Morning Wire XX
[0] Some public figures, like the American Federation of Teachers, Union President Randy Weingarten, have been calling for COVID amnesty, forgiveness for those who pushed misguided policies that hurt Americans, particularly school policies that did significant damage to students.
[1] But others who suffered from those policies say, not so fast.
[2] We need accountability to make sure this never happens again.
[3] In this episode of Morning Wire, we talk with a former Georgetown University law student who found himself suspended, forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
[4] and his future as a lawyer threatened simply for asking administrators reasonable questions about their stringent COVID policies.
[5] It's March 4th, and this is a Saturday extra edition of Morning Wire.
[6] Joining us to discuss his rather remarkable experience at Georgetown and why he's finally now revealing the details is William Spruance, who recently wrote an account of his experience that was published by the Brownstone Institute.
[7] Hey, William.
[8] First, take us back to August 2021.
[9] You were a law student at Georgetown as the school began to reopen after its initial lock.
[10] What happened?
[11] Well, I think the story really starts about 17 months before August 2021.
[12] I started law school in August 2019, and then six months into my first year.
[13] Around March 10th, we left for spring break, which was supposed to last a week, and we didn't return for 17 months.
[14] In August 2020, we were scheduled to go back to school.
[15] They had us pay our tuition, and then at the last minute, once the checks had cleared, they announced that we would continue our virtual learning for an indefinite amount of time.
[16] So that lasted a whole another 12 months, and then it was August 2021.
[17] At this point, the school had vaccine requirements related to COVID.
[18] The school had mask requirements.
[19] The school had distancing measures put in place.
[20] The school had required testing every week for students from what I recall, and they published these statistics online.
[21] So you could see that there was no crisis of COVID in the school at the time.
[22] And there were additional restrictions.
[23] For example, they banned a drinking water in the classroom.
[24] Notably, none of these restrictions, none of these mandates applied to the faculty, who were far older and far more at risk from COVID.
[25] And they then set up an anonymous hotline called Law Compliance, where students could rat on each other.
[26] Sometime at the end of August or early September, I received a notification that I had been marked as noncompliant in this anonymous hotline system for letting a mask dip below my nose.
[27] I scheduled a meeting with the dean of students, and I requested to go back to remote learning.
[28] From my perspective, the mandates and the restrictions had taken away all the benefits of in -person learning while imposing pretty severe costs.
[29] In other words, might as well be remote if we're going to have all of these things in place.
[30] And that's the background on it.
[31] And then there was a student faculty meeting where everything kind of blew up for you.
[32] What happened with that meeting?
[33] So I met with the dean of students, and he had encouraged me, I had voiced my concerns about taking away the benefits of in -person learning while imposing costs.
[34] And he kind of nodded along, and I asked him non -retorical questions, like, what's the goal of our COVID policy?
[35] He would say things like, I understand your frustrations.
[36] But I noticed I never got an answer, and I grew kind of more frustrated.
[37] This is the basis of law school, after all.
[38] It's kind of skepticism and asking questions is a critical part of the legal education.
[39] So he encouraged me to, get involved in the conversation on campus.
[40] And in particular, he pointed me to some type of a student faculty meeting said to take place the following Wednesday, from what I recall.
[41] So the dean of students recommended that you actually attend this meeting and take part in it?
[42] Yes, the dean of students recommended that I take part in the meeting.
[43] He was welcoming to my questions, though he didn't respond to them.
[44] I didn't sense any hostility at the time from him.
[45] So I walked in the door.
[46] I I introduced myself and said, my name is Williams Spruance.
[47] I have some questions about the COVID policy.
[48] I don't understand where this comes from.
[49] And I spoke for about four to five minutes and I based my speech around four distinct questions.
[50] One, what was the goal of our COVID policy?
[51] You know, this started to flatten the curve.
[52] And then they said it was about student health.
[53] But at this point, September 2021, both of those reasonings were kind of out the door.
[54] Second, I wanted to know what the limiting principles behind those goals are.
[55] In other words, well, I know you would like COVID to get to zero, but how far are you willing to go to get there?
[56] And three, what metrics would the community need to reach for the school to remove its mask mandate?
[57] That was just one thing in particular I was fixated on.
[58] Now with the recent Cochran review, we know that the masks really didn't make any difference, but that wasn't breaking news, really.
[59] I mean, even September 2021, we knew that these things had limited efficacy at best.
[60] And four, I went through a list of what I saw as contradictions in the school policies and I said, how can you explain these?
[61] For example, how can the virus be so dangerous that we can't take a sip of water, but safe enough that we're required to be here?
[62] Why is the faculty exempt for masking requirements?
[63] I mean, these were, to me, very basic contradictions.
[64] And did you ask these questions in a measured way, or were you contentious?
[65] I was very deliberate to be common in this exchange.
[66] From what I'd seen on the news, people often considered resistance to COVID policies to be these bombastic parents at school board meetings, shouting at administrators.
