One student group is pushing to make free-speech issues part of this year’s Veishea weekend with a rally on campus Friday.

At 1 p.m., the Coalition for Under Represented Voices (CURV) will host a rally in the courtyard between LeBaron, MacKay and Catt Halls. The event will deal with several issues.

The group plans to gather at 12:45 at Durham Hall and march to Catt Hall before the rally.

Jason Gross, programming director for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance, said the group has looked at the way other college campuses handle free-speech issues, and, in comparison, “It’s really restricted here,” he said.

Gross cited issues such as limits on who can get a rally permit on campus and designated “free-speech zones” as examples of problems.

“When we compared this to policies at other campuses, we thought it was really strange,” he said. “This university really limits our free speech.”

Another focus of the rally will be student participation and the lack of student voices on campus, organizers said. “There’s no student participation in decisions made on campus,” Gross said. “It all comes together — the treatment of marginalized groups by the administration.”

The small number of African-American tenured professors, few minority professors and underfunded minority studies programs, Gross said, are examples.

The event will reach beyond ISU, Gross said, because members of the Black Student Union and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Union from the University of Iowa are sending representatives to join the rally. Representatives from the University of Northern Iowa, Drake University, Grinnell College and Cornell College are also expected.

“We’re trying to say that this isn’t just an issue of concern at Iowa State, but at all Iowa colleges, and across the nation,” Gross said.

CURV is also attempting to attract several nationally recognized speakers to the event. Although plans aren’t finalized, Milton McGriff, spokesman for The September 29th Movement, said he has contacted Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, about speaking.

“We’re also trying to get leaders from the Iowa and Nebraska branch of the NAACP,” he said.

McGriff said he might speak at the rally himself. “I’m concerned that our university is trying to get us to buy into ‘top-down’ management style, instead of democracy.”

“President [Martin] Jischke was sent in here to run this place like a business; he wants to dictate what we do,” McGriff said. “He said he wants to listen to us, but he’ll make all the decisions.”

Meron Wondwosen, president of ISU’s Black Student Alliance, is another possible speaker.

CURV is a coalition of ISU’s September 29th Movement, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally Alliance, the Asian Pacific-American Awareness Alliance, the Black Student Alliance, People Understand Disabilities, The Second Wave and the Latino Council.