim a male was allowed to room in a female dorm and the university investigated a female who asked a male to leave a female locker room. Acting assistant secretary Craig Trainer condemned WCU’s alleged disregard for federal anti-discrimination laws and retaliation against female students. WCU asserts compliance with Title IX and will cooperate with the investigation. The inquiry follows a National Review report highlighting outdated policies since 2017.
(The Center Square) – Western Carolina University is under investigation for Title IX violations by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The Cullowhee school, a member of the University of North Carolina System, faces accusations of failing to “ensure sex-separated intimate spaces in federally funded institutions of higher education,” a release from the Education Department says. It further says “credible reports” indicate Western let a male room with a female in a girls’ dormitory, and in another instance, the school investigated a female for asking a male to leave a female locker room.
Craig Trainer, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Civil Rights, said in the release, “WCU’s reported contempt for federal antidiscrimination laws and indifference to, and retaliation against, girls who have spoken up about males invading their intimate spaces is simply unacceptable. After fighting for years to secure Title IX protections, women must again fight hostile institutions to ensure their right to equal protection and opportunity in sports, living spaces, and intimate facilities is respected.
“The Trump-McMahon Department of Education will continue to deploy every lawful means to eradicate this wholly unnecessary and egregious violation of women and girls’ civil rights.”
In an email to The Center Square, the university through its communications office said, “Western Carolina University acknowledges that we have received a notice of investigation from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. We believe that our campus policies and procedures are compliant with Title IX and all other federal and state laws. We will work with OCR to fully resolve this complaint.”
The Education Department’s link for “credible reporting” is to the outlet National Review, the 1955 creation of William F. Buckley Jr. and arguably among the most prominent of conservative national media organizations. It published a story Tuesday saying the school hasn’t updated Title IX policy since President Donald Trump took office and issued several executive orders; and it cited public records given to it by Speech First.
The story cites a Jan. 22 email from a compliance officer.
The incident involving the school initiating a probe against a female student for a locker room, or bathroom, incident is from 2024 and involves Payton McNabb. The Education Department says the investigation was dropped “but WCU continues to assert that it will not change its policies to comply with Title IX.”
The Center Square is seeking comment from the UNC System leadership through its media relations office.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The article presents a factual report on an investigation into Western Carolina University by the U.S. Department of Education for Title IX violations. While the content is largely neutral in reporting on the investigation and the university’s response, the use of quotes from Craig Trainer, a figure associated with the Trump administration, and the citation of National Review, a prominent conservative media outlet, suggests a subtle right-leaning framing. The tone of the Department of Education’s statement, particularly the use of terms like “contempt” and “indifference,” echoes a more conservative perspective on the issue. This framing aligns with a conservative stance on gender and Title IX issues, emphasizing the protection of women’s spaces against perceived violations. However, the article refrains from explicitly offering an ideological viewpoint, focusing instead on the investigation and the facts as presented. Therefore, the bias is more evident in the sources and language used rather than in overt advocacy or opinion.
SUMMARY: Ninety years ago, the U.S. Congress passed the Social Security Act, establishing federal old-age benefits and support for vulnerable populations. Frank Porter Graham, former UNC president and brief U.S. senator from North Carolina, played a crucial role in its creation, chairing the Advisory Council on Economic Security under FDR. Graham championed racial equality, labor rights, and economic justice, viewing economic security as a moral imperative essential to American liberty. Despite compromises in the law’s final form, his vision laid a foundation for social progress. His legacy encourages renewed commitment to social justice amid present challenges, highlighting North Carolina’s tradition of humane progress.
SUMMARY: The flesh-eating New World screwworm parasite, which feeds on living flesh of warm-blooded animals, has been confirmed in the US for the first time in a human case in Maryland, involving a traveler from El Salvador. This parasite causes severe infections as larvae burrow into wounds, posing a major threat to livestock and wildlife. While no cases have been reported in Texas, concerns persist due to infections in Mexico, including human deaths. Texas officials are working to control the parasite using fly bait and sterile flies from Panama to prevent reproduction and stop its spread, aiming to protect both animals and humans.
The first human case of the flesh-eating screwworm parasite has been confirmed in the U.S. Federal health officials say the risk to the public is low but concerns are growing in Texas, where the agriculture community is already on alert.
WRAL is your Raleigh, North Carolina news source. Check out our videos for the latest news in Raleigh, local sports, Raleigh weather, and more at https://WRAL.com
#localnews #northcarolina
North Carolina’s elections omnibus bill, sponsored by Rep. Hugh Blackwell, includes controversial provisions such as requiring full Social Security numbers on voter registration forms, replacing the current option of providing only the last four digits or a driver’s license number. Advocates like Kate Fellman express security concerns, while supporters argue it aids voter list maintenance. The bill also adjusts ballot counting deadlines, loosening last year’s stringent rules, and introduces measures like signature verification for absentee ballots. Some provisions, like banning boards from promoting turnout, were removed after feedback. The bill faces ongoing debate, with Democrats cautious about supporting it amid potential legal challenges and implementation concerns before the 2026 primary.
by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press August 26, 2025
You Can Vote executive director Kate Fellman breathed a sigh of relief when a bill effectively banning voter registration drives died earlier this legislative session after bipartisan pushback. But now, one of a multitude of provisions in the latest version of this year’s elections omnibus bill would do the same thing, albeit in a different way.
