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--:-- Host (John Bickley): Some public figures, like the American Federation of Teachers Union President Randy Weingarten, have been calling for COVID amnesty, forgiveness for those who pushed misguided policies that hurt Americans, particularly school policies that did significant damage to students. But others who suffered from those policies say, not so fast. We need accountability to make sure this never happens again.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): In this episode of Morning Wire, we talk with a former Georgetown University law student who found himself suspended, forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation, and his future as a lawyer threatened simply for asking administrators reasonable questions about their stringent COVID policies.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): It's March 4th, and this is a Saturday Extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss his rather remarkable experience at Georgetown and why he's finally now revealing the details is William Spruance, who recently wrote an account of his experience that was published by the Brownstone Institute.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Hey, William. First, take us back to August 2021. You were a law student at Georgetown as the school began to reopen after its initial lockdowns. What happened?
--:-- William Spruance: Well, I think the story really starts about 17 months before August 2021. I started law school in August 2019, and then six months into my first year, around March 10th, we left for spring break, which was supposed to last a week, and we didn't return for 17 months.
--:-- William Spruance: In August 2020, we were scheduled to go back to school. They had us pay our tuition. And then at the last minute, once the checks had cleared, they announced that we would continue our virtual learning for an indefinite amount of time.
--:-- William Spruance: So that lasted a whole another 12 months. And then it was August 2021. At this point, the school had vaccine requirements related to COVID. The school had mask requirements. The school had distancing measures put in place. The school had required testing every week for students, from what I recall.
--:-- William Spruance: And they published these statistics online. So you could see that there was no crisis of COVID in the school at the time. And there were additional restrictions. For example, they banned drinking water in the classroom.
--:-- William Spruance: Notably, none of these restrictions, none of these mandates applied to the faculty who were far older and far more at risk from COVID. And they then set up an anonymous hotline called law compliance where students could rat on each other.
--:-- William Spruance: Sometime at the end of August or early September, I received a notification that I had been marked as non-compliant in this anonymous hotline system for letting a mask dip below my nose.
--:-- William Spruance: I scheduled a meeting with the dean of students and I requested to go back to remote learning. From my perspective, the mandates and the restrictions had taken away all the benefits of in-person learning while imposing pretty severe costs.
--:-- William Spruance: In other words, might as well be remote if we're going to have all of these things in place. And that's the background on it.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And then there was a student faculty meeting where everything kind of blew up for you. What happened with that meeting?
--:-- William Spruance: So I met with the dean of students and he had encouraged me. I voiced my concerns about taking away the benefits of in-person learning while imposing costs. And he kind of nodded along.
--:-- William Spruance: And I asked him non-rhetorical questions like, what's the goal of our COVID policy? He would say things like, I understand your frustrations. But I noticed I never got an answer.
--:-- William Spruance: And I grew kind of more frustrated. This is the basis of law school. After all, it's kind of skepticism and asking questions is a critical part of the legal education.
--:-- William Spruance: So he encouraged me to get involved in the conversation on campus. And in particular, he pointed me to some type of a student faculty meeting set to take place the following Wednesday, from what I recall.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): So the Dean of Students recommended that you actually attend this meeting and take part in it?
--:-- William Spruance: Yes, the Dean of Students recommended that I take part in the meeting. He was welcoming to my questions, though he didn't respond to them. I didn't sense any hostility at the time from him.
--:-- William Spruance: So I walked in the door, I introduced myself and said my name is William Spruance. I have some questions about the COVID policy. I don't understand where this comes from.
--:-- William Spruance: And I spoke for about four to five minutes and I based my speech around four distinct questions. One, what was the goal of our COVID policy?
--:-- William Spruance: You know, this has started to flatten the curve. And then they said it was about student health. But at this point, September 2021, both of those reasonings were kind of out the door.
--:-- William Spruance: Second, I wanted to know what the limiting principles behind those goals are. In other words, well, I know you would like COVID to get to zero, but how far are you willing to go to get there?
