This fall, the University of Arkansas began putting up framed posters of the Ten Commandments in each building on its campus in Fayetteville. The move is in compliance with state law. Act 573 passed during the most recent Arkansas legislative session. That law, however, has been challenged by families in several K-12 public schools across the state and was blocked by a federal judge from going into effect for those districts in August.
But no lawsuit has been filed on behalf of university students. The installation of the signs has sparked backlash from some faculty and students. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth reports.
It’s a rainy November evening on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville as several students, faculty and staff mingle in a third floor lecture hall in the Human and Environmental Sciences Building. Junior horticulture major Nathan Gray pulls up a slideshow before addressing the crowd.
“I appreciate everybody being here. Tonight’s teach-in is about Act 573, which is the new law that was passed in Arkansas earlier this year, which requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public classroom as well as libraries, colleges, and government buildings across the state.”
Gray is part of the recently formed student group At What Point, which opposes the installation of Ten Commandments posters in university classrooms. And tonight he’s hosting a teach-in to help update people on the state law and history of religious displays in public schools in America.
“So whenever I heard about this first being implemented, I honestly kind of was shocked and I thought it was a joke at first. And upon seeing that there weren’t a whole lot of other people discussing this or bringing it up, I kind of took it upon myself to organize this, and I knew that there were faculty that felt like minded about this, as well as graduate students and alumni. So I was kind of trying to rally everybody together who I knew felt the same way and kind of just get everybody into one space so that we can share our beliefs. And even the people who don’t feel the same way that they can, um, kind of just maybe learn a little bit about act five hundred seventy three and how it affects everybody at the university.”
That law, Act 573 of 2025 requires all public school classrooms and libraries, as well as institutes of higher learning prominently display a quote, durable poster, or framed copy of a historical representation of the Ten Commandments. According to the law. Those posters have to be donated or paid with voluntary contributions. In October, the University of Arkansas received five hundred donated posters from a Christian group, Counteract USA, which was founded by University of Arkansas alum Abigail DeJarnatt. Out of the eleven four year public universities in the state, the University of Arkansas Fayetteville campus is the only one which has so far received donated posters.
University of Arkansas spokesperson John Thomas said in a statement that the university is in the process of hanging all of these sixteen by twenty inch framed posters in accordance with state law. And since the news broke in October, Gray says the mood on campus has been tense.
“It’s definitely seemed like it’s been a little bit hushed up, I will say, whenever I brought it up personally and individually with people one on one, I feel like they’re a lot more willing to give their actual opinion on it and how they feel about it, but it seems like whenever when it comes to group discussions, everyone, everyone is a little bit timid and afraid to kind of talk about it because I think these the sponsors of this bill kind of knew that religion is a touchy subject and that people aren’t willing to bring it up whenever they don’t really have to. So far, the response has been almost somewhat apathetic from students, because I think they might not really even know what’s going on to the full extent.”
Verna Labitad is the other organizer for the student group At What Point, she says a lot of fellow students are mostly confused about the Ten Commandments going up, and may not realize the precedent being set by these posters on their campus.
“This affects everybody here. It affects your friends. It affects the community. It doesn’t matter what religion or wherever you come from, it affects you because it affects your constitutional rights. And the student body should care about that. Because if we don’t advocate for our own rights, who will?”
And that’s why she and Gray wanted to hold a teach-in to help give context to the situation and hear from others of the campus community. The two speakers who presented tonight include University of Arkansas law professor John Thorland and music professor Stephen Caldwell.
“I am just disappointed that the university has not offered an explanation. If they are going to violate our constitutional rights, I believe that we deserve to know why. To merely say that they are complying with a law, a law that has been litigated. A law that we know is clearly unconstitutional, a law that will remain clearly unconstitutional until such time that the Supreme Court overturns Stone v Graham and goes in a new direction, then all parties are knowingly and willingly violating the constitutional freedoms of all the faculty, the staff and the students on this campus. And I think it’s wrong.”
Caldwell sponsored a faculty Senate resolution opposing the new law back in May. He is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit Stinson v. Fayetteville School District Number one on behalf of his son, which was argued before the Western District of Arkansas in July. In August, the court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the display in certain school districts across the state of Arkansas.
Caldwell says the decision by the university to put up the Ten Commandments is perplexing, especially as many K-12 schools in the state have opted to wait until the pending lawsuit is settled.
“The biggest point here is that this has been litigated over and over and over again. Stone v Graham ruled in nineteen eighty that the Ten Commandments in public schools is illegal and a violation of the constitutional rights. The conversation ends there until such time as the Supreme Court overrules itself, and they are the only entity that can overrule itself. And so there’s a great model for this in the last few years in the abortion debate.
“So as Roe v Wade remained good law and states, especially in the South, started passing anti abortion laws, none of those laws could go into effect until such time that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which they did in the Dobbs decision, and then the states who passed those laws could put those laws into effect. This is an almost identical situation where we have a Supreme Court precedent, which is clear, which is in good standing. And yet we have institutions that are knowingly and willingly complying with a law they know to be unconstitutional.”
And while most everyone here tonight opposes the posters, the argument for putting them up, according to the drafters of that original legislation, is that it promotes good moral grounding and civic education. Speaking during a legislative committee meeting in April, the bill’s sponsor, Representative Alyssa Brown, a Republican from Heber Springs, said the posters are an attempt to educate students on how the U.S. Constitution was framed.
“You cannot separate the history of our nation and the founding of our law and justice system from the Ten Commandments. We send our kids to D.C. to go learn about the history of our nation, where they will go to places like the National Archives or the House floor there in the Capitol, or even the United States Supreme Court, the highest court in our land. In each of those places, they will see depictions of the Ten Commandments.”
But Caldwell disagrees that these posters, which display text of a core tenet from the Christian faith, are at all secular.
“I think the Constitution says that that is illegal. The Constitution says Congress shall make no law, the government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. And to put a poster in a public classroom that states, I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other gods before me, is the government establishing a religion which is clearly unconstitutional.”
And the state law also carries no explicit penalties for institutions that do not display the posters. But anyone on campus who tampers with the displays could be subject to criminal vandalism charges because the posters are state property. And two graduate students who declined to be interviewed on record for this report said during the teach-in that they’ve been instructed to report any graffiti moving or tampering of the posters by students to their supervisors.
Verna Labitad says despite attempts to contact university administration, she and her group have not had any communication, but says the next step is to keep pushing for answers.
“We are actually trying to get three petitions going. One of them is to remove the posters before the next two that I’m going to talk about, which are the open forum petitions. Basically, we want to get an open discussion going with the university itself and get that sort of document since they haven’t posted any public statement besides just we’re complying with the law.”
And while the future of the Ten Commandments displays on the university campus is still up in the air, Act 573 is similar to laws in Texas and Louisiana, which are all on similar tracks toward each of their circuit courts of appeals. If the circuit courts issue conflicting decisions, or states continue to appeal this historical argument, the issue will likely land before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
