Gettysburg College censors pro-life flyers, lectures students

Members of the conservative Young America’s Foundation at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania allege that the school is discriminating against pro-life students in response to their latest campus activities.

As part of an event inviting students to raise awareness of varying forms of racism, Gettysburg YAF club put up flyers around campus highlighting abortion’s disproportionate death toll among black babies.

However, all the fliers had been taken down by the end of the day, with at least one photo confirming another student removing one. YAF reported the act to administration, but instead of punishing the vandals, Gettysburg College Chief Diversity Officer Jeanne Arnold issued a campus-wide statement condemning the posters.

“I write to you today because posters that were hung last week in numerous locations on campus singled out African-American women in an effort to promote pro-life positions. These posters also made misleading use of ‘Black Lives Matter,'” Arnold wrote. While giving lip service to the principle of a “free and open marketplace of ideas,” she claimed the pro-life fliers “perpetuated a chilly climate for some of our students, faculty, and staff,” and ran counter to “making Gettysburg College a more inclusive and welcoming campus through their actions.”

In the group’s response to the incident, YAF’s Emily Jashinsky notes that Arnold wants to establish a “bias response team” to “review policies related to on-campus postings and bias.” Jashinsky writes that this “sounds like censorship to us,” and accuses Gettysburg College of denying “students who hold opinions contrary to the Leftist narrative pushed by administrators” equal protection of their speech.