A group of Des Moines Area Community College Students that criticized the school’s administration for providing support to the Iowa Governor’s LGTBQ Conference is holding their own event today on campus. Jake Dagel is the president of the DMACC group.

“Our student group, Young Americans for Freedom is bringing in pro-family, pro-life, speaker Bradley Dean from Minnesota to send a message to Iowa that pro-traditional marriage and pro-life issues matter to Iowans, and that’s why we’re bringing him in,” Dagel says.

Dagel protested D-MACC’s contribution of $1,000 that paid for some students to attend the conference, saying some sessions of the conference bullied Christians and conservatives. “DMACC used taxpayer money to support that conference and so just as an alternative for people who hold the opposite views, this is the event we are hosting for them,” Dagel says.

He says their guest speaker is a good one to support their message. “Bradley Dean is an activist from Annondale, Minnesota. He’s spoken all across the county. He spoke in Dunkerton, Iowa last year where he was kicked out of a public high school for speaking the truth about homosexuality, abortion, the constitution,” Dagel says.

“Those are the same issues we expect him to address when he speaks to us.” A spokesperson for DMACC said at the time the school was not trying to promote any particular lifestyle, and was just trying to raise awareness.

DMACC president, Rob Denson, told Radio Iowa that is still the case, and the school will provide the same amount of support to this event as they provided for the LGBTQ conference.

“Because they are a student organization, they are allowed to use the FFA center for free. That’s a 400-dollar value. And DMACC is providing another 600 (dollars) for students,” Denson says. “We are not sponsoring their speaker, we are not sponsoring meals, we are supporting DMACC students who want to attend.”

Denson says they try to be open about all points of view. “The same rules apply, I’ve said this throughout this entire incidence. We want to support our students to give them an opportunity to be exposed to different views. We supported 50 students to attend the governor’s conference, and I told Mr. Dagel that we would provide the same support,” Denson says.

Dagel and Denson traded emails about how the school would support the Young Americans for Freedom event. Denson says both are ending up with equal support. “It’s a little different here, only because the governor’s conference was not on the DMACC campus. It was at Prairie Meadows, so the facility use was not calculated there because they were not using our facility,” Denson says.

“Dagel is using our facility, the FFA facility. Part of the value he receives comes from that, but it’s the exact same amount of money. The event with Bradley Dean is tonight at seven o’clock at the FFA Enrichment Center on the DMACC campus in Ankeny.