The board rejected student government’s attempts to cut off pro-life clubs.
QUICK FACTS:
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill) Board of Trustees rejected a request by the student government to deny funding to pro-life organizations.
- The board’s resolution supported the distribution of student fees to all student organizations, regardless of their viewpoints on issues like abortions.
- Student Body President Taliajah Vann attempted to block executive branch funds from going to pro-life clubs, according to a recent report.
- Vann’s executive order received backlash from pro-life students and legal groups, demanding that the move be seen as a violation of students’ First Amendment rights.
- “The Board of Trustees reaffirms its commitment to academic freedom,” the board’s resolution states.
- The resolution applies to the Undergraduate Student Government and Graduate and Professional Student Government Senates, who decide how the money will be spent on student activity fees.
THE BOARD OF TRUSTEE’S RESOLUTION IN PART:
- “As the oldest public university in the nation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is firmly committed to protecting freedom of expression and freedom of association on campus in order to foster an educational environment with a diversity of viewpoints,” the Board of Trustees’ resolution states.
- “The law requires that allocation of student fees to student organizations must be accomplished with viewpoint neutrality as the operational principle in law,” the resolution adds.
BACKGROUND:
- In 2020, a poll showed that the majority of conservative college students self-censor their political beliefs to appease their more liberal peers.
- That was contrasted by just 15 percent of Democrat-leaning students who said that they would censor their true beliefs to keep their conservative friends from feeling uncomfortable.
- That was the same year a Central Michigan University told student members of conservative student group Turning Point USA that she was “terrified” of them and that she tears down TPUSA posters as “an act of civil disobedience.”