--:-- William Spruance: That was just one thing in particular I was fixated on. Now, with the recent Cochrane review, we know that the masks really didn't make any difference.
--:-- William Spruance: But that wasn't breaking news, really. I mean, even September 2021, we knew that these things had limited efficacy at best.
--:-- William Spruance: And four, I went through a list of what I saw as contradictions in the school policies and said, how can you explain these? For example, how can the virus be so dangerous that we can't take a sip of water, but safe enough that we're required to be here?
--:-- William Spruance: Why is the faculty exempt from masking requirements? I mean, these were, to me, very basic contradictions.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Did you ask these questions in a measured way or were you contentious?
--:-- William Spruance: I was very deliberate to be calm in this exchange. From what I'd seen on the news, people often considered resistance to COVID policies to be these bombastic parents at school board meetings shouting at administrators.
--:-- William Spruance: I was actually worried my audience wasn't able to hear me because I was so I didn't want to come across as angry. I mean, they weren't rhetorical questions.
--:-- William Spruance: I didn't storm in or anything. I was just trying to get an answer to what I saw as illogical, arbitrary policies that were severely hindering my educational experience.
--:-- William Spruance: And so I didn't walk in with hostility. I walked in with a real curiosity.
--:-- William Spruance: And I stood about 10 to 15 feet away from the nearest mandatorily vaccinated student. And I delivered the speech without a mask.
--:-- William Spruance: My reasoning on that was, one, I can't understand people when they speak with a mask. And two, I was standing where a faculty member would have stood, and they were exempt from the masking requirement.
--:-- William Spruance: So I really didn't see, even under the strictest COVID interpretations, how standing 10 to 15 feet away from the nearest person and a room full of vaccinated people for four minutes could have posed any form of public health risk.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): There was a part of me that went into the speech a bit insecure. Like, what if there were simple answers to these questions?
--:-- William Spruance: And I was just so in my own echo chamber during COVID that I missed something, something so obvious.
--:-- William Spruance: So I said, please let me know if any of my premises are wrong here, because as far as I can tell, these conclusions I'm coming to are fairly obvious.
--:-- William Spruance: But I really was open-minded to hear what I might have been missing.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): The student president of the group said, well, William, you said that all the campuses vaccinated, but actually only 99 percent is.
--:-- William Spruance: I remember thinking to myself, I mean, that can't be what I missed.
--:-- William Spruance: So I left the speech and it was a sanguine moment. I tried to rage against the machine in a very calm and polite way, but nobody had any answers.
--:-- William Spruance: There was nothing really that interesting. So I left campus that evening and Friday at 6 p.m. I received an email from the dean of students telling me that I was suspended from campus indefinitely.
--:-- William Spruance: I had to attend a mandatory psychiatric evaluation. I had to waive my right to medical confidentiality. I had to write letters to administrators explaining why I had given the speech and that the school reserved the right to go to state bar associations in case I ever chose to become a practicing attorney.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Unbelievable. Who exactly was going to conduct the psychiatric evaluations and what happened next?
--:-- William Spruance: The psychiatric evaluations were set to take place with Georgetown's in-house psychiatric department.
--:-- William Spruance: So I received my suspension notice on Friday evening and on Monday I had my first administrative hearing with the Dean of Students.
--:-- William Spruance: And he really set the tone of I'm not here to answer your questions. This is about you learning to come to terms with what you did.
--:-- William Spruance: This is, it was almost like a struggle session of like, admit that you were wrong and we'll go forward from there.
--:-- William Spruance: And that afternoon I had my first psychiatric evaluation and I had to start by answering a list of a hundred questions, something like that.
--:-- William Spruance: And the questions would be like, do you ever get angry? One, never, two, sometimes three, always.
--:-- William Spruance: And I'm like, one, never, never been mad. How do you get along with your family? One, terribly, two, medium, three, perfect.
