The Stanford University Undergraduate Student Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning a proposed YAF campus lecture featuring Matt Walsh. The move comes just a few days after the senate reluctantly approved conservative students’ request for funding to host the event.
The resolution begins with a trigger warning: “This resolution mentions transphobia, misogynoir [misogyny directed towards black women], violence, and suicide.”
“Matt Walsh has created a children’s book and documentary that invalidate trans identities and continues to spread harmful messages putting trans and queer people at risk,” the first statement claims.
The resolution continues, citing previously debunked suicide and murder rate statistics among “Black and Latinx transgender women,” in a shamelessly ridiculous attempt to imply that Walsh’s lecture will pose a physical threat to students who experience gender dysphoria.
The student senators also made sure to note that, if given the choice, they would not have approved the event. Unfortunately for them, taking that course of action would violate their responsibility to uphold fellow students’ First Amendment rights.
The student governments of all but one of the seven college campuses that Matt Walsh visited during his fall semester “What is a Woman?” tour placed as many hurdles as they possibly could in the paths of students organizing the events.
Despite these challenges, supportive and undecided students filled the auditoriums to maximum capacity during each stop along the tour–even at the University of California-Berkeley, which is consistently ranked one of the most liberal universities in the United States. Clearly, those who have been put in charge of these student governments are working against the interests of those they are supposed to represent.
Instead of hearing out Walsh’s reasonable beliefs, which are rooted in common sense, the student government is choosing to encourage disruptions: “The Undergraduate Senate endorses counter-protest efforts that support trans and queer students and will actively work to support planned events in support of the queer community during this event.”
Seamus Callaghan, who leads the conservative club on campus, told YAF, “Our organization believes it is vital to inform students who may have been affected by this ideology or know someone who has, about the facts surrounding gender issues in order to make good decisions for their health and wellbeing.”
The date of Walsh’s proposed campus lecture at Stanford University has not yet been scheduled. Keep an eye on Young America’s Foundation’s events page for the latest updates.
