When my daughters were contemplating where they would go to college, I absolutely vetoed Temple University, not due to the school itself, but because I knew where it was located, in Philadelphia’s combat zone. The city has since cleaned up Broad Street, but go just one block deep off of Broad, and the same badlands that had been cleaned up on the main drag persisted.

It was that personal experience which drew me to this article, in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

How Temple University failed my daughter on her first day of college

My daughter was collateral damage in an ongoing war for ever-higher enrollment numbers and was let down by an on-campus support system that has been weakened by extreme budget cuts.

by Jamie Reilly | Sunday, September 20, 2026 | 9:01 AM EDT

Remember all those big feelings you had on move-in day as a college freshman? After a long summer, you probably arrived on campus ready to tackle dorm life fortified with new flip-flops, towels, and a duvet. Today held great promise — the start of a new you.

My daughter recently enrolled at Temple University. Her move-in day was scheduled for the final week in August. I was proud, and she was excited. Yet, on our drive to campus, we discovered that something was wrong. She was somehow assigned to an all-male floor. How could this be?

A full professor at Temple, Dr Reilly did not disclose the student’s name, something perfectly reasonable, but as a male named Dana, I could at least understand how confusion could have resulted. Skipping a paragraph in which the author told us there was a frustrating and fruitless attempt to remedy the situation, I came to this:

My daughter is transgender and autistic. Temple University assigned her to a male dorm section despite us working closely with intake counselors and disability resources to ensure a smooth and safe move to a gender-inclusive setting. Somehow, a form was missed that coordinates between the office that ensures students with special needs have the necessary supports and the residence halls that house our students.

So, Dr Reilly’s “daughter” is actually his son! We are not told how the young man was assigned to an all-male, gender exclusive dorm, whether by bureaucratic mishap or someone deliberately placing him in a male dorm. A real coed might have been amused by the situation, but of course father and son were not.

Father and son returned home, there was sadness and crying, and then we come to more:

The following day, we were contacted by another staff member who informed us they had found a room for my daughter in a female suite. However, the floor was not gender-inclusive.

My daughter would have to roll the dice and not disclose her gender identity.

We asked what the contingency plan was if her roommates rejected her. There was no plan.

Hyperlink to Temple’s definition of gender-inclusive added by me; it was not in the original OpEd piece.

So, the University made an effort, and found a room in an all-female dorm, something which would have meant that the school was willing to accept his ‘gender identity,’ without telling the real women assigned to the dorm that one of the new roommates would actually be male. We have previously noted how San José State University and its women’s volleyball team kept Brayden “Blaire” Fleming’s status as a ‘transgender woman’ secret, and that Mr Fleming was somehow able to keep such undiscovered by teammates and a roommate for over a year . . . and the chaos that followed when his secret and the school’s lies were exposed. We cannot know how Temple would react if young Mr Reilly’s status as a male pretending to be a woman was discovered by his prospective roommates on an all-female dorm floor, but we do know how San José State reacted: they protected Mr Fleming and told the real women to sit down and shut up. After the season was over, over half of the women’s volleyball team with remaining eligibility entered the transfer portal, even though the transgender player had exhausted his eligibility and would not be on the team the following season.

The University of Pennsylvania responded similarly to members of the women’s swim team who objected to Will “Lia” Thomas being on the team, warning them that scholarships and future employment opportunities could be lost if they didn’t comply.

A liberal administration in a liberal university, in very, very blue Philadelphia? Who can say that, were young Mr Reilly’s ‘gender identity’ exposed in an all-women’s dorm and some of the real women protested, that Temple wouldn’t respond by punishing the real women who were told lies by omission? The Philadelphia Inquirer, with its history of pushing and normalizing ‘transgenderism’ — that the newspaper accepted Dr Reilly’s OpEd piece in the first place demonstrates how the editors want to normalize the abnormal — might well support Dr Reilly’s son and trash the real women in such a situation.

Transgenderism is a lie, a lie from beginning to end. San José State had to lie to the real women they recruited for the women’s volleyball team, had to lie to the other colleges on its schedule, and had several colleges forfeit, once the truth was exposed, rather than play SJSU.