USA Today columnist Hemal Jhaveri began the call with an article calling for the ban because ORU follows “an archaic religion” and that “the university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ policies can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.” Jhaveri then calls for any university with such language to be banned from all NCAA activities. Jhaveri didn’t call out #1 seeded Baylor for having similar language or Creighton, Gonzaga, or Loyola Chicago for being Catholic institutions which do not support LGBTQ+ policies either. Just ORU so why? I’ll circle back to it.

ORU’s student handbooks specifically ban homosexual behavior in 2 locations. It also bans alcohol, drugs, gambling, dancing, skateboards, roller skates and water balloons. ORU never had a football team because Dr. Roberts found it to bring unsavory elements on campus. As a former Tulsan and having known people who were in Oral Roberts’ inner circle, this may be shocking to you but it isn’t a surprise to any of us. Dr. Roberts’ brand of Christianity was very fundamentalist. His ministry carried over into much of Tulsa’s political and social life during the 1970’s and 1980’s. I can tell you it had an impact on economic development. Tulsa lost many oil and gas company headquarters to Houston and Dallas during this time and they cited a lack of ability to attract talent as one of the reasons to leave. When the first ministry scandal occurred in the 1980’s, it broke the spell of the ministry’s hold on the city. The city council was reformed, economic development wasn’t subject to a moral veto and Tulsan’s began to plan for a future without Dr. Roberts. The Roberts family’s continued malfeasance with ORU funds in the subsequent years hasn’t been much of a surprise to many Tulsans.

So, why pick on ORU and make them the example? For one, their conservative philosophy and prior scandals make them an easy target. Second, they are small. The school’s enrollment has always been between 3,000 and 6,000 students at any particular time. This means the institution carries outsized influence within the NCAA.The NCAA rules are promulgated with every member having equal weight. The Ohio State with an enrollment of nearly 70,000 has just as much say on the rules of the tournament as ORU with 4,100. While the larger members certainly decide what rules are voted on, the votes themselves require many of the smaller schools to agree with them since they can, and do, out vote them. The third is likely more likely. It’s the attention the school gets from upset wins in the tournament. People learn the school exists and may see a university founded by a Native American and actively pursues students from impoverished communities as being diverse and tolerant. The media wants to dispel that belief as quickly as possible and serve as a reminder to other people of color that the “new” tolerance is the only tolerance for them.

What is a surprise is to what lengths the “new” tolerance is intolerant of any policy or institution that doesn’t kowtow to it. For example, a recent bill passed the House called the Equality Act. The Bill’s synopsis:

This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation.

The bill expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services.

The bill allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

While this all sounds well and good, there is no exclusion for religious facilities or institutions. By holding assemblies and gatherings, every church and religious facility will be determined to be a public accommodation and subject to the bill’s ban on discrimination. Remember the LGBTQ+ event last year where Elizabeth Warren and a number of other Democratic presidential candidates promised to punish churches for not being on the LGBTQ+ bandwagon? Well, here’s the effort to do so under the guise of making it so the trans community can use a bathroom.

This is a bona-fide case to eliminate the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of a government religion. Religion being that all churches in the United States answer to the Government, not a higher power. Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious buildings will be required to follow government rules and implement the government’s priorities. It reminds me of Cromwell’s confiscation of churches in the 1649 or the dissolution of churches during the French Revolution.Cromwell may be more apt as religious activity was allowed as long as it was the Government’s version (Protestant) and ministers were government approved. This was specifically what our Founders sought to avoid when they banned a government church.

If you have never called your senator or written them a letter, now is the time.The Equality Act is one of the bills being cited as a reason to remove the filibuster and make the Senate operate just like the House. The Equality Act will actually take us to the brink rather than promote harmony. What observant Catholic wants any President to dictate who can receive communion? Why should an Orthodox synagogue be forced to house those who are not Jewish? Why should a conservative masque be forced to have co-ed services? Religious bodies have always been held in separate regard in our society as being able to deem who is fit or unfit to use their facilities. The closely held beliefs of deeply religious people should be allowed in church, where they are most dear to them. It is wrong and cruel to force beliefs on others and call it “Equality.” There is a competing bill called the Fairness For All Act and is supported by many church leaders of all different faiths. I would encourage you all to contact your senator and have them support this legislation rather than an “Equality” bill that is creates more inequality than ever before.

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Social media has fractured every aspect of our lives, both socially and politically. People are more confused and polarized than ever. What’s it like to grow up in a fractured, polarized, and confused world? In our interview, Larry spoke about these, and other ideas.

Why This Matters to Larry

Larry’s generation grew up in classrooms and on playgrounds. The children and adults in his life were mostly constant, with a few people moving in and out from time to time, but his world felt reasonably static and stable. Finding love, respect, and purpose in a static community was already difficult before the Millennium, but today things have changed in deep, and apparently permanent, ways.

The root of happiness is respect, love, and purpose, and you find those things in your community.

