Students across the University of California system are being told they must complete online gender ideology training—and score perfectly on it—before they can register for classes. The required SHAPE program, which stands for Sexual Harassment, Anti-Discrimination, Prevention and Education, is being implemented under state harassment prevention laws that critics say are being used to compel students to affirm views on gender and sexuality that conflict with their personal or religious beliefs.

The training, which all students must complete each semester, claims that refusing to use a person’s preferred pronouns or objecting to biological males in women’s restrooms constitutes harassment and creates a “hostile environment.” Screenshots shared by Young America’s Foundation show one module defining a “Hostile Environment” as a situation where “someone demands that others use a particular bathroom that does not correspond to their gender identity or uses the incorrect pronoun.”

In another scenario from the training, a transgender student named Mona complains that her classmate continues to call her by her former name and protests her use of the women’s restroom. The module asks participants to select what type of “prohibited conduct” this behavior represents. The only correct answer is “hostile environment.” The training adds that calling someone by their previous name, known as “dead-naming,” may qualify as sexual harassment.

The SHAPE program stems from two state laws passed in 2024—AB 2608 and AB 2925—which mandate that all public university students complete sexual harassment and discrimination training. The laws also expanded definitions of “harassment” to include speech or conduct creating a hostile environment based on gender identity or expression.

While universities aren’t required to use SHAPE specifically, many University of California campuses—including UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz—have adopted it to comply with the new requirements. According to the UC system’s Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence Policy, “Other sex-based conduct includes acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex- or gender-stereotyping, or sexual orientation.”

Critics argue that this policy effectively forces students to affirm controversial gender theories or risk losing their ability to register for classes. “The reality and science-denying stooges at the University of California, San Diego, have shredded their institution’s ability to call itself a place of higher education by giving in to the radical Left’s gender ideology and endangering female students,” said Young America’s Foundation spokesperson Spencer Brown. “It is not sexual harassment to require students to use the restroom that corresponds with their biological sex,” he continued. “It’s egregious to force female students to share bathrooms with biological men and call that ‘tolerance.'”

California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt said the issue goes beyond politics—it’s about faith and freedom. “When universities start treating disagreement as harassment, they stop being places of learning and become engines of indoctrination,” Burt said. “Silencing biblical beliefs about gender and sexuality isn’t tolerance. It’s tyranny in disguise. CFC will not back down from defending students’ right to speak truth in love.”

For many Christians, the controversy highlights a growing tension between cultural compliance and biblical conviction. While the state insists the program promotes respect and inclusion, critics warn it punishes those who hold traditional views of male and female as created by God—a reality they say no training module can rewrite.