GFU Student Joins Class Action Lawsuit Targeting Anti-LGBTQIA+ Policies in Higher Education

By: Jen Wright

On Tuesday morning, George Fox University (GFU) student Audrey Wojnarowisch announced on Twitter and Instagram that she would be joining 33 other former and current college students across the nation in filing a federal class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education for enabling anti-LGBTQIA+ policies in higher education institutions.

As a private religious university, GFU receives a religious exemption that allows them to hold Title IX policies that discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students, despite the fact that they receive federal funding. The lawsuit mentions 25 universities nationwide and is being filed through the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP), a nonprofit founded and directed by Paul Southwick, a lawyer and GFU alumnus.

According to the REAP website, the organization “empowers queer, trans and non-binary students at more than 200 taxpayer-funded religious schools that actively discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.” The lawsuit is available for download at their website.

Wojnarowisch found the project when she connected with another plaintiff on Twitter, and joined because of Title IX discrimination she experienced here at GFU. After experiencing first harassment, then sexual harassment and finally sexual assault by another student in the LGBTQIA+ community at GFU, Wojnarwisch reported the incidents to her resident advisor, but received no reply from GFU and no discipline or support was executed, according to Wojnarowisch. “I don’t even think my case was filed,” Wajnarowisch said.

GFU has recently hired their first Title IX confidential advocate, but for Wojnarowisch, the prior mishandling of her case was because both she and her assaulter are in the LGBTQIA+ community, and that was a dynamic her resident advisor wasn’t ready to handle.

Wojnarowisch says her goal is not to secularize GFU, but to prompt GFU and other religious universities to provide support to the vulnerable LGBTQIA+ student community.

“I came here to go to school, and I came here for reasons I think most George Fox students will resonate with,” Wojnarowisch said. “I came here because I was looking for a small Christian campus, because it felt like home to me, [and] because I wanted to feel known. I wanted to be in a place surrounded by people who would help me grow my faith, and I am still looking for that.”

Wojnarowisch added that since alumnus Reid Arthur came out at a campus Lip-Sync contest in 2019, she felt more visible and accepted by her fellow students.

Southwick graduated from GFU in 2005 and has been working with LGBTQIA+ students and alumni from GFU for the past 10 years.

“I’m really grateful for Audrey sharing her story with me and being part of the case,” Southwick said. “It’s hard to see my alma mater and some former mentors trying to distance themselves from me, as if I were never a part of the Fox community, or to actively fight against the safety and liberation of their queer and trans students.”

Southwick echoed Wojnarowisch’s comment about current GFU students.

“The student body at Fox seems very supportive of students like Audrey and Reid,” Southwick said. “There is a lot of hope there. I just hope that President [Robin] Baker, who was at Fox even back when I was a student, and the board listen to their students.”