State School Gives $1,600 to Pay for Abort73 Shirts

Towson University is the second-largest public university in Maryland, so you can imagine my surprise last year when I found out that their student government gave Towson PROLIFE (a campus pro-life group) $1,600 with which to buy Abort73 T-shirts. How does that happen and how can it be reproduced at other schools?! John W. Eubank IV, the student most responsible for securing the funds, describes his success this way:

I ran for Student Government Association (SGA) Senator and got the position last year. During my term in the senate I got religious groups funded (the only group that wasn't funded on campus) by pulling a couple supreme court cases and some lower court cases basically saying a Public University cannot discriminate just because a group is of a religious orientation.
  
After fighting for most of a semester, I finally won the argument and religious groups were funded. Since that time I have been known as a senator who stands up for equality.
   
Now to the good part.

The SGA budgeting process clearly says that it does not fund t-shirts, except there is a clause that says the Senators can break policy when they think it is a reasonable request.

The Queer Student Union (QSU) on campus comes once a year and asks for $1,000-$2,000 in t-shirts and the SGA funds them. This has been the only student group the SGA funds for t-shirts.

However, this year when the QSU submitted their request for t-shirts, I also submitted a request for the Pro-life t-shirts. The entire SGA knew that if they funded the QSU t-shirts they had to fund the Pro-life t-shirts, because they had to be fair and equal in the budgeting of student groups. So they voted in favor of giving the Pro-life group $1,600 for t-shirts.

For other student groups I recommend they try to get a member into their SGA and if they can't to definitely get a copy of the budgeting process and read it over carefully looking for loopholes. Also, tell them to keep a close eye on what gets budgeted and if they see another group get t-shirts paid for, to submit a request for their t-shirts to get paid for.

My group gets roughly $7,000 a semester or $14,000 a year from the SGA in grants, supplementals, and budgets (we are required to fundraise 15% of whatever we ask for).

John W. Eubank IV
Towson University SGA Senator
Co-President Towson PROLIFE

John's last statement should encourage pro-life college students as much as the $1,600 for the T-shirts. Now that Abort73 is giving more focussed attention to formal, campus outreach (see Abort73 Campus Blitz), we hope that many more campus clubs will follow John's lead. Even if you can't get funding for T-shirts per se, there's a very good chance you can get funding for Abort73 flyers, frisbees, promo cards, pens, and ad campaigns. The money is often there; it's just a matter of going out and getting it.