by Steph Holton

For two days in mid-October a building-high, six-sided display depicting bloody images of aborted fetuses alongside photos of Nazi Germany and lynchings in the American South took up residence behind a protective metal barrier in the PSU Park Blocks.

PSU publications covered this event, detailing the gruesomeness and the collective outrage felt by what seemed to be a large part of the PSU community. While I fully believe that we should be talking about these kinds of scare-tactics, so as not to be scared by them in the future, what I really want to add to the record is how remarkable I found the student body’s response to be. Almost as soon as the display started going up that Monday morning, students began to gather around it, making impromptu signs supporting Planned Parenthood and reproductive justice, and using their own right to free speech to question the ideas being promoted by this pro-life group. In what I would deem a small victory for the student protesters, a seventh panel that had been up the first day depicting a child with Down Syndrome and making a horribly insensitive claim, was nowhere to be found on the second day.

On the Portland State campus, where there seems to be a weekly protest of one kind or another, it’s easy to become disenchanted with the notion of fighting for a cause. I feel that the PSU student body rarely voices a majority opinion on those causes. But on those two days, I was incredibly proud to be a part of a student body willing to raise its collective voice