David Blackman, a native of Plano, Texas, was thrilled to be starting law school at Penn State in the fall of 2025.
A former 911 call operator and a veteran of the Texas State Guard, Blackman, 26, loved the university's football team and its location in the Appalachian Mountains.
"I’ve been a fan of Penn State since I was a teenager," Blackman told the Washington Free Beacon. He arrived on campus in August 2025, a 50 percent merit scholarship in hand, excited for game nights in Beaver Stadium and a three-year reprieve from the Texas heat.
Then he sat through his first anti-racism class.
On the first day of "Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws," a required course for all first-year law students, Blackman listened as a transgender faculty member, Emily Spottswood, explained why the course was mandatory.
"It’s not optional," Spottswood said, because "being a lawyer is about recognizing and combating injustice."
In audio of the session obtained by the Free Beacon, Spottswood said that this "institutional message" was "baked into" the law school's "DNA," adding that, as a "trans woman," the course's focus on "combatting oppression … is meaningful to me."
