Religious Freedom, Students Under Attack

Religious Freedom of College Students Under Attack
by Marilyn Mackenzie






In a letter from WorldNetDaily today, were these words:




         In a brazen threat to freedom of religion and association, the economic stimulus bill until recently contained a provision that could have unconstitutionally denied students the right to practice their faith in any university building renovated with government funds. Americans dodged a huge bullet this past weekend when the Senate shed the portion of the bill containing this provision-but it could still be put back in the bill. That the Senate even considered passing such legislation sends chills down my spine. Had the provision remained, colleges could have denied students the right to hold Bible studies in their own dorm rooms!

         Even without the stimulus bill, religious liberty on campus is in dire jeopardy. FIRE has fought some particularly egregious cases where students and professors have had their right to religious liberty denied by the campus P.C. police. Recently, the University of Florida demanded that every student group promise in writing not to "discriminate" on the basis of religion-a requirement that violates religious groups' fundamental rights. Student groups that refused to comply faced losing both their status as recognized groups and full access to university resources. Most Americans understand that citizens have the right to form groups around shared beliefs; but college administrators at Florida and elsewhere have repeatedly tried to deny this right to hundreds of thousands of students. Thankfully, FIRE is there to defend those students' rights.

         At other universities, FIRE has seen dozens of other problems, from dormitory resident assistants (RAs) denied the right to hold Bible studies to a ban on a Christian group's screening of The Passion of the Christ. In a particularly appalling case, FIRE fought successfully against a University of Delaware indoctrination program that focused not only on denying but on coercively changing students' deepest and most private moral and philosophical beliefs.

         By signing up to receive FIRE e-mail alerts and joining FIRE's fight for freedom, you will make us one voice louder in the fight for religious liberty. Here's the link: http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/10208.html

If you explore the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education site, you'll find guides for Free Speech on Campus; Due Process and Fair Procedures on Campus; Student Fees, Funding and Legal Equity on Campus; Religious Liberty on Campus; and Guide to First-Year Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus. If you have a child or grandchild entering college or in college, these are valuable tools.

Here is a video about FIRE. It's a video episode of PBS "Voices of Vision" series. It highlights FIRE's cases at Le Moyne College, where a graduate student was expelled for defending corporal punishment in the classroom; SUNY Fredonia, where a professor was denied promotion for publicly disagreeing with the university's student conduct policies and affirmative action practices; and the University of New Hampshire, where a student was evicted from his dorm and forced to live out of his car for posting a flyer that joked about the "freshman 15." http://www.thefire.org/index.php/video/9368

Yesterday, on another site, I reminded everyone about the series Speechless: Silencing Christians. If you have not watched any of those episodes, I urge you to do so. I've shared the Silencing Christians programs before, and each time, I am told by at least a handful of people that Christians are not being discriminated against. My post yesterday, Who Is Censoring Your TV? explained that a one-hour special about the information in the 14-episode series Speechless: Silencing Christians has been denied on some TV stations. Here's the link to my story yesterday, with links back to the Speechless: Silencing Christians site. http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?memberId=223207&articleId=281474977592721&...

It's time for us to wake up and realize that our rights are being trampled every day.

My parents and grandparents did nothing when prayer was taken out of our public schools.

Will we be known as the generations who did nothing about what is happening in our public schools and on college campuses?

Of course we must pray that God will help us change this. But, as my grandmother always said, "We have to put feet to those prayers" as well.