The director of a Washington, D.C.-based organization that equates abortion with genocide is supporting the creation of a student club at Clark College. However, the effort hasn’t succeeded so far because no faculty members have agreed to advise the group.
As a result, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform postponed an on-campus event, the Genocide Awareness Project, which had been set for last week. CBR director Kevin Oliver said the seven faculty members his organization approached turned down a request to serve as club adviser. Three of them voiced strong opposition to the club’s anti-abortion position, he said.
CBR’s website, AbortionNo.org, describes the Genocide Awareness Project as a mobile exhibit that displays large pictures of aborted fetuses alongside pictures of Holocaust victims.
John Guiher, the president of Clark College’s Students for Life club, said his group is not associated with CBR and its members are working to convince CBR not to come to Clark College.
“This display builds walls of tension between those that need help and support and those that say they ‘stand for life,’ ” Guiher said. “I think this display will further emotionally damage post-abortive women. We want nothing to do with this group.”
Oliver founded the CBR in 1990 as a privately funded nonprofit educational corporation. He said 10 Clark College students have signed a petition to charter a student club, as required by the college.
Oliver emailed college President Bob Knight on Monday, declaring the event postponed and saying the requirement for a faculty adviser is an “unreasonable impediment” and a “burden.”
“Faculty intransigence is not a legitimate ground for quashing students’ ability to exercise their collective expressive rights,” Oliver wrote.
In the email, Oliver said that if the club cannot find an adviser by Nov. 1, the center will ask the school to waive the requirement. Oliver said the CBR will seek judicial review if the requirement isn’t lifted.
However, Clark College Vice President of Administrative Services Bob Williamson said last week that the college does not require a group to be sponsored or chartered to hold a public event in the free speech area near the chime tower outside of Cannel Library.
Williamson said Oliver’s group was invited to complete an application to conduct a “First Amendment” activity but that no one from CBR did so.
In an email to students, Williamson said the campus is a “limited public forum” that can control when and where First Amendment events happen but not what ideas they share, provided the events do not threaten the educational environment.
CBR has been touring the country to display its project at colleges since 1997. Williamson said that CBR usually goes to larger campuses and four-year schools.
“I’m surprised they would come to a community college when PSU is right across the river.”
ASCC Club Coordinator Jordan Hamilton said the club’s application for charter identified its purpose as a focus on historical and cultural genocide, not abortion.
As for the threat of judicial review, Vice President of Student Affairs Bill Belden said, “This sort of thing happens more than you would like to know.” If the center does seek judicial review and notifies the college, he said, the matter would be forwarded to Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Mankowski-Dixon.
According to the center’s website, CBR has visited a variety of schools in the past 20 years, including Portland State University in 2008. Its members, who visited The Evergreen State College on Oct. 9 and 10, will visit PSU again Monday and Tuesday.
Luc Hoekstra is the campus editor for The Independent, Clark College’s student newspaper. This story was written as part of a collaboration with The Columbian called Voices From Clark College. It was also published in The Independent.
