Its full title is “An Act to Create the Given Name Act; to Protect Faculty Members, Teachers, and Employees of Public Schools and State-supported Institutions of Higher Education from Compelled Speech; to Prohibit Requiring Faculty Members, Teachers, and Employees of Public Schools and State-supported Institutions of Higher Education to Use a Person’s Preferred Pronoun, Name, or Title without Parental Consent; and for Other Purposes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Compelled Speech” is getting a lot of mileage in recent years, like “Liberty” on pitted roads. The “other purposes” include the use of a student nickname unless it’s derivative of the name on the birth certificate, like Bob for Robert, now is banned in Arkansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new law was listed among many others Sunday in editions of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette<\/em>, “New Laws Bring Changes to UA System Schools<\/a>” (with alternate link<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n More solidarity can straighten out the tilt that otherwise shows little sign of weakening. Information on joining Local 965 of AEA\/NEA, or renewing membership using eDues, is found at our Join the Union<\/a> page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Copyright 2023 Ben S. Pollock<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n My Editor’s Note column first appeared in the August 2023<\/a> newsletter of UA-Fayetteville Education Association \/ Local 965<\/a>, which I’m serving as vice president.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An Editor’s Note Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last spring signed into law Arkansas Act 542 of 2023, the Given Name Act. Its full title is “An Act to Create the Given Name Act; to Protect Faculty Members, Teachers, and Employees of Public Schools and State-supported Institutions of Higher Education from Compelled Speech; to Prohibit Requiring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/ACT542-first-page.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7676,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2023\/10\/woke-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":7637,"position":0},"title":"It’s Past Time to Woke Up and Smell the Coffee","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 25, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Is the Guv Limiting Campus Speech? An Editor's Note Maybe it's my middle age or that my decades as an editor have locked in 20th-century grammar, but I have to be overly conscientious to use preferred pronouns in conversation and even email. 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Pollock","date":"August 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"An Editor's Note It's incredible that no wag by now has given our era a name that sticks, goes viral. The announcements and actions coming out of Washington this year \u2014 with no sign of slowing \u2014 qualify for uniqueness. We came close in 2017-2021 to a singular name, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. He did not touch the Bibles held for him by his wife.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Donald_Trump_takes_the_oath_of_office_2025-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Donald_Trump_takes_the_oath_of_office_2025-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Donald_Trump_takes_the_oath_of_office_2025-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Donald_Trump_takes_the_oath_of_office_2025-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Donald_Trump_takes_the_oath_of_office_2025-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Donald_Trump_takes_the_oath_of_office_2025-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8218,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2025\/12\/presumptive\/","url_meta":{"origin":7637,"position":2},"title":"How Presumptive Thou Art","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Holidays and Holy Days I'd like to thank the governor, the honorable Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for giving my colleagues in Arkansas state government and me Friday off, well, outside of first-responders and the like. Holiday? 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Pollock","date":"July 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY -- With a maneuver some describe as canny, the Greenland School District annexed Fayetteville Public Schools, officials with both announced Wednesday morning. The new body will be called the Greater Greenland School District and will use the facilities and personnel of both. Thus,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chronicles of Crystal Britches"","block_context":{"text":"Chronicles of Crystal Britches","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/chronicles-of-crystal-britches\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/12\/education-tests-everyone\/","url_meta":{"origin":7637,"position":4},"title":"Education tests everyone","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock . \"We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us,\" says Walt Kelly's Pogo. (Not Gene Kelly, who never danced punk's pogo.) That classic Cold War punch line's almost an affirmation for those of us who consider ourselves enlightened Americans. But as such, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":294,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/03\/unprepossessiveness\/","url_meta":{"origin":7637,"position":5},"title":"Unprepossessiveness","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY, Monday July 2, 2007, hypothetically -- The Arkansas State Police arrested the executive editors, managing editors and editorial page editors of two prominent newspapers at 11 this morning, no one being in their offices before that. At 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the measure forbidding the spelling of the possessive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7637"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7644,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637\/revisions\/7644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Logo](\"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Solidarity_Polish_trade_union_logo.svg_-300x117.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/a>