The omnibus bill would require registrants to provide their full Social Security number on their voter applications. Under current law, applicants have an option between giving the last four digits of their Social Security number or their North Carolina driver’s license number.
This session’s elections bill began as a “correction to the rush job” the legislature passed last year after the elections, Senate Bill 382, said Mark Swallow, an advocate for left-leaning Democracy Out Loud. Last year’s bill tightened ballot counting and curing deadlines, amongst other election changes, while this year’s bill loosens them a bit.
However, as the session progressed, it quickly became a grab bag for the Republican majority’s election priorities.
While much of the legislature’s policy work is paused until next year, the elections omnibus is on a different timeline. It may see movement as early as September, according to bill sponsor Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke.
In Swallow’s view, it’s come a long way, but still has a ways to go.
And in an increasingly uncommon move in North Carolina’s GOP-led legislature, Blackwell is taking in everyone’s feedback on the omnibus before moving forward.
Social Security number, please
Fellman does a lot of voter registration as part of You Can Vote, a civic organization focused on voter education and empowerment.
She already hears concerns about the security of providing the last four digits of registrants’ Social Security numbers. Some of the younger registrants don’t know their number offhand, and have to call or text their parents to get the information, which raises further security issues, she added.
“Nobody would give (their full SSN) to a stranger just out on the street,” Fellman said. “… I just don’t know how you could actually do paper voter registration form collection.”
Jim Womack, president of the conservative North Carolina Election Integrity Team, said having a full Social Security number, as the omnibus would require, would make list maintenance easier, as the only true unique data point among voter registrants.
NCEIT is a chapter of the Election Integrity Network, founded by former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell. Mitchell helped Trump in his failed bid to overturn the 2020 election. Now Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, and several others think North Carolina lawmakers are following her election policy playbook.
Womack, for his part, said providing a full Social Security number is no more dangerous than providing any other information at a voter registration drive.
“If it’s the full Social, they’ve got to protect it the same way they do the last four (of the SSN) or the driver’s license number, because both of those are protected as well,” he said. “So I mean, there’s always risk in allowing voter registration drives.”
‘How it should be’
At a late June House Election Law committee meeting, Harrison posed a concern to Blackwell about a provision of the omnibus bill that would have barred boards of election from “encouraging or promoting voter turnout in any election.”
The provision seemed “a bit vague” to her. Didn’t they wantthe county boards to encourage turnout? Wasn’t part of their job to promote voting?
Blackwell assured Harrison that there was more work to do on the bill before it was ready for a vote.
“The idea is that we want the State Board to focus on the conduct of the election, and that the responsibility for turnout is better handled by other folks,” he said. “We were trying to draw a line, and we may not have gotten it just at the sweet spot.”
The next time the omnibus bill was heard in committee, the turnout provision was axed. And instead of moving straight from the elections committee to rules, where the bill would have likely been expedited to a floor vote, the bill was assigned an additional committee hearing.
After that committee meeting, where Harrison raised other concerns, Blackwell’s staff emailed her to ask further questions. While Harrison still has a list of issues with the omnibus bill, she gave credit to Blackwell for being amenable to changes, and giving the bill time to improve.
“I’d rather them do it out in the open, in a committee, than to go into a back room and figure out what’s going to work,” she said. “This is actually a better, more public process. This is how it should be.”
The omnibus bill has undergone a number of other changes since its debut.
Instead of offering State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes the ability to make 25 political hires — which he said were needed to ensure “ the folks that are surrounding me, certainly my direct reports and I, are aligned on the vision for the agency” — the latest version gives him five positions.
An initial campaign finance provision limiting foreign nationals’ ability to contribute to referendum committees has turned into a broader ban on foreign national contributions for any candidate, political committee, party or treasurer.
The latest version officially takes back the ability of so-called “Never Residents” to vote in state elections, in line with recent court rulings, and limits the acceptable photo ID documents for overseas and military voters.
And of course, it changes some deadlines.
‘Humanly not possible’
Last Election Day, the Wake County Board of Elections received 4,800 absentee ballots before the 7:30 p.m. cutoff.
Staff checked ballots, conducted data entry and reviewed the voter and two required witness signatures on each envelope before adding them to the tally.
If last year’s Senate Bill 382 had been in effect, Wake County’s count would have begun at 5 p.m. on Election Day and run continuously until there were no ballots left, with no leaving the room allowed, except in case of an emergency.
