UPDATE: The Honors Alliance has reposted the photo of Melanie Salazar. You can see that post here.
Honors Alliance at University of Texas at San Antonio wants to showcase its students members, unless those members are pro-life. At least that’s what Students for Life leader and Wilberforce Fellow Melanie Salazar found out recently.
Honors Alliance is made up of students from different honors groups across the campus. Every week, the Honors Alliance showcases a different student, talking about their background, their major, and other groups they are involved with on campus, in a segment called “Meet-A-Member Monday.” But when the group showcased Salazar, wearing an “I Am The Pro-Life Generation” t-shirt, all heck broke loose.
In an e-mail to Students for Life of America, Salazar said, “For having my picture taken I was given the option to wear a school shirt or a shirt representing my organization. I chose to wear a “I AM THE PRO-LIFE GENERATION” shirt in representation of the pro-life group. My picture was posted and without my knowledge was taken down.”
According to Salazar, she followed all the instructions and at no point was told this would be an issue. She told the student in charge of posting the photos several pieces of information about herself, including that she was involved with the Mexican American Student Studies Organization, Circle K, and the Catholic Student Association. But it was her showcasing her involvement in Students for Life that got her intro trouble.
According messages between the student officer and Salazar, “we had to take it down because some people thought we were a prolife group, but we can’t take a political stand because we are university funded.”
Mr. Lawyer Student is of course factually wrong, and not consistent. Wearing a shirt that says “I Am The Pro-Life Generation” and clearly references involvement in a student group on campus is not taking a political stand, especially when it is clear a group is highlighting the activities of its members.
For example, the group posted about a student who is involved with the Democratic Socialists group on campus, but no fuss was made.
Student groups cannot lose funding for being political. Obviously Dr. Constitution knows that groups like College Republicans and College Democrats, for example, exist. But, when you want to shut down pro-life views, facts don’t really matter, do they?
