Organizers of a counterprotest in response to the pro-Confederate rally planned for Saturday have canceled their event at the Jackson Avenue Center because of security risks and the potential threat of inclement weather.

Bill Sposato, one of the organizers of the counterprotest, said the cancellation came after determining that the University Police Department could not provide protesters with what they felt was necessary security.

“We, along with the university, tried to find viable alternatives to our plans,” he wrote in a Facebook post earlier this morning. “The problem we kept facing is that the solution would either be very safe but ineffective as platforms, or it would be an effective platform, but the university did not feel it could provide security arrangements that would be satisfactory to us and themselves.”

Sposato apologized for the cancellation and said the decision was difficult to make and one the organizers “did not make lightly.”

The two pro-Confederate groups are still planning to march on the Oxford Square at noon and organize on campus from 1- 5 p.m.