Students at the University of North Texas recently vandalized an abortion memorial put up to raise awareness about the unborn lives lost to abortion. The memorial was created by the Young Conservatives of Texas, the largest non-partisan conservative youth organization in the state of Texas.
The president of YCT, Kelly Neidert, planned to put up 1,000 little pink flags to represent the 60,000 babies killed by abortions since the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. However, social outreach chair Bella Armenta for the University’s College Democrats club tweeted shortly after that she was looking forward to playing “catch the flag.” They talked on Twitter about stealing flags from the ‘sexist transphobic all-around horrid’ young conservatives.
“The memorial was intended to help students understand the impact of abortion in a meaningful way. We were wanting to draw attention to overturning Roe v. Wade because that’s being talked about a lot in the political sphere with Amy Coney Barrett being the SCOTUS nomination,” said Kelly Neidert, chairwoman of YCT.
Only a few hours after the memorial was approved by the school and placed, people came in removing and stealing 350 of the flags as well as the display signs meant to inform students about the purpose of the memorial. Videos surfaced online of students capturing flags and refusing to return them to the YCT members. They harassed Neidert on social media, calling her and her group ‘trash humans’ and that she should just kill herself. She even received a ton of death threats, yet the University has done nothing and did not comment on the situation.
Many members of the Youth Conservatives of Texas were shocked and upset to see some of their peers openly desecrating an abortion memorial intended to represent lives lost from abortion in a meaningful way.
The Caucus Director for the Texas Freedom Caucus also commented on the situation. “Very sad that the free exchange of ideas is dwindling on university campuses across #Texas, but what’s even sadder is that many students don’t seem to care. Whatever happened to lively discussion? That’s what university is all about—to be exposed to and consider new ideas,” he tweeted.
The memorial was to showcase conservative beliefs in a meaningful way, but liberals will just keep vandalizing things and blaming the right. The University of North Texas has revealed its true colors and shown us that they do not care about the free speech rights of all students on campus, even for a memorial that they approved themselves.
