-By Warner Todd Huston
In March, the pro-life student group Voice For Live was denied the status of official student club by the Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University. And even as VFL was compared to white supremacists, racists, and deemed undesirable, the SGA approved a new group called Students for Justice in Palestine despite that the latter group has a history of anti-Semitism and campus disruption.
The SGA (SGA) voted on March 12 to deny Voice For Life (VFL )the right to become an officially sanctioned club. The vote against VFL was later upheld by the SGA senate.
To explain its decision, the SGA claimed that the pro-life group’s national website is “offensive” because one of its links takes visitors to the website for Bio-Ethical Reform. The SGA also claimed that because the pro-life group engages in sidewalk counseling at a Baltimore abortion facility, that “clearly violates the JHU Harassment and Code of Conduct policies.”
President of Students for Life of America Kristen Hawkins told Fox News that they were shocked to be denied club status.
“We were pretty shocked when the students showed their bias toward the pro-life students,” Hawkins said.
Former SGA Vice President and a drafter of the SGA Constitution Evan Lazerowitz is also shocked by the SGA’s unfair actions.
In a letter of support for SFL, Lazerowitz said, “The fact is, quite simply, that the SGA’s actions constitute viewpoint discrimination, which violates the SGA Constitution. I am particularly concerned that SGA members actually told a student group leader that he should remove certain web-links or not undertake certain actions simply because they personally disagreed with them. Concern about a group’s message, and groups that it supports, definitely violates the free speech guarantee of the SGA Constitution because the SGA is passing judgment on the viewpoint of the group.”
On its website, Students For Life revealed an email exchange between SGA members that talks about Lazerowitz’s letter of support. In the exchange, VFL is likened to white supremacists and another email claimed that the SGA’s duty is to “protect” students from ideas they don’t agree with.
Johns Hopkins student Andrew Guernsey pointed out the hypocrisy in the SGA’s position.
“It is inconsistent with the JHU’s motto ‘The Truth Will Set You Free’ for the SGA to try to hide its students–many future doctors and nurses–from the truth about abortion and how it hurts women, families and most of all, innocent preborn babies,” Guernsey said.
During that same SGA meeting, the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was approved for inclusion as an official student group. SJP has a long history of virulent anti-Semitism and is controlled by the American Muslims for Palestine, a group that the Anti-Defamation League says, “promotes extreme anti-Israel views.”
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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