By Alyssa Allemand and Anna Hansen
During the Christmas tree decorating ceremony Wednesday (Dec. 4), the Edgewood College chamber choir silently protested the removal of a link on the college’s wellness resources page that connected to Planned Parenthood—they put “I Stand With Planned Parenthood” stickers on their music folders.
Meanwhile, Tradition Family Property (TFP) Student Action, a conservative Christian group whose stated mission is to “proudly affirm the positive values of tradition, family and private property,” claimed a victory at Edgewood because Interim President Sister Mary Ellen Gevelinger removed the Planned Parenthood link after a TFP petition signed by 15,746 people.
According to an article posted by College Fix on Dec. 2, TFP targeted Edgewood to remove the link to Planned Parenthood.
Many of TFP’s stances are considered homophobic, racist, transphobic and hateful towards various minority groups. TFP considers its activists “pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-God.” Its website includes pages such as “Top Reasons to Oppose Transgender Agenda” and “10 Reasons Why Homosexual ‘Marriage’ is Harmful.”
The petition stated that “as a Catholic institution, Edgewood College should have never included Planned Parenthood as a ‘wellness’ option for students in the first place, because the abortion provider is directly responsible for shedding innocent blood, which offends God so much.”
Abortions are only 3.4% of Planned Parenthood’s services, according to their 2019 annual report.
Gevelinger, who cited the decision to remove the Planned Parenthood link as “internal,” was quoted in the College Fix article saying, “the decision to put Planned Parenthood on the website was because the college had reduced the number of on-campus health services in recent years, and was pointing students to other areas for service, such as health care for women and men, and testing for certain diseases.”
“Since Planned Parenthood is a major provider of abortions, I asked that it be removed from the College website,” Gevelinger said. “This has been done without any public notice, and there has been no public response.”
Until today.
The article was circulated among students on social media and word of mouth on Dec. 4, the day of the college’s tree lighting ceremony, where the choir, who performed, knew Gevelinger would be in attendance.
Shawn Padley, a member of the choir and the Edgewood student organization SAFE, said the choir considered not performing as a form of protest but did not want to upset their director.
“And then one of our classmates came in and had the (Planned Parenthood sticker) already put on her binder,” he said. “And we were like, can you go make some photocopies, and we’ll all just put them on our binders and that’ll be that. So then we somehow managed to get everybody in the choir involved. Everybody put them on their folders except for me who forgot my folder, so I put it on my shirt.”
Padley said many people came up to the performers after they sang and thanked them for the silent protest.
Emergency Town Hall
Also in response to the controversy around TFP and Planned Parenthood, the Edgewood College Student Senate hosted an emergency town hall meeting to work on composing a letter to Geveligner on behalf of students.
The letter to the president will include a list of demands from students. Students expressed concern about the president’s lack of research into TFP and the college’s lack of sexual education and resources on campus.
Student Senate Faculty Advisor Ferrinne Spector Wednesday said the “very careful research” done by students that looked into TFP “was not done by the president.”
The president responded to TFP and requested the removal of the Planned Parenthood link from Edgewood’s website without consulting a cabinet or council, said Spector. In fact, the cabinet hasn’t met all semester.
More student voices
Edgewood senior Oliver Soler, chair of Edgewood College Democrats, sent out an email to students with a subject-line saying, “Edgewood Sides With Right Wing Hate Group.”
“We cannot accept this,” Soler said. “We need Edgewood College to support its students … to take a stand against hate, and we need to keep this school a place for anyone to feel safe and healthy while they get an education.”
“That means we cannot stand for outside ideological groups lobbying our institution and regressing our standards.”
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