There’s and old saying, sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t. With apologies to Mounds and Almond Joy, a college professor found himself in hot water for his chocolate choices.
David Richardson (33) is a gay college professor working in the State Center Community College District and was recently put on paid administrative leave. At the same time, he’s being investigated for as yet unspecified allegations that he harassed and discriminated against his colleague’s gender and he also created a hostile work environment.
Richardson’s crime is using gender-specific pronouns on the wrappers of chocolate bars. He/Him was printed on the wrapper containing chocolate bars containing nuts and She/Her for bars sans nuts.
He’s accused of defining a person’s human sexual identity with chocolate bars based on their ingredients.
Richardson did not make the chocolate bar labels in question. They are a product of Jeremy’s Chocolate which produced the He/Him, She/Her chocolate bars because the Hershey company used a biological man to promote their “Her/She” bar for “International Woman’s Day.”
Richardson bought a case of the pronoun-specific bars when he saw an ad for the products and passed them out to people at an Academic Programs Open House. The school took exception to the practice and had a law enforcement officer deliver the letter of sanctions to his home.
Richardson. is a self-described gay conservative and has an unrelated lawsuit against the college district for sanctions against him for his behavior in a mandatory “pronoun etiquette” seminar.
Jamie MacArthur, a transgender chemistry professor at the district, gave the seminar. How long MacArthur has identified as a woman was unclear.
Richardson, a proud and open LGBTQIA2S+ person, was guilty of “unprofessional conduct” when he entered his preferred pronouns as “Do, Re, Mi” during the Zoom seminar.
Richardson must complete six hours of equity, diversity, and inclusion training. He is then to write a letter of what he learned and to create an environment where he, as a gay man, doesn’t exhibit homophobic or transphobic behavior at home or in his religious activities.
Richardson contends such a letter would violate his privacy and first amendment rights. Investigations are continuing.
