Opinion: Cardinals for Life President: SGA Failed Us

By Nick Swanson 

I have the honor and privilege of serving as the president of one of the largest student organizations on the campus of The Catholic University of America: Cardinals for Life. But more important than the size of our organization is our mission: we work to create a sustainable culture of life in our community and to answer St. John Paul II’s call in Evangelium Vitae to create evangelists for “the Gospel of Life.”

Our organization’s mission to advocate for the end of abortion is fundamentally in line with The Catholic University of America’s mission to be “in service of Church and Nation.” As president, I believe our organization lives up to that mission most fully when we gather on Saturday mornings to give witness prayerfully and peacefully to the Divine gift of human life on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. 

Catholic University students have made it a practice to gather at 10:00 a.m. to ride to the nearby NoMa metro stop in D.C. where there is a Planned Parenthood, and the co-sidewalk chairs lead the group of students in the rosary and divine mercy chaplet. It is a peaceful and loving witness to life.

As part of the Sidewalk Prayer event, we have made it a tradition after we finish praying to go as a group to the Dunkin’ Donuts right down the street from Planned Parenthood and directly adjacent to the NoMa metro stop.

Twice this year, Cardinals for Life has presented to the Treasury Board—the branch of student government responsible for allocating the Student Activity Fee, which is a pool of student tuition money used to fund extracurricular events for all student organizations. We requested funding to provide free donuts to those who attend Sidewalk Prayer. Our hope was that we could use this time after we finish praying to create community within our club and process our experience praying. Just as other groups have free food at their events paid for by funds allocated by the Treasury Board, we asked for free donuts for ours. The donuts were not an end in themselves but a means to creating community within our club and surrounding the Sidewalk Prayer event specifically. 

Sadly, the Treasury Board denied our request twice. Their reasons for denying us were misguided and confusing. For example, they claimed that we should have to pay for ourselves because we had done so in the past. They demonstrated a clear bias against our event when compared to the money they have given to many other events on campus. No student organization is held to these same strict scrutiny standards the Treasury Board used against us.

Given their fallacious justifications, I decided to appeal the Treasury Board’s extreme decision. I submitted a 3,600-word memo to explain our rationale for appealing. The memo laid out a comprehensive explanation for why the Treasury Board was wrong based on the explanations they gave us in their allocation decision email. After our appeal was approved by the Executive Board of the SGA (I took this as a mostly pro-forma step), the Student Government’s Senate Appeals Committee, comprised of five senators, met and unanimously agreed to a compromise to give us less money than we had requested but much more than the $0 that the Treasury Board had decided to give us.

The committee made their recommendation to the full Student Government Senate on Monday, November 1 for a debate and vote. Even though I disagreed with some of the things the recommendation memo said and found it contained inaccuracies (that were largely a result of the committee being misled), I supported the recommendation as a compromise to give Cardinals for Life something. Shockingly, however, the Senate decided to reject even this compromise recommendation. In unprecedented fashion, three Senators who agreed to the funding allocation in committee then backstabbed us on the Senate floor by voting it down and encouraging other senators to do the same. As a result, Cardinals for Life received absolutely nothing. 

Many of the senators who voted against us made illogical and red-herring arguments during the debate. For example, one senator declared that Cardinals for Life did not “do their research” and claimed that requesting money for Dunkin’ Donuts was irresponsible because it would put an excessive burden on the student activity fund. This argument was simply ridiculous given the fact that the Treasury Board funds Dunkin’ Donuts for other organizations and frequently distributes money to clubs for food that costs a lot more than Dunkin’ Donuts does. 

Another senator claimed she did not understand why we could not just pay for ourselves. Her argument made a mockery of the purpose of having a student activity fee. The debate did not pass without a few personal attacks. Furthermore, many of the senators claimed that to vote in favor of the recommendation would be disrespecting the Treasury Board—as if the senators serve the appointed members of the Treasury Board instead of the student body. That argument in particular demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of an appeals process. I suspect many of the senators were motivated by personal pro-abortion bias, a general lack of concern for our reasons for appealing, and a desire to grandstand. 

This was prompted by an unprecedented decision by the entire Treasury Board to appear at the Senate Session. One by one, each Treasury Board Director used the public comment portion of the Senate Session to advocate against the compromise recommendation by the Senate Appeals Committee and to attack Cardinals for Life. Most notably, one member of the Treasury Board declared that because she was a woman of color and a minority, the Senate should reject the compromise agreement—implying that members of Cardinals for Life were racist and sexist. 

The appearance of the Treasury Board at the session, their lobbying of senators before the session began (including trying to arrange meetings with the senators via email), and their decision to offer public comments against us demonstrated a coordinated and strategically planned attempt by the Treasurer of the Student Government Association to intimidate my organization and inappropriately influence the Senate. This was an unprecedented violation of separation of powers. Never before in SGA history has the Treasury Board been permitted to hold such an intrusive role in the appeals process of their own decision; it lacks common sense, respect, temperance, prudence, and professionalism. The Treasury Board demonstrated a level of hostility against Cardinals for Life that I believe compromises their ability to fairly allocate funds to us in the future. This puts my organization at a financial disadvantage. 

Additionally, I believe that the Treasurer misled the Senate Appeals Committee in writing and when he met with them. He wrote in a letter that he submitted to the committee that, “the [Treasury] board recommended the reformatting of the event to the organization, yet the Organization did not do so, and kept a format that many on the [Treasury] Board felt was exclusionary to the student body.” 

I believe that this statement and the ones that the Treasurer made to the Senate Committee amount to distortions of truth. The Treasury Board never recommended after our first presentation that we “reformat” our event. What the Treasurer told the Senate Appeals Committee was not true, and those distortions played a major role in their decision-making. 

The Student Government Association failed Cardinals for Life at nearly every level.

With all this said, I am incredibly thankful to the eleven senators who voted in our favor, particularly President Pro Tempore Gerald Sharpe, who gracefully rebutted the dubious arguments made by other senators and stood up for Cardinals for Life when it was not popular to do so. The other ten senators that supported us included: Tony Crnkovich, Michael Moore, Raegan Lehman, John Scott, Andrea Suarez, Maggie Bubel, Emily Bowman, Maevis Fahey, Brooke Lackey, and Christina Herman. I applaud their courage in standing up to the coordinated Senate-Treasury Board led crusade against Cardinals for Life.

I want to make clear that I do not wish to delegitimize the SGA as an institution. My criticism is simply directed at members of the SGA who abused their authority as members of the institution. I am happy to work with any members of the SGA who will put their personal differences aside and decide things on their merits. 

As the president of Cardinals for Life, I promise our organization will never give up on our mission to fight for the unborn.

Members of our community can do two things to support Cardinals for Life during this difficult time. First, I urge people to donate to our Venmo account @CardinalsForLife, which has been approved by the Office of Campus Activities at CUA. Even a few dollars can go a long way to support our important mission. This is especially important because we are in a tough financial situation. 

Second, I urge people to join us on the sidewalk outside of Planned Parenthood on Saturday mornings to pray to end abortion. We meet at the metro benches at 10:00 a.m.. 

Make no mistake, as the head of Cardinals for Life, I am disappointed by how unfairly we have been treated throughout this process. But no matter what happens going forward, I will not allow this to divert us from our work to build a more humane society that sees life as a gift that should be respected from the moment of conception to natural death. I am sorry that so many members of the Student Government Association do not want to be part of that work that supports the mission of the university in which they attend.

Nick Swanson is a senior majoring in History and Hispanic Studies. He serves as President of The Catholic University of America Cardinals for Life.