FIRE Calls Out University of Scranton for Reportedly Discriminating Against Conservatives

FIRE Calls Out University of Scranton for Reportedly Discriminating Against Conservatives

This almost never seems to happen to liberal student groups.

Campus Reform reports:

‘Yikes, nope, denied’: Nonpartisan free speech org. calls out college’s ‘discrimination’ against conservatives

A nonpartisan free speech group alleged that a Pennsylvania university engaged in viewpoint discrimination when it denied status to a conservative student group.

The Foundation of Individual Rights in Education says that the University of Scranton student government discriminated against students seeking to form a Turning Point USA chapter when it voted against granting them official student group status. FIRE says it sent a letter to the university urging the administration to intervene, citing the school’s stated student code of conduct, which says that “freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of the individual must be preserved.”

However, the school says that “these personal freedoms must be balanced against our mutual responsibility for supporting and nurturing a community whose ministry of education is informed by the vision of life contained in both the Gospel and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.”

According to FIRE, the school sent back an “unsatisfactory response” in which it “stood by” as the student government “turn[ed] students’ rights into a popularity contest.”

“We ask again that you identify a viewpoint-neutral reason for the rejection or, in the alternative, a substantive explanation as to how viewpoint discrimination is compatible with the promises Scranton makes to its students,” FIRE wrote in a second letter to the university.

FIRE also called attention to University of Scranton student government president Fahad Ashraf who commented in a social media post, that once the club’s application for official student group status has been received by the student government, “that is when the whole ‘yikes, nope, denied,’ is meant to occur.”

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