This story was written by one of Teen Vogue's 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
Student protesters recently took a stand against a Trump-appointed judge with a history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights, insisting he is the wrong person to weigh in on free speech issues on college campuses.
Through two events — a silent and peaceful protest organized by undergraduate students and a counter-event planned at the same time as Duncan’s event called “Protecting LGBTQ+ and Civil Rights,” organized by law students — Villanova University students showed their disapproval for federal judge Kyle Duncan presence at their school.
Duncan was invited to address Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law for an event entitled “Free Speech and Higher Education.”
As a federal judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, Duncan has worked to restrict trans students’ bathroom access, advocated for Louisiana’s same-sex marriage ban, and fought against a contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, among other conservative stances. According to Vox, Duncan also had a career as general counsel for a conservative Christian law firm before his time on the bench began, and “few lawyers have done as much anti-LGBTQ legal work as Kyle Duncan.” Students wanted to show their disappointment with the administration for inviting him to speak.
“I felt that it was important as a leader to be here in person to very clearly voice my disapproval, instead of just putting a statement out and not doing anything else about it,” Akintade Asalu, Villanova’s undergraduate Student Government Association’s Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, told Teen Vogue.
“I think that it is high time that not only with this event, but with other events that we've held in the past that the school and the institution as a whole begins to acknowledge and really reconcile our history with bigotry,” Asalu, who attended the silent undergraduate protest, continued.
In a statement to Teen Vogue, a Villanova administrator said, “As a faith-based institution of higher education, fostering dialogue and discussion is core to our values, Augustinian mission and Catholic heritage. We are committed to providing the Villanova community opportunities to engage on relevant topics—controversial and otherwise—believing that everyone benefits from open, thoughtful, rigorous, and respectful discourse. In the pursuit of education and understanding diverse viewpoints, a wide variety of speakers are invited to campus.”
Because of his record on anti-LGBTQ+ issues, Duncan has been met with campus protests before, notably last spring at Stanford University when the protest made national headlines. A dean who told Duncan that his work “has caused harm” ultimately resigned from the school.
At Villanova, the counter event held just two floors above Duncan’s event was planned by OUTlaw, an organization for LGBTQ+ law students and allies. Law professor and Villanova’s inaugural anti-poverty fellow Stephanie Sena helped put together the programming, noting the importance of providing alternate space for students who would be made uncomfortable with Duncan’s presence.
“Just because protest is legitimate, I don't believe it is the most effective course of action here,” Sena told Teen Vogue. “I felt like a better course of action would be to deny him the attention that he is seeking, and instead, create alternate programming so that students could have a choice whether or not they attend [that] talk, or whether they go to one that is hopeful that offers messaging about what the current challenges to the LGBTQ community are, and what is the work that advocate legal advocates are currently doing. [I] wanted that to be a space where students felt seen and loved and appreciated.”
President of OUTlaw, Landon Holben, expressed frustration with the law school’s choice in inviting Duncan to be the featured speaker of the free speech event.
“I do have some reservations about whether or not the administration is properly vetting, researching, [and] taking into account the students' opinions and how certain speakers like this may impact students,” he said.
He said the alternate programming was intended to offer a safe space for other students like him that might feel threatened by the event happening just two floors below.
“We're doing this to provide sort of an alternative space for students who are impacted by it or may feel uncomfortable with having someone like that in the building,” Holben said.
While the law students hosted their own event to hold space for LGBTQ+ students and allies, Villanova’s undergraduate LGBTQ+ organization, VUPride, organized a silent protest, in which they attended Duncan’s event wearing VUPride merch and rainbow pins. They also laid a trans flag over the desks they were sitting at.
One flyer advertising the protest said, “Our presence will be enough to take a stand.”
VUPride president, Max Cabral, hoped their sit-in protest sent the message to the administration of: “We're here, and we're queer, and we're ready to stand up for whatever we believe in.”
Although the VUPride protesters sat in the front of the room with their merch and flags, Duncan and the event’s moderator ignored the protesters and skipped their questions that they had written down on notecards to give to the moderator during the Q&A portion of the event. However, Cabral still thinks their protest efforts were a success and was happy that they organized something that showcased the presence of queer people on campus.
“We came in, we did what we said we were going to do,” they said. “We did not make a ruckus. We were there to be seen.”
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