A student anti-abortion club filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Miami University, saying it abandoned its annual “cemetery of the innocents” display on the Hamilton campus after the college demanded that warning signs be placed ahead of the display.
Wait, call off the lawyers! A Miami spokeswoman called the flap an “unfortunate misunderstanding” Thursday. Claire Wagner says the university does not require warning signs. The cemetery display, she says, can go on.
The suit, filed by Students for Life at Miami University and its four top officers, accused the college of violating their constitutional right to free speech. Miami is a public university. The club wanted to plant small crosses in the Hamilton campus’ Central Quad to maximize exposure.
“These past cemetery of the innocents displays have persuaded multiple women who were pregnant and considering abortion to change their minds and choose life for their unborn children,” says the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati.
Students for Life, part of a national organization, says it first put up a cemetery display on the Miami-Hamilton campus in March 2015. That first display, the suit says, prompted a women’s studies professor to persuade her students to unplant every cross and sign. The October 2016 display triggered a different backlash: the removal of 10 crosses and the planting of signs for “reproductive justice.”
For its October 2017 display, the anti-abortion club filled out a mandatory “Campus Exhibit Approval Form” and gave it to Caitlin Borges, the university’s regional director of student activities and orientation. The dates Oct. 29 to Nov. 5 worked for both.
But the college had one new condition, a requirement that signs be posted near campus entrances telling people that the Students for Life exhibit lay ahead. In an email to Students for Life club President Ellen Wittman, Borges explained the rationale for the warning signs. She wrote that the symbolic cemetery “is quite polarizing and causes a lot of unrest on campus.” She wrote that the display could inflict emotional trauma on passersby.
“Our counseling center sees a spike in the number of students who report overwhelming feelings of sadness, anxiety and pain triggered by the display when they encounter it unexpectedly,” Borges wrote on Oct. 26.
To Students for Life, the warning signs might as well have been a roadblock. Its lawsuit says the signs would “dissuade members of the university community and campus guests from viewing the cemetery of the innocents display and send a message … that this display of crosses was somehow dangerous or harmful.”
The lawsuit asks the court for a judgment that Miami University violated the club’s First and 14th Amendment rights. It asks for attorneys’ fees, costs and an unspecified “nominal” amount of monetary damages.
It might not go that far. Wagner indicated that further conversation might be in order, now that Miami no longer requires warning signs.
“All Miami University students and student organizations have First Amendment rights to free speech,” Wagner says. “As a result, the university does not approve or disapprove of any student organization’s display based on content or subject matter.
“Our values dictate that we protect the rights of our student organizations to hold and express disparate beliefs, and we encourage the discussion and learning that comes from sharing our differences,” she says. “If mistakes were made, they will be addressed.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian advocacy group in Scottsdale, Ariz., handling media relations for Students for Life, did not return phone calls Thursday.
Controversy over similar Students for Life displays at other colleges, including Colorado University, Washington State University and St. Louis University, has led to protests and vandalism.
Students for Life USA filed suit against the University of South Alabama in 2014 over the placement of its display. The suit was settled in 2016, with the college agreeing both to amend its policy on use of its space and to pay an unspecified sum of money.
CONTACT JAMES McNAIR at [email protected], 513-914-2736 or @jmacnews on Twitter
