UNM Policy Used to Charge High Security Fees for Riley Gaines Talk Struck Down
From yesterday’s decision by Judge David Herrera Urias in Leadership Institute v. Stokes (D.N.M.):
Kenna Fleig, one of TP-UNM’s co-presidents, submitted an event request form indicating that TP-UNM expected around 100 attendees for an event that would last 3.5 hours. The form noted that [the speaker, Riley Gaines,] travels with her own security, and the students did not want to request additional security. A week later, TP-UNM received an email from UNM informing them that they were required to request and accept university security…. Defendant Stump of the UNM police department … provided the students an invoice that listed the cost of security for the event as $10,202.50….
[T]he quote of over $10,000 was for every officer UNM employed—thirty-three officers; nearly one for every three attendees the students expected. When TP-UNM asked why Defendant Stump intended to assign every officer to the Gaines event, and whether it was because of the speaker or the inviting organization, he responded that “it’s all based on individual assessments,” that they were looking at the “individual,” and that “there is not a criteria [sic].”
He also told the students that if an organization were to screen the Barbie movie in a venue on campus, he likely would not require even a single officer because the UNM police were “not worried about the Barbie movie.” He then said that security was “consistent” in how it assessed fees “to Turning Point” in the past. He described past TP-UNM events featuring other conservative speakers that generated protests a
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