How One College Student Exposed His School’s Misuse of Millions in Student Fees
Nathan Apodaca always considered himself pro-life. But he wouldn’t have called himself a pro-life activist.
That is, until a friend took him to a Summit Ministries conference in high school. Among the speakers was Scott Klusendorf, president of Life Training Institute, a group that specializes in training pro-life advocates to defend their views.
“That’s what inspired me to start taking a deeper look into the life issue,” Nathan says.
And take a deeper look he did, launching a Students for Life chapter at his community college. And then, when he transferred to California State University-San Marcos the next semester, he quickly joined the Students for Life chapter there.
Soon after joining, he found himself in charge, and he set to work trying to spark conversations about life on campus.
But the campus did more than talk when Students for Life brought the Genocide Awareness Project to San Marcos. Designed to stir emotions and debate on life issues, the Genocide Awareness Project is a photographic display that juxtaposes pictures of aborted babies with pictures showing victims of genocide.
That display ignited a fierce debate on campus.
So, to follow up the event, Nathan and the group decided to invite Dr. Mike Adams, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and prominent pro-life speaker, to come to campus and address some of the questions that the display raised.
But when they requested a grant from the student activity fund in order to host Dr. Adams, they were turned down.
That struck Nathan as odd. After all, every student is required to pay a student activity fee, contributing to a fund totaling $1.3 million. Shouldn’t every student group have an equal chance to apply to receive that funding?
Except, when Nathan dug a little deeper, he found out that was not how it worked at all.
Instead, two favored student groups – the Gender Equity Center and the LGBTQA Pride Center – were receiving the lion’s share of the student activity fees to spend however they liked. The remaining student groups, on the other hand, were left with only a small portion of that fund – 3 percent, to be exact. And there were a lot of restrictions on how these other groups could spend that money.
The more Nathan learned, the more he realized just how unjust this system was – not to mention unconstitutional.
So, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Nathan and his student group have filed a lawsuit against the university.
You can learn more about Nathan’s story and his case in the latest issue of Faith & Justice.
In this issue you’ll also read…
- March for Life President Jeanne Mancini on building a culture of life.
- How ADF found its theme verse.
- What happened when California pregnancy centers were forced to advertise for abortion.
- What a pediatrician has to say about transgender ideology.