During the week of March 15, 2010, Northeastern commenced Respect Life Week. Under the disguise of dialogue, this university has sponsored a political campaign against abortion and the students of this institution who support it.
Throughout the week, the campus has had several school-sponsored events with the intent to highlight the so-called horrors of abortion, aggressively violating the school’s non-political tax-exempt statues. As a graduating senior, I am offended and strongly opposed to the political crusade this institution has allowed to take place.
I understand the importance of dialogue, but this week has further closed the doors to have this needed open conversation across campus, by skewing the information given to students to mainly support one end of the political spectrum. When will there be a Respect Choice Week?
When will Northeastern University invite NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood, the National Organization of Women, EMILY’s List, and Catholics for Choice to speak and inform students? When will Centennial Quad be filled with tiny flags signifying the many lives in the United States that are saved through the legal medical practice of abortion? Why has this university chosen to silence the voice of many of its students?
Respect Life Week has done nothing but to foster unjustified intolerance to a woman’s right to privacy and her reproductive rights, and toward the students that strongly believe in choice, making many uncomfortable and unwelcomed on their own college campus.
I, for one, am ashamed that money I have given this university has been used against me to publically criminalize a legal constitutional right. If this university truly cares about open dialogue and education as it claims, I demand the stage be shared by every view point and allow the student body to decide their belief on the subject at hand for themselves, instead of tilting the information in one direction, like what has sadly occurred during Respect Life Week
–Eric J. Alves is a senior political science major.
