The council awards tens of thousands of dollars per year to student groups using money from the $35 activities fee students pay on their termbill. A clause in the council’s constitution prohibits the council from giving money to groups that discriminate. To gain recognition from the council, student groups also have to sign an agreement pledging to follow the clause.

HRCF allows any student to become a member, but does require its officers to affirm that they are Christians, according to Prisca E. Shrewsbury ’03, a member of the group’s executive board.

“We don’t feel that his charges that we’re just a discriminatory group in general are really founded,” Shrewsbury says. “We’re a group that makes every effort to be diverse and to be welcoming to every person on campus who would like to be a member.”

She says its open membership policy satisfies the requirements of the Handbook for Students. It is important for the group’s officers to be Christian because they lead Bible study and prayer, according to Shrewsbury.

While HRCF is not taking an official stance on Lurie’s campaign, executive board member Lara M. Bushak ’03 criticizes Lurie for raising the sensitive issue at the council meeting without first contacting HRCF and allowing the group to clarify its position.

“He’s not exactly trying to uphold the purposes of student clubs, and it seems like he might be pushing his own agenda a little bit, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable voting for him as president,” Bushak says.

Other Christians, like Grizzle, have been more vocal, pointing to Lurie’s penchant for making fun of Christianity (his website cites evangelical Christians as his “favorite group to mock”) as a reason to believe he is anti-Christian.

On Friday, Lurie added a disclaimer to his website in response to what he called “vicious postings” in his guestbook: “This entire page and everything on it is a JOKE. It is SATIRE. It is NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. I just wanted to be clear on that because some people are stupid and can’t tell the difference between humor and not-humor.”

Lurie says he thinks religious groups fill a niche on campus as long as they have a policy of inclusion.

“I’m not saying I’m going to get all these groups off campus,” Lurie says. “That’s not what I want to do.”

Agreeing to Disagree

Lurie and Misono are friends who admit that they have differences on some issues, including the HRCF controversy. Misono says he has no official position on the issue but says he encourages “healthy discussion.”

Lurie says their disagreements only make their partnership stronger.

“If we can work out a compromise between ourselves, it’s more likely to be accepted by more people,” he says.

Misono says he supports many of Lurie’s ideas, which he feels aren’t represented by the other tickets.