by Greg Piper
Elite universities that rushed to condemn the killing of George Floyd and Jan. 6 Capitol riot saw no need to denounce Hamas for terrorism against Israeli women, children and partiers – until wealthy donors called them out and even demanded the firing of top brass.
Another oft-marginalized group on campus doesn’t have titans of hedge funds, private equity firms and the “Law & Order” franchise to plead their case, however.
Administrators have offered no known response to documented vandalism and physical attacks on pro-life students at far-flung campuses this fall, while a public university slapped its pro-life club with a massive security bill despite its event prompting no threats.
New York City arts school Cooper Union even hired a professor who was fired by nearby Hunter College for brandishing a machete on New York Post reporter Reuven Fenton when he asked her about cursing out Hunter Students for Life members and vandalizing their display.
PROFESSOR GONE WILD: Pro-abortion professor Shellyne Rodriquez curses at pro-life students and vandalizes table at Hunter College. pic.twitter.com/QNspuXB4KK
— Students for Life of America | Pro-Life Gen (@StudentsforLife) May 17, 2023
The Bronx County District Attorney’s Office gave Shellyne Rodriguez a plea deal Oct. 2 that vacates her machete “menacing charge” when she completes “at least six months of dialectical behavioral therapy and has no new arrests” before her May 15 sentencing, according to arts publication Hyperallergic, which said her harassment charge was “not considered a crime.”
Cooper Union didn’t answer Just the News queries about whether it knew of Rodriguez’s recent history when hiring her.
Students for Life of America contrasted the “sweetheart deal” for Rodriguez in a county court with the aggressive federal prosecution of nonviolent pro-life activists by the “Department of In-Justice” under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
The “Biden-Harris Administration is weaponizing the law to turn pro-life activism into felonies, an incredible misuse of the rule of law,” SFLA said.
Historically black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University has not answered queries about any action it took against students who were recorded harassing pro-life activists and stealing their signs.
The activists came to campus Sept. 15 to protest an abortion rights speech by Vice President Kamala Harris. They were “completely surrounded, having their belongings stolen & vandalized,” Students for Life Action, the political side of SFLA, wrote in an X thread.
While @ncatsuaggies students yelled “F*ck ‘Dem Kids” and “Black Lives Matter,” SFLA Student Leaders Lydia Taylor, Jessica Newell & Pro-Life Force tried their best to protect their belongings & correct the abortion lobby’s false narrative — because Black Preborn Lives Matter, too. pic.twitter.com/B6j5tk025V
— Students for Life Action (@SFLAction) September 16, 2023
Police “immediately came in and said, ‘We have to go now’ and pulled us out of the mob,” Lydia Taylor, president of the SFLA chapter at North Carolina’s Campbell University, told Catholic News Agency. “We were forced to leave a lot of our stuff behind,” later coming back for a bullhorn, microphone and speakers, she said.
Onondaga Community College students “mobbed” and hurled slurs at Savannah Craven, northeast field coordinator for SFLA, when she visited the State University of New York campus in Syracuse last month to help its nascent pro-life club with a “Cemetery of the Innocents” display, Craven wrote for SFLA.
Video shows a student chewing and spitting out a plastic fetal model from their table – a recurring response to pro-life activism – while another vandalized the display and multiple students cursed and hurled slurs at Craven, a black woman in a predominantly white crowd.
“School staff members passed by the event and said nothing as the crowd became bigger, louder, and began closing in on me,” Craven wrote.
Students followed and continued jeering Craven as campus police officers escorted her to their car, with students standing in front of the car as she got in, video shows. Craven says students also “jump[ed] on the police car to prevent me from leaving safely.”
OCC did not answer queries about what consequences if any students have faced, or why staff allegedly passed without getting involved.
The University of Washington responded to a query but didn’t answer questions about any consequences for a student recorded vandalizing a display by Huskies for Preborn Lives, an SFLA affiliate, and shoving the group’s president.
The conservative Leadership Institute was tabling with the pro-life group. Its field representative Angel Venegas told Campus Reform, which is an LI project, that they called police and gave a statement.
They don’t know the vandal’s identity, however, because another student “intentionally blocked” Venegas and the president from keeping tabs on the vandal before police arrived, SFLA Pacific Northwest Regional Coordinator Sophia Di Piazza wrote in a blog post.
The Alliance Defending Freedom threatened to sue the University of New Mexico if it does not rescind the “unconstitutional viewpoint-based fee” imposed on its SFLA chapter for an April lecture by SFLA president Kristan Hawkins that drew no threats or “advertisements urging people to protest.”
A campus police officer gave the club estimates of $7,000-to-$8,140 to pay for security for the event, “based on the reactions to three recent events” by conservative student organization Turning Point USA that made “national news,” ADF’s letter says. But the officer also said the fee could be “much lower.”
Other university officials backed the high estimate because Hawkins’ lecture “had the potential to be controversial,” the letter states. The club “had no choice but to accept” the estimates or UNM might cancel the event, wasting months of planning: “The power dynamics … flowed in one direction.”
Thirty officers were assigned to cover the event, and UNM sent the club a $5,461 bill a few days later. Not only did campus police use “factors that are not listed” in its security fee policy – protests at prior events – but university officials have “unbridled discretion” to decide what to charge with “no meaningful – and certainly no objective or narrowly drawn” limits, ADF claims.
The letter asks UNM to “preserve any and all documents connected with, discussing, or relevant to the incidents described here,” including security fees charged to other student groups in the past five years, ahead of possible litigation over the “heckler’s veto.”
UNM did not respond to queries for its response to the letter.
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Greg Piper has covered law and policy for nearly two decades, with a focus on tech companies, civil liberties and higher education.
Photo “Protesters at Pro-Life Event” by Students for Life Action.
