The Trump administration announced Monday it’s investigating the University of Wyoming for alleged Title IX violations stemming from members of a campus sorority voting to admit a transgender woman in 2022, despite the school’s insistence that it doesn’t have a say in the membership of the private organization.

Critics of the admission of Artemis Langford have, until now, focused their efforts on the sorority itself: Kappa Kappa Gamma. Six of the sorority’s members sued the organization over the decision to admit Langford in 2023, but the case was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson, who ruled the government cannot interfere with how a private, voluntary organization chooses its members. 

The lawsuit did not name the University of Wyoming as a defendant. That didn’t stop the Trump administration, which has already challenged California and Maine over transgender policies, from pursuing an investigation into the Equality State’s lone, four-year public university.

“[The Office for Civil Rights] launched an investigation into the University of Wyoming after the university allowed a man to join a campus sorority,” the Department of Education announced in a statement Monday, indicating that, at least in the administration’s view, the onus was on the university to police KKG’s membership practices, a stance that at least one attorney who focuses on Title IX issues told WyoFile was legally questionable.

The Department of Education revealed the investigation in an announcement recognizing June as “Title IX Month.” (June is more prominently known as Pride Month, a time of recognition of the LGBTQ+ community.) The department said it would “highlight actions taken to reverse the Biden Administration’s legacy of undermining Title IX and announce additional actions to protect women in line with the true purpose of Title IX.”

The school, for its part, continues to maintain that Langford’s admission is a sorority matter. The University of Wyoming’s “position has been that it doesn’t control decisions about sorority and fraternity membership,” the university said in a prepared statement. “Appropriately, the university has not been a participant in litigation in federal court regarding the legality of the sorority’s decision to admit the transgender student.”

Title IX — a federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sex in educational programs and activities — provides an exemption for the membership practices of social sororities and fraternities, according to attorney Melissa Carleton, who works with colleges and universities across the country on Title IX issues. 

The Department of Education claims that KKG lost its exemption as a sorority by deviating from single-sex membership practices by deciding to admit a transgender woman. 

Because the statute says social sororities “are outside the bounds of Title IX, it’s not clear the [Department of Education] has enforcement authority,” to define who can and cannot be a member, Carleton said. 

If UW is found to be in violation of Title IX, its federal funding could be on the line, Carleton said. 

“The Office for Civil Rights’ initiation of an investigation is not itself evidence of a violation of federal civil rights laws and regulations,” UW stated. “The university believes it has been and is in compliance with Title IX but intends to fully cooperate with the investigation and will work with the Office for Civil Rights to come into compliance if needed.”

How we got here

The announcement comes just days before a deadline in an ongoing civil lawsuit against UW’s Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter that began over two years ago. 

In March 2023, six members sued the sorority for allegedly breaking its bylaws, breaching housing contracts and misleading sisters when it admitted Langford, a transgender woman, by a majority vote of its members. 

The plaintiffs include Jaylyn Westenbroek, Hannah Holtmeier, Allison Coghan, Grace Choate, Madeline Ramar and Megan Kosar. 

Reasoning that the government cannot interfere with how a private, voluntary organization determines its members, a U.S. District Court dismissed the case in August 2023. 

The suing sorority sisters appealed the decision, but the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their arguments and gave the plaintiffs two options: amend their complaint or ask the lower court for a final judgment. 

“More than nine months after the Tenth Circuit issued its decision, they have neither amended their complaint nor notified us of their decision to ‘stand on the original complaint,’ which would allow them to receive a final judgment that could be appealed,” U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson wrote, ordering the plaintiffs to fish or cut bait by June 9. 

The plaintiffs had not taken court action as of press time. 

The plaintiffs have, however,  developed a direct connection with the Trump administration since their initial complaint. 

May Mailman, who previously worked as their attorney, joined the White House in January as deputy assistant and senior policy strategist to President Donald Trump. 

