Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal | Religion: "An evangelical student group that has been banned from advertising or meeting on the Brown University campus has enlisted the help of a national organization that defends the free-speech rights of students on college campuses.

The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announced last week that it is supporting the 100-member Reformed University Fellowship, which was notified in a Sept. 13 e-mail from the university’s chaplain, the Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson, that its status as a recognized student organization had been withdrawn.

Leaders of the group say they were given different reasons for the action. At first, they were told it was because their local sponsor, Trinity Presbyterian Church, had withdrawn its support, which it hadn’t. Then they were told that it was because the group’s former leader had been two months late in September 2005 when he submitted the group’s application to be recognized as a campus organization. But the third reason is one that group leaders say is most baffling: the Rev. Allen Callahan, Protestant chaplain, asserted they were “possessed of a leadership culture of contempt and dishonesty that has rendered all collegial relations with my office impossible.”

Student leaders said they still don’t know what he meant, and wrote a0 long letter to the chaplain’s office seeking elaboration. There’s been no response."