--:-- William Spruance: I'm like, perfect. We've never had a fight.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And then you met with the psychiatrist and frankly, she couldn't have been nicer, but you were also aware that she was also a pawn in this game as well.
--:-- William Spruance: I don't hold anything against her. And I went through and I had to write kind of repetitive statements on why I gave my speech.
--:-- William Spruance: And the reason I gave the speech was to get answers to my questions. They didn't seem to grasp that.
--:-- William Spruance: And I was a little bit embarrassed that I was suspended from school. It's kind of not exactly where I saw my law experience going.
--:-- William Spruance: I'm sure it wasn't. I had gone to a meeting that he had recommended that I attended.
--:-- William Spruance: I used these principles from law school of challenging arbitrary restrictions, of asking questions, of being skeptical of authority.
--:-- William Spruance: And then I was being punished and my future livelihood was being threatened by these people.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Tuesday and Wednesday was more of the same. And you had called some people in your friends and family just as sounding boards.
--:-- William Spruance: And I think a lot of COVID policies and COVID restrictions, like a lot of what we've seen in the last few years, have been designed to make people feel alone.
--:-- William Spruance: And they've been designed to make people feel crazy if they want to push back. And that's why we have this cultural kind of top-down form of censorship.
--:-- William Spruance: It's to make people comply because they assume everyone else is going along with the group thing.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And you were very lucky that you had a very strong network of friends and family that you could call.
--:-- William Spruance: And even if they disagreed with me, I knew would tell me why I was wrong.
--:-- William Spruance: And one in particular, a friend of mine told me, what are they going to do? Not let you become a lawyer because you asked a few questions.
--:-- William Spruance: And it was the most refreshing moment of anybody I spoke to because all of a sudden I realized, like, this story didn't look good for Georgetown.
--:-- William Spruance: They had totally overplayed their hand. This wasn't just like they had at other points when I was there, suspended professors for tweeting something a little bit controversial or let students get away with screaming at cabinet officials until they left the campus.
--:-- William Spruance: They had really overplayed their hand with me, I thought.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And you had done some work in journalism, internships and small little jobs along the way.
--:-- William Spruance: And D.C. is a small place, especially amongst kind of more conservative leaning people.
--:-- William Spruance: And I started getting invited to go on all these shows. I didn't make any media appearances at the time, but Fox News discussed the story without mentioning my name, without mentioning Georgetown Law's name, but said a student from a top-ranked law school just went through this and explained my suspension.
--:-- William Spruance: And I told Dean Mitch Balin and the Georgetown Law administrators that I was getting media attention and that Fox wanted to run a story on it.
--:-- William Spruance: And 14 hours after Fox ran the story, my suspension was lifted that Thursday.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): I have no idea whether the administrators even watched it.
--:-- William Spruance: And I also learned that a group of alumni had contacted the school when they learned about my story and voiced their displeasure.
--:-- William Spruance: And I don't, maybe Georgetown Law just wanted to suspend me for a week to have the whole situation cool off, but I wasn't inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And the school never informed you why they reversed the decision?
--:-- William Spruance: I was in communication with the school because I had a series of hearings and they said, William, you're free to return to campus on Monday.
--:-- William Spruance: So I don't know what prompted it, but I do know that the timeline coincided with receiving media attention from Fox and a group of alumni learning of the incident.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): So this happened back in August 2021. You now finally telling your story. Why did you wait till now to reveal all this?
--:-- William Spruance: Well, in the fall of 2021 I was in my third year of law school.
--:-- William Spruance: I'd already invested two years into this enterprise. It wasn't like I could transfer with 15 credits left.
--:-- William Spruance: Part of me just wanted the story to go away. I wanted to graduate. I wanted to get away from Georgetown.
--:-- William Spruance: I didn't want anything to do with it. And to that end, I was successful.
--:-- William Spruance: I was able to make the rest of my schedule pretty much hybrid for the rest of the year through May.
