Gettysburg College recently created a new “bias response team” that pro-life students believe will target their educational efforts on campus.
In February, the Gettysburg College pro-life club hung posters across the campus explaining how abortion is used to discriminate against minorities, specifically African American babies, LifeNews previously reported. At the time, the historic Pennsylvania college was hosting an event where people could explain how they were subject to racism. The pro-lifers’ fliers were intended to bring a pro-life perspective to the event. The pro-life students used the popular hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on the posters along with facts and numbers showing how the abortion industry targets African Americans.
The posters were removed the following day. Instead of defending the student’s right to free speech, the college responded with a lengthy email describing its problems with the pro-life fliers.
Chief Diversity Officer Jeanne Arnold sent the email. In it she stated that she would create the bias response team in order to “review policies related to on-campus postings and bias.”
In a new report, Arnold insisted that the team’s creation isn’t directly correlated to the incident.
“It was on the to-do list since last fall,” Arnold said. “But after the poster issues, I just kind of moved it up on my list of things we were going to do anyway.”
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The College Fix reported more on the story:
The bias-response team will not “adjudicate” disputes, but rather “watch for patterns” of claimed bias and “tailor educational programs accordingly,” Inside Higher Ed says.
One of the pro-life student activists, Young Americans for Freedom’s Alissa Lopez, said she isn’t so sure, given that her group was publicly denounced by the administration for putting up posters that basically say “‘we think these lives have value.’”
She claims that administrators demanded they remove the posters, though the director of student rights and responsibilities, Ron Wiafe, says they were only asked to “adjust their communication.”
The Gettysburg club members said in February that Arnold’s email “targeted and shamed” their club for promoting pro-life values. Club members said they are afraid the new bias response team will create rules that will prohibit them from hanging up conservative messages in the future.
A college environment is supposed to educate and inform students and encourage a diversity of perspectives. However, Gettysburg College is one of a growing number of colleges that are censoring the voices of pro-lifers, even creating a bias-response team to ensure that the situation doesn’t happen again.
