by Jeremy Beer
Two campus student organizations, Lifesavers and the Young Conservatives of Texas, have asked the dean of the law school, M. Michael Sharlot, to publicly apologize for the law school's involvement in supporting a Planned Parenthood fundraiser held last year.
In connection with the fundraiser, the Austin American-Statesman ran an advertisement from Planned Parenthood thanking those who had sponsored tables. Included on the list was "The UT Law Faculty."
This immediately raised eyebrows among students who were concerned that university funds had gone to sponsor a fundraiser for the nation's largest provider of abortions. Sonia Mohammed, chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas, raised this issue in a Daily Texan op-ed.
Dean Sharlot reacted quickly, insisting in a letter to the Texan that only personal funds of individual faculty members had been used to sponsor the table. But for many this raised another question: why was the University or the Law School mentioned at all in the Planned Parenthood material? In a letter to Dean Sharlot, this writer asserted that the advertisement "misused the University of Texas at Austin name. It also implies that every member of the faculty contributed to the fundraiser with personal funds; this is hard to believe and is almost certainly untrue."
In response to that letter, Dean Sharlot admitted that not all faculty members had contributed to the fundraiser, and that the charge of misusing the University name was "a legitimate issue." He agreed to "be more sensitive to the implication of general agreement when it concerns a non-university activity that engenders strong disagreement as is the case with Planned Parenthood." He also stated that he would "cooperate in any investigation."
The dean's apparent good-faith willingness to cooperate with any investigation led Lifesavers and the Young Conservatives of Texas to ask Dean Sharlot to come forth with a public apology via a letter to the editor of the Daily Texan. According to Angela Beer, President of Lifesavers, the group wants the university community to know that "there are students on this campus who do not take lightly university support of infanticide."
Dean Sharlot has yet to respond.
Jeremy Beer is a graduate student in psychology and can be reached at jbeer@mail.utexas.edu