Backstory:

Recently at my University, there were two candidates for the Presidential election for SGB (Student Government Board). The first candidate, Romeo, is an active Christian on campus. The second, Shull, is not. Shull won the election.

Recently an anti-abortion group on campus demanded money so they could go to Washington DC and protest, rally or participate in some kind of political cause that had to do with anti-abortion. Shull said no, we are not giving you the money.  Their group would use the money for proselyztizing and thus it would not be a fair desicion.

Big surprise...there was backlash, outrage, etc. Romeo, who is in this group, accused Shull of being discriminatory and blah blah. There was a lot of pressure put on SGB, and I think also because Shull is new to the Presidency and was afraid of his reputation being tainted, they revoked the desicion and allotted $1,515 so this group can go do their bullshit.

First, here is a letter written by an angry Christian on campus in response to the initial decision:

I am writing in regards to the article “Board denies funds for anti-abortion group.”
I was present at the Student Government Board meeting on Tuesday night, and let me assure your readers that SGB President-elect Charlie Shull’s rationale is indeed as flawed as it appears in the article.

If Shull has a problem with the religious members of this campus, that’s fine. It’s his opinion. Maybe a nun rapped him on the knuckles back in grade school and he’s still upset about it.

In any case, his reasoning that the March for Life is a “proselytizing” event flies in the face of the fact that it isn’t a religious event by any means, as mentioned by both Students for Life member Justin Romeo and Peter Gruber, the president of the group. Having been to the March for Life in previous years, I can say with certainty that it is not an effort to convert people to a religion but to voice an opinion.

If voicing an opinion is proselytizing, then all political groups at Pitt ought to have their funding revoked. Shull did take the time to mention Romeo’s religious convictions, which weren’t relevant to the topic of funding at all. I think this is evidently a case of Board members’ bias, and it sounds like a violation of the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms everyone is for, until they have to hear something they don’t like.

Here is a letter I wrote to the editor in response to the whole ordeal. I hope it gets published but it is finals week right now so the newspaper is a little behind on things, understandably:

I agree with Charlie Shull's initial decision to refuse the anti-abortion
group funding for their rally (or protest, or lobbying, whatever it's
being called), and not because of their religious beliefs. Whether they
were pro-life or pro-choice, what strikes me as odd is that the university
would be willing to allocate funding for a group's specific political
cause in the first place. I assume that Shull meant to be fair as opposed
to discriminatory, and that the fact that the decision was revoked was due
to pressure and backlash against SGB for being prejudiced and religiously
discriminatory. Frankly, that's about as logical as calling someone who
refuses funding to PETA anti-animal. $1,515 is a large sum of money,
something that would perhaps be more fairly given to a new group trying to
get started. If the anti-abortion group feels so strongly about this very
personal issue, why can't they use personal funding? I don't believe it is
SGB's job to hand out money for any kind of rally or protest.