by Elizabeth Campbell
After CBLPI student activist, Clare McKinney, tended to the wishes of her university and removed the “inflammatory” image of Antonia Okafor holding an AR-15 from her CBLPI lecture flyer, it was sent back to her without the typical stamp saying “approved by the Office of Student Involvement, remove by (date).” Instead, the posters have a stamp saying, “This event is not endorsed by Saint Mary’s college.”
Vice President of SMC, Karen Johnson, called this absurd action from Saint Mary’s College a change that will occur for all events not sponsored by the school. However, when CBLPI activist Clare McKinney went back to look at other flyers and they all contained the school’s previous stamp saying the flyer was approved by OSI.
This unnecessary policy change has resulted in the flyers being reported to security by students who disagree with McKinney’s event. The students said they called security because flyers didn’t have the stamp of approval, even though they did have the new stamp of approval given by the school.
These students then began harassing McKinney on Twitter, ultimately blocking her just because she tried to prove that the flyers were approved by the school administration.
The administration should have known this would occur. The school obviously did not release anything explaining the new stamp on the flyer. The new stamp should also not have been used on a flyer that Clare was told would be supported by the school if the image used was not one of Antonia holding a gun. Clare made the changes so the event could go on and is still being bombarded by the liberal bias at her school!
This could have all been avoided if the school would have just allowed the flyers Clare originally had, if they did not change the policy to avoid backlash from their students, and they supported Clare to bring intellectual diversity to the Saint Mary’s college campus.
Saint Mary’s College has shown on multiple occasions that it will only cater to the requests of leftist women on campus. Creating new policies for flyers, saying an image is inflammatory because it doesn’t fit the narrative that the university wants to push.
Saint Mary’s College is in desperate need of intellectual diversity and empowerment, instead of victimization, of women. Clare has been an incredible advocate for empowering women and promoting intellectual diversity and dialogue on her campus. In fact, the only conservatives who have spoken on Clare’s campus have been CBLPI sponsored conservative women.
CBLPI calls for Saint Mary’s to take action and begin supporting conservative ideas on their campus. Students can no longer be allowed to ruin others’ events just because they disagree with the content of the lecture. The administration should instead encourage students to attend and respectfully engage in intellectual discourse with the speaker.