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Early this morning, 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 vandals were art students who claimed the condoms were part of an art project.
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.
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.
John Sohl, President of WKU Hilltoppers for Life relays his first hand account here:
“All I wanted to do was take a nap during the last night of a very successful Life Week at WKU. But just as I was dozing off, my brother spotted two people dressed in dark clothing, hanging something in front of our display! Well, it didn’t take long to figure out what they were doing because we had been waiting for something like this all week long. Yes…they were vandalizing our Cemetery of the Innocents.
But it wasn’t what we expected. Instead of breaking crosses and destroying our design, they were taking a different approach. They were placing a condom on every single cross, what would have become over 3,000 crosses…had we not done something about it. Yet, after contacting campus police, they told us there was nothing they could do about it, despite the fact that it was on our display. 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?
Things did get resolved, but the girl is still getting credit for her project, and the police still did nothing to stop it. Students did not see this display luckily, but had we not been there watching it, we would have woken up to almost 4,000 desecrated tombstones. I never thought this would actually happen to our little pro-life group. All we wanted was to get a little more active!”
Please take a moment today to:
1) Call or Email the WKU Police Captain of Professional Standards, Joe Harbaugh, at his non-emergency number, 270-745-2543 or [email protected] to express your outrage and demand the university apologize to WKU Hilltoppers for Life and to train the campus police that putting condoms on some one else’s crosses is not art or freedom of expression, it is desecration and vandalization.
2) Log into our action website with your Facebook or Twitter account and sign our petition to the WKU Administration and show them that America is watching at https://www.abolishabortion.com/petition/tell-wku-condoms-crosses-not-art.
3) And post this social media graphic to your Facebook or Twitter account.
4) Check out some press reports about the situation:
