UMD TPUSA faces excessive security fee for campus event
The University of Maryland’s Turning Point USA chapter is fighting back against what it calls a ‘viewpoint-discriminatory security fee’ for a campus speaking event.
FIRE sent a letter to UMD saying the school violated the group’s constitutional rights and calling on administrators to rescind the fee.
A Maryland conservative student group is speaking out after the school imposed an excessive security fee for an event it plans to host.
Turning Point USA at University of Maryland, College Park, is fighting back after the university imposed a discriminatory security fee for an event featuring Cabot Phillips, Daily Wire senior editor and former Campus Reform editor-in-chief.
The chapter says the school refused to allow the event if it did not pay the extra security fee.
”He did say, ‘We will not approve this event unless you first pay this fee,’” Connor Clayton, the group’s communications chair, told CBS News. Clayton is a correspondent with Campus Reform.
The school denies weaponizing the fee against the organization, noting in a statement, “The university imposes the same type of screening requirements and related security fees on other event hosts holding similar types of guest speaker events, regardless of the content or viewpoint of the event organizer, speaker, or their respective messages.”
Clayton disagrees, however, and states that his chapter has never been charged a security fee for past events where university police were present.
[RELATED: Tulane University delays approval of TPUSA chapter revival]
”It’s basically saying, anybody, if they want to threaten our chapter or threaten us because of our viewpoints and our speech, then the university, in turn, is going to impose financial burdens on us, or else we can’t have our events,” he remarked. “That is a very dangerous precedent to put on a Turning Point chapter.”
Clayton maintains that the group will not pay the fee, but still plans to hold the event, saying, “If the university would like to provide that free of charge like they have in the past, we are totally fine with that. But to say that we have to pay the security fee or this event is not happening, that’s blatantly unconstitutional, and we definitely have a contention with that.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression blasted the school in a letter, saying that such a fee “violates TPUSA’s First Amendment rights and puts freedom of expression at UMD at risk,” and that it “must immediately rescind the security fee requirement.”
The letter also says the school refused to staff the event with University of Maryland Police and instead demanded the group retain the services of a third-party security team “due to security concerns.”
FIRE said that UMD cannot charge the fee “because others in the community might feel offended by an event and subsequently become violent or disruptive,” and refers to the situation as a “heckler’s veto.”
All relevant parties have been contacted for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
