Georgetown law grad says he was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after he questioned Covid protocols

A Georgetown University law school graduate has come forward claiming that he was suspended and forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after he questioned the school’s draconian COVID policies in 2021.

Speaking on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” former student William Spruance, now reportedly a practicing attorney, said the problems emerged after he delivered a campus speech critical of the school’s COVID policies.

Listen:

In an article written for the Brownstone Institute, he noted that students (but not faculty members) were required to be vaccinated, wear masks on campus at all times, and not drink water while in class. Meanwhile, the school’s dean launched an anonymous hotline for students to report fellow student violators.

In his speech, Spruance posed four questions to the school’s administrators:

  1. “What was the goal of the school’s Covid policy? (Zero Covid? Flatten the curve?)”
  2. “What was the limiting principle to that goal? (What were the tradeoffs?)”
  3. “What metrics would the community need to reach for the school to remove its mask mandate?”
  4. “How can you explain the contradictions in your policies? For example, how could the virus be so dangerous that we could not take a sip of water but safe enough that we were required to be present? Why are faculty exempt from masking requirements?”

The school did not take kindly to the questions.

“I received an email that I was indefinitely suspended from the school, that I’d have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and waive my right to medical confidentiality,” he explained to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“During the psychiatric evaluation, it would start with kind of innocuous questions like, ‘Do you ever get angry?’ followed by ‘Do you get angry about masks? And then do masks make you want to hurt anybody?’ So it was an ongoing cycle of questions that were designed to make me seem unhinged for being willing to question their COVID policies,” he added.

Carlson responded by asking him whether any administrators were willing to listen to him.

“So we took a look at the speech that you gave. … It was entirely rational. You were asking questions about the science. You turned out to be completely right. Were any administrators at the Georgetown Law Center willing to entertain a rational conversation with you?” he asked.

Spruance responded that it was a no-go with administrators but not as much so with his professors.

“I found that individual professors were willing to have the conversation with me behind closed doors, but they wished to remain anonymous. As for the administrators, there was no such luck,” he explained.

Continuing his response, he noted that what happened to him was part of “a much larger cycle of events” at the school.

“We had people like Sandra Sellers and Ilya Shapiro, who were thrown out of the institution just for being willing to question campus orthodoxies. And it was part of an ongoing double standard where if you’re progressive and you regurgitate the proper slogans, then there’s an indemnity built into shouting down speakers,” he explained.

“If you’re willing to question the orthodoxy of campus, then they’ll bring the whole horde of administrators against you and work to professionally and socially and reputationally destroy you. And that’s how I saw my issue, which happened in August and September of 2021. Just four months later, Ilya Shapiro was kicked off campus for questioning President Biden’s decision to limit his Supreme Court nominations to just black women,” he added.

The discussion between him and Carlson concluded with the host asking the Georgetown graduate “how shaken was” his faith in America’s legal education system.

“Well, I thought I was attending a trade school for a skeptical profession. I think in the long run, it’s hard to be optimistic about future judges and administrators and unimpressive bureaucrats because Georgetown Law is really just an incubator for an unimpressive ruling class of tomorrow,” Spruance replied.

“And so these people won’t stay on campus and just make the people there miserable. They’ll be running institutions like Georgetown Law. They will be at various government agencies. They’ll be judges. And that, to me, is the more alarming aspect,” he added.

“I made it out of this process relatively unharmed. I mean, it was about a week that was difficult in my life. But going forward, people have come out to me since my piece was released about similar stories, and they’re going through far worse than me,” he continued. “At the root of this is the administrators. And that’s where these students and these professors and these administrators will go on to inflict more damage,” he concluded.

Vivek Saxena

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