Larry Sharpe

People’s social lives change so rapidly today that the traditional sense of community has been shattered. We change jobs more often, our workplace stretches across continents and cultures, and we are more likely to move thousands of miles away from where we grew up. What happened?

The Rise of Big Tech

Social media happened. The Internet and the Information Age have revolutionized our personal networks. The unintended consequences of making it easier to connect has completely changed the paradigm of personal relationships. On the one hand, it has opened up the whole world to us, on the other, the vast access to people and information has become a flood of chaos.

I asked Larry how kids can even survive, let alone be happy and find their way in such a complicated world. His response was illuminating:

My daughter was watching PewDiePie, and I asked ‘why are you watching this’, and she said ‘because I feel like I’m with him.’

Larry Sharpe

PewDiePie is one of the most popular personalities on the Internet today, and he is popular because he gives kids today a sense of community. The root of happiness is respect, love, and purpose, and if you find those three things you’re quite likely to be happy. But once you have them you have to maintain them. It’s like what the Red Queen said in Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll). You have to run as fast as you can just to say in one place.

Personalities online, streaming services, and online gaming platforms give the participants a sense of community, but only as long as they deepen and strengthen their relationships with the individual. People are forging their own unique personal identities out of the fractured pieces to today’s social landscape.

Watch the interview with Larry Sharpe to learn more.

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Small Business Ownership

Larry said that there is a systemic lack of ownership that’s noticeable in lower-income, Black and Brown communities and among immigrants. Business-minded people come to the United States with a high level of enthusiasm, and visions of a better life than the one they left. People everywhere imagine owning their homes and starting businesses. Yet, our system of governance puts major obstacles in the way of their success.

Here in New York, they are faced with a wall of regulations and occupational licenses for everything you can imagine, from braiding hair at a whopping $20,000 required spend on education and other prerequisites, to its crackdown on unlicensed dog-walkers. Seriously?

How is a person expected to respond to such entrepreneurial spirit-killing over-regulation? Unsurprisingly, Larry says that with limited choices, these impoverished people begin looking at high-risk activities and crime. Those people who turn to crime will prey on their neighbors, where these crimes often go unreported, particularly in immigrant communities where undocumented people fear deportation, or where previously incarcerated individuals don’t want to increase their own risk of recidivism. According to Larry, this endless cycle continues, increasing incentives for human trafficking, the illegal drug trade, protection rackets, and sweatshops.

Larry believes that one approach to reducing poverty in these communities is by creating incentives for business ownership. For example, licensing requirements can be replaced with non-compulsory credentials. A hair-braider can just braid hair if they want to, without a license, or they may take the courses necessary to qualify for credentials in which some people may find value. This is especially true for low-risk jobs that do not involve dangerous activities. In this regard, a hair braider or dog-walker may get to work right away to earn an honest living, and they may also choose to get credentialed after they have the necessary funds in hand. As a result, consumers have more choices and can make rational decisions. They may choose the lower-priced, non-credentialed dog-walker, or they may choose to pay more to the dog walker who took a 12-hour class on animal care.

Home Ownership, and Poverty

According to Larry, wealthy, and often middle-class people are able to give their children an edge with the savings they accumulate through homeownership, but impoverished people have no corresponding equity. This leaves their children in a cycle of dependence and poverty, where money spent is money lost, as is the case with rent,  and a community that encourages the use of government programs that are funded by taxpayers.

Larry wants to see these communities thrive. People from every background are eager for homeownership, business ownership, and self-ownership. Yet because of barriers to ownership, people stay on welfare and stay poor.

Larry believes that public housing should have a path to ownership, too. Renting housing to low-income families is a bandaid, even when rental costs are low. Instead, Larry believes that we should give people the chance to purchase their public housing units. Instead of throwing away money on rent every month, people can invest in their property. In addition, when people own their property, they take better care of it. This is a win for society, and for the new homeowner. London already has a similar model for homeownership, where low-income families can have shared ownership in property, without investing the full market rate.

Fixing Families and Prison Reform

Larry Sharpe applies this concept to the idea of taking ownership of your life. This is most apparent in Brown and Black populations, where men are incarcerated at a considerably high rate. These people–predominantly men get convicted for nonviolent crimes like drug-related offenses, resulting in fatherless homes. The other people in these populations who actually have productive lives are incentivized to work for the government, where their lives aren’t self-owned, either.

Larry believes that we can do a lot of good by eliminating the fear among potential employers when it comes to hiring less-skilled, minority, and immigrant employees. Presently, employers may be targeted by the government if they fail at complying with any number of regulations, and so they hire the “safer” employees.

Want to know more? Watch the video, below:

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First, we need to recognize what the problems are. Is it a lack of accessibility to schooling? No. Regardless of where a family resides, they are in a school district where they can access public education. The problem is access to quality education.

Is another problem affordability? No. Again, we all have access to “free” public education. But like Larry Sharpe said about free college— it is still free bad college. So yes, we can go to a free public school, but many of them are free bad public schools. Often the only good education available is private, which is currently too expensive for many families.

