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THE END OF STUDENT ACTIVITY GROUPS? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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Clint Tolbert, a senior and former president of the Christian fraternity Sigma Theta Epsilon at Miami, says that while his case is being financially supported by the Alliance Defense Fund, he's never seen the "Defunding the Left Action Pak." This isn't about pocketing student fee money, he says. Sigma Theta always got its money: between $1,000 and $2,000 last semester. "It's a case of equality," Tolbert says. "We have the right to be funded the same way as other activities."

Scott Phillips, the assistant general counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, speaks with the passion of a Southern Baptist minister when talking about the lawsuits. "We're not opposed to a system that lets students choose where the money goes. We'd support an atheist student who didn't want his funds to go to a Christian magazine," he says.

Taken at face value, such arguments, couched in the democratic language of free speech, seem fair and reasonable. Campus religious groups want, and should get, equal treatment. At the same time, they don't want their money to go to activities that may promote values they oppose. ADF's plan to both ensure equal treatment and avoid the funding of opposing ideologies leads to one solution: to end student fees as we know them.

Eric Brakken of the Associated Students of Madison, the University of Wisconsin's student government, believes ADF's definitions of democratic free speech will ultimately limit what can be debated on college campuses. He says its attacks are part of a desire to limit the political debates on campus, and that the "Defunding the Left Action Pak" proves his point. His school fought the first legal battle for student fees when a self-described "extreme-right" Christian law student, Scott Southworth, sued the school and won. Southworth and a few other students won by taking the "opposing-view" route. The university appealed.

"This case is so much more than objecting to funding methods, objecting to certain student groups. It's much deeper," Brakken said. "They like to limit the argument to opposing views and separate funding." Brakken argues that there might be professors on campus whose research students oppose and academic departments that don't match students' ethics. "Should I opt out of paying a portion of my tuition because of that?" he asks.

Judge Diane Wood heard the Wisconsin case and dissented, saying she feared this could be the end of a student-run tradition that started with the 1960s free speech movements. "It is commonplace to require the funding of a neutral forum," she wrote. "Taxpayers support the Mall in Washington which is used by countless speakers with a range of viewpoints. Though the government is not entitled to require a citizen to fund the Catholic Church, it is entitled to permit the Pope to conduct a mass on the Mall ... if the government had to censor the speech of Mall users to ensure it's not offensive, [it would have to] close the forum."

For more than 30 years, student governments have managed the activity fee money of their students. Independent newspapers, literary magazines and social work all get funded through student fees. "If you are taking a class and you think a particular speaker would add to the discussion outside of the classroom, the money is there for that. It just adds so much to learning," says Robin Hubbard of the Center for Campus Free Speech.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Thomas Jefferson on the evil of student fees