[67] I was actually worried my audience wasn't able to hear me because I was so I didn't want to come across as angry.
[68] I mean, they weren't rhetorical questions.
[69] I didn't storm in or anything.
[70] I was just trying to get an answer to what I saw as illogical, arbitrary policies that were severe.
[71] hindering my educational experience.
[72] And so I didn't walk in with hostility.
[73] I walked in with a real curiosity and I stood about 10 to 15 feet away from the nearest mandatorily vaccinated student and I delivered the speech without a mask.
[74] My reasoning on that was one, I can't understand people when they speak with the mask.
[75] And two, I was standing where a faculty member would have stood and they were exempt from the masking requirement.
[76] So I really didn't see even under the strict as COVID interpretations, standing 10 to 15 feet away from the nearest person and a room full of vaccinated people for four minutes could have posed any form of public health risk.
[77] There was a part of me that went into the speech a bit insecure.
[78] Like, what if there were simple answers to these questions?
[79] And I was just so in my own echo chamber during COVID that I had missed something, something so obvious.
[80] So I said, please let me know if any of my premises are wrong here because as far as I can tell these conclusions I'm coming to are fairly obvious, but I really was open -minded to hear what I might have been missing.
[81] And the student president of the group said, well, William, you said that all the campus is vaccinated, but actually only 99 % is.
[82] And I remember thinking to myself, I mean, that can't be what I missed.
[83] So I left the speech and it was a sanguine moment.
[84] I had tried to rage against the machine in a very common polite way.
[85] but nobody had any answers.
[86] There was nothing really that interesting.
[87] So I left campus that evening and Friday at 6 p .m. I received an email from the dean of students telling me that I was suspended from campus indefinitely.
[88] I had to attend a mandatory psychiatric evaluation.
[89] I had to waive my right to medical confidentiality.
[90] I had to write letters to administrators explaining why I had given the speech and that the school reserved the right to go to State Bar associations in case I ever chose to become a practicing attorney.
[91] Unbelievable.
[92] Who exactly was going to conduct the psychiatric evaluations and what happened next?
[93] The psychiatric evaluations were said to take place with Georgetown's in -house psychiatric department.
[94] So I received my suspension notice on Friday evening and on Monday I had my first administrative hearing with the dean of students.
[95] And he really set the tone of, I'm not here to answer your questions this is about you learning to come to terms of what you did this is it was almost like a struggle session of like admit that you were wrong and we'll go forward from there and that afternoon i had my first psychiatric evaluation and i just start by answering a list of 100 questions something like that and the questions would be like do you ever get angry one never two sometimes three always I'm like, one, never, never been mad.
[96] How do you get along with your family?
[97] One, terribly, two, medium, three.
[98] Perfect.
[99] I'm like, perfect.
[100] We've never had a fight.
[101] And then I met with the psychiatrist, and frankly, she couldn't have been nicer.
[102] But I was also aware that she was also a pawn in this game as well.
[103] I don't hold anything against her.
[104] And I went through and I had to write kind of repetitive statements on why I gave my speech.
[105] And the reason I gave the speech was to get answers to my questions.
[106] They didn't seem to grasp that.
[107] And I was a little bit embarrassed that I was suspended from school.
[108] It's kind of not exactly where I saw my law experience going.
[109] I'm sure it wasn't.
[110] I had gone to a meeting that he had recommended that I attended.
[111] I used these principles from law school of challenging arbitrary restrictions, of asking questions, of being skeptical of authority.
[112] And then I was being punished and my future livelihood was being threatened by these people.
[113] So Tuesday and Wednesday was more of the same.
[114] And I had called some people and my friends and family just as sounding boards.
[115] And I think a lot of COVID policies and COVID restrictions, like a lot of what we've seen in the last few years, have been designed to make people feel alone.
[116] And they've been designed to make people feel crazy if they want to push back.
[117] And that's why we have this cultural kind of top -down form of censorship.
[118] It's to make people comply because they assume everyone else is going along with the group think.
[119] And I was very lucky that I had a very strong network of friends and family that I could call.
[120] And even if they disagreed with me, I knew would tell me why I was wrong.
[121] And one in particular, a friend of mine told me, what are they going to do, not let you become a lawyer because you asked a few questions?
[122] And it was the most refreshing moment of anybody I spoke to because all of a sudden I realized, like, this story didn't look good for Georgetown.
[123] They had totally overplayed their hand.
[124] This wasn't just like they had at other points when I was there, suspended professors for tweeting something a little bit controversial or let students get away with screaming at cabinet officials until they left the campus.
[125] They had really overplayed their hand with me, I thought.
[126] And I had done some work in journalism, internships and small little jobs along the way, and D .C. is a small place, especially amongst kind of more conservative -leaning people.
[127] And I started getting invited to go on all these shows.
