Gay student fee funding ban out at Texas A&M

Conservative students at Texas A&M University took a somewhat surprising blow on Thursday after the student body president vetoed a measure that would have given students the choice to opt-out of helping fund a new LGBTQ center with their student fees.

The veto came in an effort to protect the school from “great harm to our reputation as a student body and to the students feeling disenfranchised by this bill,” John Claybrook, the student body president, explained in a letter obtained by Campus Reform.

The Student Senate-approved measure, which passed last Wednesday, would have given students the ability to funnel their student fees away from funding groups contrary to their religious or moral objections. If Claybrook had approved the measure, it still would have required approval from school administrators before going into effect.

“It would’ve been a great step in the right direction in that would’ve let students have a more of a say in where their own money, not the university’s money, would be going towards,” Eric Schroeder, an A&M student and president of the Aggie Conservative club, told Campus Reform.

Schroeder suggested to Campus Reform that the proposal might have been rejected in order to appease members of the school’s administration who openly opposed the legislation, including President R. Bowen Loftin, who told the news website that even the conversation surrounding the bill had “negatively affected” the school’s image.

Read more on the issue here.