Campus Reform: Florida Atlantic University

On Tuesday, Ave Maria University filed suit against the Obama administration over the controversial HHS mandate which requires Catholic institutions to pay for birth control and abortafacients for their employees.

Since the details of the mandate were announced and it became clear that religious exemptions for Catholic institutions would not be available, every single US Catholic bishop (that's 181 bishops) has spoken out against the mandate.

The list of Catholic institutions which have taken a stand also continues to grow. At this time, only two Catholic universities have filed lawsuits, but more are expected in the coming weeks; those are Ave Maria and Belmont Abbey College. Other Christian colleges which have filed suit include Geneva College and Colorado Christian University. While CCU's suit is being handled by the Alliance Defense Fund, the other lawsuits, including Ave Maria's, are being handled by The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty.

This post is part of CampusReform.org's guide to the nation's top 100 colleges. Each day, CampusReform.org profiles a different college, examines its political climate, and offers items of interest to conservative students, parents, and alumni. Click here to see the full list of college profiles.

The University of Miami (Miami) is a private research university located in Coral Gables, Florida. Established in 1925, Miami today enrolls 9,855 undergraduate students and 5,259 graduate students, and employs 2,505 faculty members.

Campus Life

Of the 14 political campus groups, 11 are liberal and three are conservative.

The liberal groups are Amnesty International; Earth Alert; Eco Forum; Emerging Green Builders; Greenpeace; Multicultural Student Affairs; Students for Equality; Students Toward a New Democracy; Sustainable U; UM Young Democrats; and VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood.

The conservative groups are the College Republicans, Respect Life, and Students for a Free Cuba.

Faculty

The faculty at the University of Miami have donated overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. In the 2008 presidential election, 86% of contributing faculty and staff donated to Democratic candidates according to campaign finance data from the Huffington Post.

The university president, Donna Shalala, was the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration.

The University of Miami, like other universities across the country, has made it its mission to ignore students' individual rights and ban smoking on campus. 

Rather than letting students make their own lifestyle choices, the University has assumed the role of "nanny state" to regulate individual behavior on campus.

Attempts by universities to control student behavior creates a slippery slope.  What will be the next behavior universities deem "unhealthy"? Will potato chips and soda be outlawed from campus because they can make you fat?

If you are a student at the University of Miami start planning to protect your individual rights on campus. Check out what students at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor did to protest a smoking ban on their campus:

On Monday night the Saint Thomas University Students for Human Life listened to a talk given by Dr. Robert Kennedy of the UST Center for Catholic Studies. The discussion was on how the current healthcare debate fits into Catholic doctrine, and its notion of sanctity of life. He discussed what the Catholic church condones, and what it would look for in an ideal bill. While this group is fervently non-partisan, it was overwhelmingly acknowledged that the current bills being put forth by the majority party in Congress do not agree with the aforementioned doctrine.

I will be attending the St. Thomas activities fair tomorrow to meet with the conservative groups on campus.

I will be on campus to celebrate the constiution and meet any meet its supporters. Come out and win copies of the constitution and make a difference.