During the time that Mailman represented the plaintiffs, she worked as legal director of the Independent Women’s Forum, a DC-based, right-wing policy group that attached itself to the case. Several of the plaintiffs now serve as “ambassadors” for the organization and can be booked for speaking events.

“With the help of Independent Women, the University of Wyoming sorority sisters have been standing up for sisterhood and to keep sororities female ever since. Their advocacy footprint has expanded reaching sorority women nationwide,” the organization said in a press release shortly following the Department of Education’s announcement. 

Langford never lived in the sorority house on campus. In a statement to WyoFile, her attorney said her client did not know what prompted the Trump administration to launch an investigation now. 

“After Ms. Langford’s sisters voted her into the sorority, some filed a Title IX complaint about her admission. Ms. Langford does not know who those sisters were,” her attorney, Rachel Berkness, said in a statement that noted the complaint was eventually dropped. “After Ms. Langford celebrated her graduation from UW last month, she is surprised to learn that the Independent Women’s Forum, a political think tank that has promoted itself through litigation against Ms. Langford, is now advertising a new Title IX investigation.”

The University of Wyoming launched its “The world needs more cowboys” campaign in 2018 with a video celebrating the diversity of students who embody the cowboy legacy — tenacious individuals who courageously pursued adventure and freedom through “fearless independence” in the American West.

As students, UW asks us to embody “cowboy ethics,” but our institution isn’t “cowboy” anymore. 

If UW applauds cowboys for their “unyielding courage” and “relentless curiosity” — as banners adorning campus lamp posts suggest — then the administration should be standing up to the fear and narrow-mindedness exemplified by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ attack on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

After hours of testimony over the last year from professors, students and staff who spoke out against the Freedom Caucus’ push to defund DEI programs, the UW administration demonstrated they were more than willing to over-comply and over-censor essential university offices out of fear of legislative reprimand. This is not cowboy “unwavering integrity,” it’s bowing down to authority at the first point of resistance.   

Even private funding for DEI initiatives is under threat. Senate File 103, “Terminating and defunding diversity, equity and inclusion,” a bill vetoed by Gov. Mark Gordon earlier this year, would have prohibited public institutions from accepting private donations designated for DEI efforts. That means when our community wants to support inclusion with our own funds, there are lawmakers who want to tell us we can’t.  

What will happen once the University of Wyoming loses accreditation for programs that require DEI, putting students’ degrees in jeopardy?

In fact, enrollment at the state’s only four-year public university has already been declining.  

Taking effect on July 1, House Bill 147, “Prohibition of institutional discrimination,” defines DEI programs and activities as inherently discriminatory. The rhetoric of a merit-based society is attractive, but what is not being conveyed is that we can’t have a merit-based society without DEI when there is systemic institutionalized discrimination. What gets lost in this definition is the truth: DEI is cowboy. Not the sanitized version we see on recruitment posters, but the real, historical legacy of the American West. One in four cowboys was Black. The vaquero traditions of Mexican cowboys defined cattle herding and ranch life. Native Americans, Asian immigrants and women all shaped the frontier. Cowboy culture has always been diverse; we’re just finally telling the whole story. 

By rejecting DEI, we aren’t preserving tradition. We’re whitewashing it.

When did “relentless curiosity” mean allowing fear to dissuade us from inviting hard workers, creative thinkers and adventurous pioneers to have a seat at the table? 

Cowboy ethics aren’t meant to be printed on a banner, attached to a light pole and forgotten when things get hard. If we only stand by them when it’s easy, they aren’t ethics, they are decoration. 

Cowboy values are grit, speaking up when it counts, standing up to bullies and looking out for the people around you.

So, we urge the university to find its Wyoming cowboy backbone — reflect, course correct and remember what it truly means to draw a line and hold to it.

For years growing up in sight to the Grand Tetons to the west and Gros Ventre Range to her east, Dawn Kent kept her eye out on the landscape along the Gros Ventre River in Kelly, Wyoming, for a post office safe.