Another problem with our current system is that it is a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The state often forgets that students are individuals who learn best by using various methods and at differing paces. They do not consider individual aspirations for future careers. This is especially evident in state colleges and universities, who do not currently offer many programs that the workforce needs.

Perhaps most importantly, we keep throwing money at ineffective schools that underperform and do not allow students to thrive. They are being rewarded for doing a bad job. In a free market, if a business is not doing well for their customers, they shut down and the customers move to a more successful business. The same should happen with education. If a public school is not teaching students effectively, funding should cease until the school finds a better way, or until they shut down. The idea of rewarding a bad job also applies to inadequate teachers. For example, job privileges are given to teachers who have been employed longest, not to teachers who are better at their job.

So what solutions can we put forth to make these problems go away? Should we continue to fund, fund, and fund some more? Governor Cuomo seems to think more funding (which requires significant tax increases) will increase higher education accessibility and affordability. With the new Excelsior Scholarship program, families who earn up to $125,000 per year are eligible for free tuition for any CUNY or SUNY two- or four-year program. The student must take 30 credits per year, then stay in New York state after graduation for as many years as they were in the program. It is popular, but there are some major problems with this so-called solution.

As Larry said in a CBS “Live It Up with Donna Drake” interview, the state is basically bribing students to stay. That’s not a very honorable way to keep New Yorkers from moving out of state. Suppose a recent college graduate can only find a job in NYC, but can’t afford to live in the city and must find a place to live in New Jersey. Or suppose a recent grad can’t find a job in the state at all. Do we expect them to give up a job opportunity to stay in the state, or risk having their scholarship turn into a loan they can’t afford? What would most likely happen is a new layer of corruption: the grad would leave the state and use an in-state address  to keep from owing tuition.

Another major problem with the Excelsior Scholarship is that a student must take 30 credits each year. This is a full-time load, which is doable, but it is extremely difficult for students who need to work while enrolled in school. After all, the scholarship only covers tuition, so the student still needs to foot the bill for housing, books, food, and other necessities. Those who need to work are at a disadvantage and may not be able to keep up with 15 credits per semester.

The program does not cover costs for failed classes. If a student is overloaded and consequently fails a class, they owe tuition to the school. So as attractive as “free” college sounds, it creates more problems for those it claims to help.

The same can be said for the free 3-K plan Mayor Bill de Blasio has been endorsing in NYC. It will add more seats to already crowded classrooms and make it more difficult to add funding for more teachers. The city will need a projected $700 million from both the state and federal governments to fund this.  Not to mention it would give funding to public schools, daycare centers, and religious centers. Many of the same people who are against school choice vouchers because it directs funds to religious institutions are trying to push funds to religious institutions for 3-K students.

The simple solution to fixing our education system is to relinquish the stronghold of the state education department. It has already proven it cannot competently handle your money. A few years ago,$356 million for special education funding disappeared. Recently, another $84 million budgeted for disability programs can’t be accounted for. And of course, school construction and renovation projects almost always go over time and over budget. Simply put, the department does not efficiently keep schools up to quality standards.

Ideally, under a libertarian government, educational institutions would be a segment of the free-market which would allow good schools to succeed (based on competition and profit incentives) and bad schools to close. Prices would be set by market supply and demand laws so there would be different schools at different price points, and charitable free schooling for those in need (much like charitable hospitals). But until we get government out of the education business, there are still ways to immediately improve our current system.

To make access to high quality schooling easier for every family, the state must empower families by getting rid of mandatory location-based school districts. A zip code should not determine what kind of education a student receives. If a family lives in a low-income neighborhood, their government should not force them to attend poor quality schools.

In terms of affordability, we need to bring back the option of school choice to New York state. Upper class families already have school choice. They can afford to send their kids to any school in the state. Families with less means have no choice in our current system. They live in areas where schools are not thriving, but they cannot afford to send their children elsewhere.

Think of school choice vouchers like food stamps. Instead of having government-run grocery stores where everybody can get groceries for “free,” the state gives food vouchers to needy families to buy groceries at any market store they want. The same would be true for school choice vouchers. Instead of being forced into government-run schools, the state returns tax dollars to families in the form of a voucher the can spend at any school of their choosing. This would lead to many more options for more personalized education, which is incredibly important for a state as wonderfully diverse as New York.

Indeed, personalization of education would be much easier if we empowered families instead of a bureaucratic education department.  If there were fewer regulations and blanket curriculums in all sectors of education (public, private, charter, home school, etc.), there would be more options for different programs. Some could focus on agriculture, arts, or STEM. Others could focus on different methods of teaching (hands-on, teamwork or solo work, varied levels of reading, etc.). This should apply to higher education as well. Larry has said that colleges should be trying harder to figure out which skills are needed in the workforce and applying that to what programs they offer.

Education is too important for the people of New York state to put up with inadequate, bureaucratic institutions. Families and individuals need the power of choice and the freedom of opportunity back in their hands.

Check out Larry Sharpe on education reform here: https://staging1.larrysharpe.com/issues.

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