A Maryland college Republicans club will not be punished for a display that drew attention to how the abortion industry targets African American babies in the womb.
The College Republicans students at Hood College set up a display in April that highlighted facts and quotes about a number of conservative issues, including abortion.
However, students quickly began complaining about the pro-life and transgender information on the display; and college administrators announced plans to review the situation to determine if the club should be punished.
This week, the College Fix reports administrators cleared the club members of any wrongdoing.
“To hear that we weren’t receiving any sanctions, it was a relief,” club President Christopher Gardner said. “We all thought the entire situation was kind of ridiculous, but it did fulfill the purpose of the board. It spread conservative messages, and that’s what we set out to do.”
The display included the pro-life messages “Let’s talk about race … abortion is the number one killer of black lives in the United States,” and “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.”
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Some students and faculty urged administrators to take down the display, blasting it as hateful and threatening. However, administrators allowed the display to remain up for the allotted time.
Here’s more from the report:
Gardner said the display generated a ton of debate — including two campus forums — and helped advance conservatism at Hood. He said the College Republicans faced a few instances of harassment, but despite that the overall effort was a success.
During one campus forum in late April the College Republicans fielded questions and concerns from their peers.
“When you’re saying that transgender people are mentally ill, you’re threatening their livelihood,” Gabrielle Cavalier, a senior at Hood and the vice president of the Hood College Democrats, told the group at the meeting, according to the Frederick News-Post.
“When you say that abortion is genocide, you’re calling any woman who gets an abortion a murderer,” Cavalier continued.
Gardner said the experience gave him hope that free speech will continue to be protected on campus.
“I can see the campus going in the direction of allowing people to have free thought, as long as you aren’t advocating for murder or something, of course,” he told the Fix.
Pro-life students increasingly have to fight for recognition and free speech on campus.
In March, a pro-life student club sought legal help after Kutztown University officials in Pennsylvania scrubbed their chalked pro-life messages from the campus sidewalks. The college permitted other groups to write chalk messages on the sidewalk.
In January, pro-life students filed a lawsuit against Queens College in New York after it denied their Students for Life club official recognition.
Pro-lifers frequently deal with vandalism on campus, too. In April, in two separate incidents, students tried to destroy pro-life displays at Texas State University and Washington State University. And in March, a pro-life student display at the University of Colorado at Boulder was vandalized.
Earlier this month, another group of pro-life students at Fresno State University filed a lawsuit against a professor after he was caught on video instructing his students to deface and erase the pro-life group’s sidewalk chalk messages.
