Gregory Champion, president of the Eastern Michigan University pro-life group Students for Life, said when the group applied for funding in February they didn’t expect to be fully funded, but each student at EMU has mandatory dues.
“If they’re funding groups that are doing things that we don’t necessarily agree with, we deserve the same kind of funding,” he said.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal ministry, filed a lawsuit against EMU on March 19 on behalf of Students for Life.
ADF’s lawsuit said EMU officials have denied Students for Life funding for mandatory student activity fees. The fees would be used to fund a pro-life exhibit called the Genocide Awareness Project. The display is a traveling exhibition that shows photos comparing abortion to genocide.
The lawsuit, Students for Life at Eastern Michigan University v. Parker, said university officials have been conflicting with funding of political and ideological speech, and the First Amendment freedom of speech clause “prohibits content and viewpoint discrimination in a public university’s allocation of mandatory student fee funding.”
Champion, who is also a senior studying construction management at EMU, said Students for Life applied for funding just like any other student group would, but EMU’s Student Government initially said they do not fund political or ideological events. After looking everything over again, SG then agreed, but when the group applied for funding again SG emailed Students for Life the next day denying the funds.
According to Champion, when he emailed them back inquiring as to why the funds were denied, he said SG told him that the exhibit in question was “too controversial and too one-sided.”
EMU Executive Director of Media Relations Geoff Larcom said, “Last November, the exhibit in question was granted permission to appear in an outdoors area on the Eastern Michigan University campus on the dates of April 11 and April 12, 2013. This exhibit has appeared on Eastern’s campus before and also has been displayed at many campuses across the country. It is important to understand that the situation noted in the legal complaint arises out of a request to Student Government for funding the appearance of this exhibit. Given the pending litigation, we will not be discussing additional details about this matter at this time.”
Champion said the issue isn’t whether or not the exhibition could appear at EMU, it’s simply been about obtaining the right funding.
