Another Washington State College Attempts to Silence Pro-Life Speech

You may recall the story out of Spokane in 2009 that AIW reported on here, here and here. It concerned the speech rights of students on the campus of public colleges.

Administrators at Spokane Falls Community College "threatened Beth Sheeran and members of a Christian student group with disciplinary measures, including expulsion, if they chose to hold a pro-life event on campus to share information with other students because the message was 'discriminatory' and did not include a pro-abortion viewpoint."

Now administrators at Olympic College in Bremerton are attempting a similar attack against pro-lifers there.

According to a press release from the Anti-Choice Project, "[f]ollowing a decision made this summer by the Olympic College Board of Trustees, the state college plans to revise its free speech policies, relegating non-students who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights to an obscure location described by the school paper as the “least visible on campus”.

The new regulations were prompted after a member of the Anti-Choice Project brought signs on campus "depicting the bloody body parts of allegedly aborted fetuses."  Despite a NYT Magazine story and countless first person testimonies from people who saw an abortion take place, nearly 100% of the mainstream jounalistic population erroneously believes that these pictures are fake. Despite four years of college and a strong commitment to Darwin and the scientific method, for some mystifying reason, the aborted fetus always remain "allegedly" aborted, or perhaps "allegedly" a fetus, in the eyes of most journalists. This confusion continues in spite of various reports and newstories detailing dead babies found in jars, refrigerators, cardboard boxes and in one case a shipping container filled with thousands of dead fetuses. You'd think people still thought Obama was a Muslim.

The free-speech zone idea appears to have grown out of the good old fashioned American management technique known as, "passing the buck". "It was really a response to the students coming to this office," said Sue Riddle, executive assistant to then-Vice President of Student Services Richard MacLennan.

From there, other time-tested American contributions to civilization such as CYA, public relations and "I'm with stupid" t-shirts took over as an ad hoc committee with the Orwellian sounding name -- First Amendment Task Force -- was formed; a committee specifically designed to do the opposite of what the name implied.

According to the Anti-Choice web site, "The Anti-Choice Project has sought legal counsel at this time." I have a feeling Beth Sheeran could give some recommendations.

Let's hope the AG's office and Rob McKenna don't decide to waste more tax payer dollars to try and silence pro-lifers and keep the truth about abortion from the public like they tried to do in Spokane.