As reported by Students for Life, on the morning of April 20, campus police at Western Kentucky University (WKU) refused to stop vandals from draping condoms on the top of small crosses in the campus stadium – these crosses, all 3,700 of them, symbolize how many unborn children die through abortion each day in the US and were installed by the Hilltoppers for Life group on campus.
The Hilltoppers for Life group members, who had been keeping an eye on their display through the night in reaction to similar acts of vandalism to pro-life displays at other campuses including nearby Northern Kentucky University, asked the art students to stop and then called campus police. The students refused and the campus police just stood by and watched. The police claimed that they, “couldn’t do anything because the condoms aren’t actually vandalization,” even though the crosses are the property of Hilltoppers for Life and they have the administration’s permission for their display.
Student president of Hilloppers for Life group said “the vandals argued they were doing this for an art project for school, as an approved assignment, which makes me wonder…how does the university have the right to approve assignments that vandalize and desecrate the property and displays of other people?”
The Students for Life report made an imporant point: “Claiming vandalism as art is disingenuous and disturbing at best. The desecration of the crosses at WKU is sacrilegious, offensive, and borders on a hate crime. While we have seen vandalism before at other campuses across the nation, it is not uncommon for students to face opposition of this nature but usually the campus police do help out and stop the vandalism rather than hide behind some ‘artistic expression’ excuse.”
The underlying problem is that the art student who did it is “still getting course credit for her project,” according to the Hilltopper’s president. In other words, the art professor has made art vandalism an approved political expression of pro-choice activism. The underlying problem is culture of liberal professors and possibly the administration in which true freedom of expression is eroding to the point of non-existence.