I remember what it’s like to be a vocally pro-life student in a deeply hostile environment. Yale in the 1980s was not exactly open to healthy exchanges on that touchy subject. But students still mostly believed in free expression back then. And the school grudgingly but dutifully protected it. Sure, conservative posters of any kind tended to get ripped down from lightpoles. But we’d reciprocate by stamping leftist posters, in red ink, “KGB Approved.” Then liberals would run around tearing them down themselves. So things weren’t all that bad.

In case you’ve checked out of what’s happening on campuses, things are much, much worse today. Look at Georgetown University, which still claims to be a sorta-kinda-quasi-Catholic scented school. There a student club which supports the church’s official teaching on marriage is waiting to see whether the student government will ban it. As a hate group, you see.

Move to secular campuses, and the situation is in some places really grim. We just learned that the statewide vice-chair of Wisconsin College Democrats boasts publicly [profane language] of vandalizing pro-life student displays. She’s not alone, according to Kristan Hawkins. Ms. Hawkins is president of the lively, effective and upbeat organization Students For Life of America (SFLA). If you follow the organization, you know that it’s not prone to crying wolf. But Hawkins and SFLA have sent up a signal flare to warn us how intolerant campuses are becoming to pro-life students’ views. Rather than just reprint their release, The Stream decided to interview Ms. Hawkins on the topic. Our Q&A is below.

The Stream: Why do you think that pro-choicers feel they have a right to censor, obstruct, or disrupt free speech by prolife students on campus?

In much of our discourse on college campuses, we talk about feelings rather than our shared liberties. Sadly many students and campus administrations feel that they have the right to shut down speech if they don’t agree with it or feel it could hurt someone’s feelings. But college in particular should be a time when we meet people different than ourselves and learn to talk to and to understand each other

The Stream: We have the campus left now calling for protestors to “punch” those whom they dub as “Nazis.” Have we seen any outright violence aimed at pro-lifers yet? If so, where?

Just this week, we were responding to comments from a university professor calling for violence, and yesterday we announced a settlement in a case involving a professor who urged his students to vandalize free speech. There is escalation, and we are concerned. Pro-life speakers and Students for Life groups Canada and England have faced growing opposition and we see that as a harbinger of things to come.

There have been numerous other examples of violence against pro-lifers. The issue has gotten so out of hand we’ve created a map to start tracking all of the recent vandalizations we are aware of. There are probably many more we haven’t even captured.

The Stream: Do students report being punished for expressing their views in class? In academic papers? At which schools has that happened?  At which schools do you know that healthy debate is encouraged?

We’ve seen opposition to pro-life speech on secular and so-called Christian and Catholic campuses, but we’ve also seen schools, both faith-based and secular, make free speech a priority. In the past few years, we have been contacted by students who felt that they were being punished for expressing their pro-life beliefs in class. However, those cases are very hard to prove in court. Others are very clear.  We usually spend our time mentoring the student on how to work around their professor.

Poll after poll proves that this generation rejects abortion.

High schools are our biggest problem areas right now, as many principals simply believe they can tell pro-life students that having a pro-life group is “too controversial or political” and stop their speech. Usually, we resolve those cases with a letter from our lawyer and a few passages from the Constitution. Others, we have to take them to court and win, like we did with Parkland High School in PA.

The Stream: At which schools have administrators been proactive in protecting the free speech rights of pro-life students?  Which schools have been the worst? Do you have any sense of how the worst schools justify their inaction?

Many schools will condemn violence against pro-lifers, most recently St. Louis University and Northern Kentucky University. But what is needed now is for schools to bring students who harm the free speech rights of pro-lifers to justice. We need to see more than a letter from an administrator.

Others have a long way to go. For example at the University of Missouri (MIZZOU) a student service coordinator sent out a “trigger warning” telling students they may want to walk a different route to avoid a Students for Life display, which contained zero graphic images but instead just explained in words the violence of abortion.

Typically, school officials who shut down speech use the logic that they are protecting the sentiments of other students. But all students advocating for a peaceful conversation on a human rights issue should be heard. Abortion is violence to women and their preborn children, and with so many taking place each year, we should be talking about what happens to people in abortion clinics and what other choices they have.

The Stream: What’s the hardest part about being a pro-life student at most colleges?

Fighting against the weight of political correctness. There is a lot of media support, Hollywood support, Planned Parenthood lobbying support for the abortion mentality, which tells women that they can’t walk and chew gum … that without abortion, they will not be able to achieve anything worthy of their potential. But we believe that women can finish their educations and achieve their career goals while becoming mothers. We believe they are strong enough. And we want to talk about that.

The Stream: What are your top five tips for pro-life students to stay encouraged and effective?

• Ask for a platform. Schools have a process for authorizing student speech. Take advantage of that.
• Join with other students. We find that once a student comes forward saying, “I’m pro-life,” others will speak up to. So get organized.
• Be courageous. Being pro-life means that we are standing up for those without a voice. Don’t be afraid to host events that will cause controversy and get people talking. Push back and seek legal counsel when your administration has “lost” your application for club status for the past 5 months. Don’t be afraid to go and pray and witness in front of Planned Parenthood or other abortion facility in your community. Just standing there on a Saturday morning can save lives.
• Be creative.  Generation Z and Millennials have tremendous skills and talents to put to work as a voice for the voiceless.
• Keep talking. Not everyone wants to hear what we are saying, and that’s okay. We must keep communicating Truth to reach those most targeted by the abortion industry.

The Stream: What are the most hopeful signs for pro-life college students?

The fact that we are seeing explosive growth nationwide. When we launched Students for Life of America full-time in 2006, we thought there were about 100 active student groups. Today we serve more than 1,170 in all 50 states, and counting. Poll after poll proves that this generation rejects abortion. Abortion is an issue that cuts across partisan lines and ideological lines because so many of us have seen our brothers and sisters via ultrasound or, through own life experiences; we understand abortion never really solves a problem, but instead creates others. Students care about social justice, and they are courageous in confronting the cruelty of abortion.