Money for Madison Masses

Chancellor John Wiley of the University of Wisconsin- Madison has approved use of student activity funds for the UW Roman Catholic Foundation, which conducts Catholic services for students at the campus. The funding is subject to approval by the UW Board of Regents.

All UW students are required to pay a student-activity fee, which pays for student government, campus extra-curricular events, and expenses of recognized student organizations. Six years ago a group of conservative law students sued UW over the fee, claiming that it forced them to support groups they found offensive. The case (1) was ligitaged all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled that the fee was constitutional, provided that the money was distibuted to student groups regardless of their viewpoint. As a result, the University eliminated a provision in its rules that barred funding for activities which are "politically partisan or religious in nature."

Even then, the UW-Madison Dean of Students issued a memo barring the use of university funds for church-related activity, but allowing them to be used for "educational and expressive activities that are religious in nature." Get the difference?

This dispute parallels the recent imbroglio over Bible-classes led by a resident-assistant in a UW-Eau Claire dormitory. The question of whether the use of public funds or facilties to further religious objectives violates the First Amendment underlies both cases.

While the First Amendment prohibits "the establishment of religion" but protects the "free exercise thereof", the Fourteenth Amendment bars any state from denying anyone the "equal protection of the laws." To me, the only way for government to honor both provisions is to remain neutral on the subject of religion-----not only impartial between different religions, but also between all religion and atheism.

Since blatantly atheistic student groups (be they Leninist or Lennonist) could qualify for funding from student activity fees, religious groups must be accorded the same right, lest the latter be denied equal protection. Since students are bound to differ widely on political, social and religious issues, the present system guarantees that students will pay for the promotion of beliefs they oppose. Is there a fairer way to fund student activities on campus?

One obvious alternative is to replace the mandatory activity fee with a program of voluntary contributions to groups of the student's choice. UW will never adopt this option because most students would probably give nothing, and student activities would ground to a halt.

A more viable change would be to keep the mandatory fee, but allow each student to allocate a portion of this fee to the groups of his or her choice, just as many employers allow workers to allocate charitable contributions deducted from their paychecks. Just as parents may select a religious school under Wisconsin Parental School Choice, students could select to support a Christian, Jewish or Muslim student group. The courts (including both the Wisconsin and US Supreme Court) have approved the constitutionality of Parental School Choice, so the proposed allocation system should be OK too.

But do UW officials want a fairer system?

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(1) UW System Board of Regents versus Southworth.