Members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Kansas have announced their intentions to picket for 30 minutes each at Montana State University and at Bozeman High School on Monday, Sept. 9.
WBC's website says the group is picketing MSU because "MSU doesn't teach anything that will benefit their students on that great and terrible day of judgment! MSU teaches to [sic] worship yourself!"
The email that came out from the school said:
We at MSU adamantly reject the group's actions and positions. MSU is a place that welcomes diversity in all of our actions every day across our campus. WBC's message could not be further from our own.
As a state university, we are bound by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and we will honor the right of free speech and the right of people to assemble peacefully.
The Dean of Students and the leadership of the Associated Students of MSU are working collaboratively with a number of campus and community groups on how to best communicate a message that celebrates true commitment to diversity and inclusion at our university.
We at MSU believe that the response to hate speech should always be respectful speech. The answer to violence should always be healing, and the answer to ignorance should always be education. We hope that our response to this event is something we can all learn from and one that will make us feel proud.
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