It washed away 98 years ago in the Kelly Flood, and her grandfather, Raymond C. Kent, was postmaster for the small Wyoming community at the time.

“There were two safes that were lost in the flood,” she said. “One at the Kneedy home and one at the post office. The Kneedy safe was found about 30 years ago, about 2 miles downstream in the river bottom. 

“But the post office one was never found, although I was always told there really wasn’t much in it that mattered.”

It’s been a century since the rumble of collapsing boulders, dirt and shale created an estimated 50 million cubic yards of debris that formed a natural dam on the Gros Ventre River in Teton County on June 23, 1925. 

Two years later, heavy rains and snowmelt collaborated to breach the barrier and unleash a flood, leaving behind memories and landscape scars.

Kent, 71, believes her family may be the sole remnant with blood links in Kelly to the pioneers who were around when the dam let loose and washed out about 75 buildings and killed six people May 18, 1927. That includes homes, outbuildings and much of the town.

“Gros Ventre River Flood Takes Huge Toll in Life and Property,” the Jackson’s Hole Courier newspaper headline reported Thursday, May 19, 1927. “Death and destruction came down the Gros Ventre River yesterday morning in a great wall of water that snuffed out at least six lives, wiped the town of Kelly off the map and swept away several hundred head of livestock.”

Kent said to understand the flood, one has to go back to the natural dam formed when a large part of the north side of Sheep Mountain in the Gros Ventre Range slid down into the valley below blocking the river. 

Her grandmother, Anne Kent lived in Kelly in 1925, helping run the local store and post office with her husband, Raymond. 

In 1940, Anne wrote an account of both the slide and the flood that her granddaughter keeps filed in a book.

Written Remembrance

“There was a big landslide just four miles east of the settlement. That slide was an enormous thing, hundreds of tons of earth break off from the north hillside, filling the canyon for one-half mile, making a dam just that thick and 200-feet high,” Anne Kent wrote. “It shut off the river and backup up the water, taking about 12 or 15 days in making a lake seven miles long.”

Anne Kent wrote that “miraculously,” no one was caught in the slight and that only shortly before the slide, cowboys had put the last of their range cattle through the canyon.

“The last two riders were so close to the edge of that moving mass they were covered with dust,” she penned.

Jackson’s Hole Courier reported Thursday, June 25, 1927, that the Gill Huff ranch was almost totally inundated and that Huff lost a “fine new $10,000 home underwater.”

It also reported the Card ranches were lost and another rancher, Ed Russell, was also threatened.

The slide followed a similar event in 1909 that first created the original “Slide Lake,” which thereafter would be “Upper Slide Lake” while the new lake was dubbed “Lower Slide Lake.” 

The newspaper reported that prior to the slide there had been a “number of light earth tremors” felt in the Jackson Hole region.

A visit by Wyoming State Engineer Frank Emerson in July 1925 found that things had settled down and the river was flowing through the center of the 180-foot-high dam. The lake behind the dam was about 5 feet from the top of the fill. 

He estimated that water levels would eventually decrease below the fill to about 25 feet. The natural dam was holding, and people should not be afraid to enter Yellowstone National Park from the southern entrance.

“A person would probably be safer in any traveled region of the Jackson Hole region today than he would be upon the streets of any of our large cities,” Emerson wrote.

Floating Hayrack

However, in May 1927, with melting snows and rains feeding the lake, a ranger noticed an old hayrack that had been floating on the lake for two years suddenly floating down the river. 

He realized the dam was weakening and water was topping it. He rode to Kelly to warn people to get out.

Dawn Kent said her father, who was 14 at the time, was in school. Her grandfather ran to the school and told all the students to go home. 

Her grandfather instructed her dad to go home and let the horses out, but not to take any time collecting tack and just to head to high ground.

Her mother, who lived on a ranch north of town, was 7 years old at the time and witnessed the wall of water descend when the dam broke. Kent’s grandmother in her account of the flood wrote that the Gros Ventre River had become muddy and swollen.