[128] I didn't make any media appearances at the time, but Fox News discussed the story without mentioning my name, without mentioning Georgetown law's name, but said, a student from a top -ranked law school just went through this and explained my suspension.
[129] And I had told Dean Mitch Bailin and the Georgetown Law administrators that I was getting media attention and that Fox wanted to run a story on it.
[130] And 14 hours after Fox ran the story, my suspension was lifted that Thursday.
[131] I have no idea whether the administrators even watched it.
[132] And I also learned that a group of alumni had contacted the school when they learned about my story and voiced their displeasure.
[133] And I don't, maybe Georgetown law just wanted to suspend me for a week to have the whole situation cool off, but I wasn't inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
[134] And the school never informed you why they reversed the decision.
[135] I was in communication with the school because I had a series of hearings, and they said, William, you're free to return to campus on Monday.
[136] So I don't know what prompted it, but I do know that the timeline coincided with receiving media attention from Fox and a group of alumni learning of the incident.
[137] All right.
[138] So this happened back in August 2021.
[139] You're now finally telling your story.
[140] Why did you wait till now to reveal all this?
[141] Well, in the fall of 2021, I was in my third year of law school.
[142] I'd already invested two years into this enterprise.
[143] It wasn't like I could transfer with 15 credits left.
[144] Part of me just wanted the story to go away.
[145] I wanted to graduate.
[146] I wanted to get away from Georgetown.
[147] I didn't want anything to do with it.
[148] And to that end, I was successful.
[149] I was able to make the rest of my schedule pretty much hybrid for the rest of the year through May. I graduated in May 2022.
[150] But I was still weary of them going to state bar associations to report me for my alleged misconduct.
[151] When you join the state bar association, you have to go through what's called a character and fitness evaluation, which typically make sure you don't have any history of crime and fraud or moral turpitude.
[152] And I had to report that I had been suspended from school.
[153] I was able to go through the process.
[154] I reported my suspension and it didn't cause any issues.
[155] I was able to join the State Bar Association.
[156] And finally, I thought that I was liberated from the vice that Georgetown had me in.
[157] Even though I'd won the battle of the suspension, I felt like it had been more like a strategic retreat of avoiding conflict with the school to avoid any unnecessary drama in my life.
[158] And my thought process was just get out of this hive of Washington, D .C. But then the more I thought about it, I realized the story wasn't about me. I really don't like talking about myself.
[159] That was another reason I didn't want to publish the story.
[160] It's a bit just too postmodern for my taste.
[161] But I realized this wasn't about me. It was about the corruption of an institution.
[162] It was about how COVID had let bureaucrats at every level, government or universities, destroy individuals, that there was like an utter disregard for formerly important principles of expression and rationality.
[163] And I wanted to tell the story to highlight that at Georgetown Law.
[164] And even further, I alluded to this earlier when we were talking, but I think so much of COVID and so much of the last few years has been designed to further this atomization of individuals in our culture.
[165] We saw it with the summer of George Floyd in 2020.
[166] kind of cultural bullying into putting a black square on Instagram.
[167] And we saw it with COVID that you were considered a loon if you ever spoke against the forces of power.
[168] And so it made people feel alone.
[169] And a lot of us were going through these things.
[170] And I escaped relatively unharmed.
[171] So I told this story, one, in order to let people know that they weren't alone.
[172] And two, I do think in COVID, we need some accountability for what happened.
[173] We saw with Randy Whitegar and the teacher union lady, call for amnesty for COVID responses.
[174] And no, I think we need accountability for people who totally abuse their authority, who don't deserve to wield this power anymore.
[175] And so when I talk about accountability, one of the only groups that I've seen really understand this has been the Brownstone Institute, which is a nonprofit run by a brilliant guy named Jeffrey Tucker, who's a libertarian thinker and writer.
[176] What I see is the goal of the Brownstone Institute.
[177] I don't speak on their behalf at all, but it's about coming to terms of what the hell happened.
[178] How do we make sure this never happens again?
[179] How do we make sure that this serves as a warning time and not a precedent for something going forward?
[180] Building our institutions back from the base level and understanding that during COVID, we managed to sacrifice our most fundamental rights.
[181] Our government colluded with big tech to usurp the First Amendment.
[182] They implemented contact tracing programs, which to me overthrew the Fourth Amendment.
[183] They quashed her right to travel.
[184] The ruling class enjoyed the largest wealth transfer in the history of the world.
[185] They permanently damaged an entire generation of American children.
[186] And so we need accountability for that.
[187] We can't just move forward without understanding that this had real quantifiable damage, economics, sociological damage to our culture.
[188] And the people who could least afford it overwhelmingly bore the burden of these costs.
[189] Well, William, thank you for telling us your story.
[190] That was Georgetown Law graduate, William Spruy.
[191] and we should note that we reached out to Georgetown several times for comment, but as of this interview airing, we had not heard back.
[192] Thanks for tuning in.
[193] This has been a Saturday extra edition of Morning Water.