--:-- William Spruance: I graduated in May 2022.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): But you were still weary of them going to state bar associations to report you for your alleged misconduct.
--:-- William Spruance: When you join the state bar association, you have to go through what's called a character and fitness evaluation, which typically makes sure you don't have any history of crime and fraud or moral turpitude.
--:-- William Spruance: And I had to report that I had been suspended from school.
--:-- William Spruance: I was able to go through the process. I reported my suspension and it didn't cause any issues.
--:-- William Spruance: I was able to join the State Bar Association.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And finally, you thought that you were liberated from the vice that Georgetown had you in.
--:-- William Spruance: Even though I'd won the battle of the suspension, I felt like it had been more like a strategic retreat of avoiding conflict with the school to avoid any unnecessary drama in my life.
--:-- William Spruance: And my thought process was just get out of this hive of Washington, D.C.
--:-- William Spruance: But then the more I thought about it, I realized the story wasn't about me.
--:-- William Spruance: I really don't like talking about myself. That was another reason I didn't want to publish the story.
--:-- William Spruance: It's a bit just too postmodern for my taste.
--:-- William Spruance: But I realized this wasn't about me. It was about the corruption of an institution.
--:-- William Spruance: It was about how COVID had let bureaucrats at every level, government or universities, destroy individuals, that there was like an utter disregard for formerly important principles of expression and rationality.
--:-- William Spruance: And I wanted to tell the story to highlight that at Georgetown Law.
--:-- William Spruance: And even further, I alluded to this earlier when we were talking, but I think so much of COVID and so much of the last few years has been designed to further this atomization of individuals in our culture.
--:-- William Spruance: We saw it with the summer of George Floyd in 2020 and kind of cultural bullying and putting a black square on Instagram.
--:-- William Spruance: And we saw with COVID that you were considered a loon if you ever spoke against the forces of power.
--:-- William Spruance: And so it made people feel alone. And a lot of us were going through these things.
--:-- William Spruance: And I escaped relatively unharmed.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): So you told this story, one, in order to let people know that they weren't alone.
--:-- William Spruance: And two, I do think in COVID we need some accountability for what happened.
--:-- William Spruance: We saw with Randy Whitegarden, the teacher union lady, call for amnesty for COVID responses.
--:-- William Spruance: And no, I think we need accountability for people who totally abuse their authority, who don't deserve to wield this power anymore.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And so when you talk about accountability, one of the only groups that I've seen really understand this has been the Brownstone Institute, which is a nonprofit run by a brilliant guy named Jeffrey Tucker, who's a libertarian thinker and writer.
--:-- William Spruance: What I see as the goal of the Brownstone Institute, I don't speak on their behalf at all, but it's about coming to terms of what the hell happened.
--:-- William Spruance: How do we make sure this never happens again? How do we make sure that this serves as a warning time and not a precedent for something going forward?
--:-- William Spruance: Building our institutions back from the base level and understanding that during COVID, we managed to sacrifice our most fundamental rights.
--:-- William Spruance: Our government colluded with big tech to usurp the First Amendment.
--:-- William Spruance: They implemented contact tracing programs, which to me overthrew the Fourth Amendment.
--:-- William Spruance: They quashed our right to travel.
--:-- William Spruance: The ruling class enjoyed the largest wealth transfer in the history of the world.
--:-- William Spruance: They permanently damaged an entire generation of American children.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And so we need accountability for that.
--:-- William Spruance: We can't just move forward without understanding that this had real quantifiable damage, economic, sociological damage to our culture.
--:-- William Spruance: And the people who could least afford it overwhelmingly bore the burden of these costs.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Well, William, thank you for telling us your story.
--:-- William Spruance: That was Georgetown Law graduate William Spruance.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And we should note that we reached out to Georgetown several times for comment, but as of this interview airing, we had not heard back.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Thanks for tuning in. This has been a Saturday Extra Edition of Morning Wire.