“Sometime in the forenoon, the dam gave way and by 11:30 the town of Kelly was washed away,” Anne Kent recorded. “The residents had realized that a large amount of water was coming and most of them left for high ground. 

“One family of three was caught and drowned, also three others who lived on the river below the town.”

Kent’s grandmother estimated that 75 buildings were washed away along with all the possessions and materials inside them, including bedsteads, kitchen ranges, ice boxes and two safes.

“A marriage certificate, Mr. Kent’s and mine, was afterwards found covered with mud,” Anne Kent wrote. “Several pieces of thin cut glass, a wedding gift to one couple, was later found with not a nick or a scratch.”

Flood waters went all the way to Wilson and ranch land, cattle and buildings along the river between Kelly and the junction of the Gros Ventre and Snake rivers were destroyed. 

The destruction was estimated to be 3 miles as its widest point.

Casualties

In Kelly, the Kneedy family — Henry Milt Kneedy, his wife, and adopted son, Joe — died as did a pioneer schoolteacher, Maud Smith, and her sister, May Lovejoy. 

Rancher Clint Stevens tried to ride a hayrack through the surging waters and drowned.

Many in the estimated 50-member community narrowly escaped death. The Jackson’s Hole Courier reported that Charles Rhinehart pulled himself to safety through a grove of aspen, that a Mrs. Almy and an unidentified man pulled themselves out of the surging water just below Kelly, and Chester Simpson lost his car in the flood as he was trying to start it.

“Henry Francis (carried) him to safety behind his saddle,” the newspaper reported May 19, 1927.

Only the Episcopal Church, its parsonage and the school were left standing in Kelly. Overall, an estimated 40 families in the region were displaced.

Dawn Kent said her grandparents moved the store and the post office to the church building. And the store continued to be operated by her family until 1971 when the building burned.

As a girl working at the family store in the 1960s, she said people would ask about the flood, and the family became adept at repeating the story for tourists and others.

One story from the flood is that a woman when she evacuated town right before the flood to higher ground took her wind-up victrola player and one record. The record was the “Wreck of Old ’97.”

“And so, they sat up there on the bench and listened to the ‘Wreck of Old ’97,’” Kent said.

In the years following the flood, debris that had sunk in the mud would surface. 

Kent said as a girl she saw rusted cars along the river she assumes were from the flood. Old bottles, tin cans and other rusted debris once buried and sticking out of the ground in the river region were always suspected as remnants from the disaster.

A Safe

In 1999, fisherman Ernie Wampler Sr. saw a piece of metal poking out of the riverbank while fishing in late November. 

Upon investigation, it turned out to be a safe. The safe was dug out and taken to the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum for a public opening.

“Artifacts from inside the safe include a silver pocket watch, a pair of eyeglasses, a glass jar, many coins and tokens dating from 1920 and earlier, leather pouches, purses and wallets, wads of paper embedded in mud and other items,” the Jackson Hole News reported Dec. 8, 1999.

It was determined to have belonged to the Kneedy family.

Each year, Kent said Kelly residents gather in May to remember the flood and share photos and interesting articles. They just wrapped up their annual meeting earlier this month.

On June 7, Kent said that as part of National Trails Day, a commemoration of the 1925 slide is planned by the Friends of the Bridger-Teton nonprofit. The group is planning work at the Gros Ventre Slide Geological Area to rehab trails and pull invasive species plants from 9 a.m. to noon. A special commemoration of the slide with speakers is planned.

Kent said the slide and flood are important to remember for history’s sake as well as how it changed the landscape of the area and impacted so many lives. 

Shaking continues in the region from time to time and other minor slides have happened over the years.

But Ken said she continues to watch for the piece of history that can be traced back to the post office her grandfather oversaw.

“I’ve always had my eyes open, hoping that someday I might find that other safe,” Kent said. “But of course I never have … but it still could happen. Everyone was surprised when Ernie found the other one.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.