Pro-Life Group At a New Jersey School Is Finally Recognized After Multiple Rejections
Jose Nino
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Students for Life of America (SFLA) will now be allowed to be active at the New Jersey Institute of Technology after the university’s student senate approved its establishment on campus.
This approval vote came after SFLA had its recognition application previously rejected on three occasions.
Former SFLA leader Jonathon Kreinberg wrote about the pro-life organization’s ordeal in a blog post at the national SFLA website on August 12, 2023. He described this entire ordeal as a “long and tiresome process.”
The group initially submitted a proposal back in September 2021, which ended up being rejected over concerns that it would generate “division on campus,” per an email that Campus Reform obtained. On top of that, the school called attention to how there was “no set criteria” concerning how student organization applications were approved.
The pro-life students were notified that their organization was “not unique,” and that they could join current organizations such as NJIT’s Science and Politics Society or the Murray Center for Women in Technology to talk about their views or cobble together resources for pregnant and parenting students. However, after SFLA members contacted both of these groups, they found that neither was active on campus.
Over the next year, the pro-life group submitted two additional applications, each time they appeared to address the senate’s misgivings from the prior submission, but was rejected each time.
As the university rejected the pro-life organization’s application, it concurrently emailed the student body promoting a chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA).
One email even encouraged students “passionate about health care equity and protecting reproductive rights” to attend a PPGA interest meeting. In another email, a PPGA workshop was promoted, and a third called on students to attend the organization’s “Sex, Love and Condoms!” event.
“[A]s a prospective group, they were not required to submit a list of 10 interested members to host an event as we were required,” Kreinberg stated. “Even with our consistent interested members list, we did not have a similar opportunity and observed a clear violation of our right to free speech.”
After submitting an additional application, the organization was invited to give a presentation before the student senate, but was rejected again due to an “overlap of services with other programs and departments on campus.”
Kreinberg manifested his frustration with this ordeal, declaring, “It is clear that some higher power at NJIT is at work against us stretching out the approval process in the hopes our movement will die organically.” He observed, however, that the organization was still “working with SFLA legal counsel to win back the constitutional right to free speech that has been stripped from [SLA students] three times over.”
After his blog post was published, Kreinberg informed Campus Reform that the university was sent a demand letter from SFLA. Subsequently, the university “responded speedily that they were going to hold another vote for the club at the start of the semester.”
Kreinberg would end up graduating, senior student Matthew Fleishman would continue pushing for the organization’s approval. Fleishman informed Campus Reform that the new student senate president got in touch with him and invited the pro-life organization to the senate’s first meeting on September 13.
In the end, the organization was finally allowed to operate on campus after this meeting.
Such scenarios are all too common in universities nationwide. Right-wing organizations will simply not be allowed to operate at these institutions. It will take relentless petitioning and even outside intervention from free speech organizations to ensure that right-wing organizations be represented on campus.
More importantly, in the long-term, the institutions must be thoroughly purged of leftist staff and administrators so that right-wing ideas and organizations can flourish.
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