That would have meant spending one or two nights in the office, Wake County Board of Elections Democrat Gerry Cohen said. It wasn’t a realistic ask.
Last year’s bill also moved up deadlines for counting and curing provisional and absentee ballots. Before its passage, county elections staff had until the day before county canvass, nine calendar days after the election, to count and cure all the ballots. Senate Bill 382 gave staff just three business days after the election to do so.
This year’s omnibus bill takes it back — kind of. It would give election officials five business days after the election to complete the job.
Lee County Board of Elections Republican Jay DeLancy, who founded the right-leaning Voter Integrity Project, said the deadlines set under SB382 were “humanly not possible” without a hiring surge.
As an election integrity advocate, DeLancy liked the idea of the count being “continuous,” but as a board member, his perspective has shifted slightly.
“The things election integrity people like me have been complaining about were not all put there for nefarious purposes,” he said. “Now we’re having to see, oh, it was done for a pragmatic purpose, just so we have time to count them.”
However, DeLancy wants stronger penalties for those who share ballot count results before the polls close to avoid any possibility of fraud.
What else is in the omnibus bill?
North Carolina absentee voters must attach a copy of their photo ID to their ballot, and either get two witnesses or a notary to sign the envelope.
Last year, the State Board of Elections was supposed to try a third security measure — signature verification — but the pilot program never quite got off the ground due to issues finding an acceptable vendor.
Signature verification requires the use of a machine to detect whether a voter’s signature belongs to them. If North Carolina implemented it through the omnibus bill, it would be the only state to require three security measures for absentee voters.
Hayes’ chief of staff Brian LiVecchi told lawmakers they’ve discussed potential vendors to avoid and seek out with other states. The pilot program wasn’t made a priority under the previous State Board of Election administration, he said. They would like to change that.
Harrison isn’t a fan of the idea.
“They’ve been wanting to go down this road for a while, but we know that there’s a long history of folks getting thrown out because of their signature,” she said. “And anybody who’s watched their signature change from age 18 to 40 or to even 80. I mean, nothing looks the same.”
Hayes, who worked in the legislature as House Speaker general counsel until a few months ago, has fingerprints all over the elections omnibus bill.
Besides the signature verification piece, Hayes was clear that securing positions exempt from the North Carolina Human Resources Act, which bans political hiring and firing, was a top concern. Under the current bill, the State Board would also be able to hire private counsel for legal matters, removing the Democratic attorney general from the picture and shielding any documents from the public records law.
Swallow trains elections workers, and he said these provisions violate one of his golden rules.
“One of the things we tell our poll workers is that the only people that can be partisan in our elections are the candidates, and that’s changing with this bill,” he said.
Even bipartisan sections of the elections omnibus bill face obstacles. The provisions attempting to block foreign influence in elections and campaign finance aren’t quite across the finish line yet, according to Womack.
“They’re struggling to find language that would allow them to restrict referendums or foreign funding of referendums and that sort of thing without infringing on First Amendment rights,” Womack said.
No language change is going to be effective unless the legislature repeals tworecent laws that make it easier to cover up the origins of funds, Harrison said.
And some of the omnibus bill’s provisions don’t do anything at all, except maybe send a message, Cohen said.
The omnibus bill bans ranked choice voting, a process by which voters rank candidates instead of choosing just one, and no winner is crowned until they earn a majority. The election method is lauded by supporters for producing more moderate consensus winners and criticized by opponents for being too confusing for voters.
But ranked choice voting already doesn’t happen in the state, and it would take express permission by the legislature for any localities to allow it. Laws that allowed ranked choice voting experiments in Cary and Hendersonville years ago have expired, Cohen said.
A ways to go on omnibus
Fellman is concerned about the timeline. If the elections omnibus becomes law, most of it goes into effect Jan. 1, 2026. That’s just a few months before the 2026 primary election, which isn’t much runway to implement changes and educate voters, she said.
There will likely be legal challenges, which may make things murkier, she added.
At the end of the day, House Democrats have a leg — or seat — up. If they decide they’re not satisfied with the bill, they can block a veto override. Generally, Democrats tend to stick together on election matters, Harrison said.
Swallow isn’t so confident after swing Democrats have sided with Republicans on several veto overrides so far this session.
“There are things in this bill that fix issues, like the curing of ballots timeframe,” he said. “But I hope that doesn’t convince Democrats that this is something they should be voting for.”
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The content presents a detailed examination of election-related legislation with a focus on concerns raised by voting rights advocates and Democrats, while also including perspectives from Republicans and conservative figures. It highlights potential negative impacts of the Republican-led bill on voter registration and election administration, emphasizing issues like voter access and election integrity from a critical standpoint. The inclusion of critiques about Republican priorities and the framing of certain provisions as restrictive or problematic suggests a center-left leaning, aiming to inform readers about the implications of the legislation with a slight emphasis on protecting voter rights and transparency.
