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BROWSE THE
IVORY TOWER
ARCHIVE

THE END OF STUDENT ACTIVITY GROUPS? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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While Miami University hopes for a ruling in favor of the status quo later this year, the University of Wisconsin has already asked the Supreme Court to hear its case against Southworth. If UW loses, it will spell the end of the current student fee system nationwide. So far, neither Miami nor Wisconsin has changed its policies.

Randy Blankenship will not say whether his case was going to strictly focus on the way Miami University divides its fee money or whether he and the other lawyer involved would follow in Scott Southworth's footsteps and argue for the abolition of student fees in general. Rather, he reemphasizes the notion that Christian student groups are being discriminating against in a most un-American way. "In the history of the First Amendment," he says, "Thomas Jefferson said it was evil to let people pay for the viewpoints of others."

"The end goal is to dismantle the fee system," insists Hubbard of the Center for Campus Free Speech. "So no one will have access to these funds because everyone will be opposing one view or another. They'd love for students to have to look off-campus for activity money."

And where might that lead? Wildlife Groups funded by Exxon? Vegan groups funded by ADM, "Supermarket to the World"?

Private citizens groups have generally won Supreme Court cases against public entities trying to enforce speech with which the groups disagree. A 1995 case in Boston went against a group of homosexual men who wanted to march in a private St. Patrick's Day parade but were denied by the parade marshals. In the first round, the state ruled against the veterans in charge and said they had to allow the gay men into the march. But when the vets took the case to the Supreme Court for round two, with Alliance Defense Fund legal help, Massachusetts' rule was overturned and the gay group lost.

ADF's first campus lawsuit was filed that same year. A student of the University of Virginia was denied money from activity fees to publish a Christian newspaper. The court ruled in favor of the Christian student, saying all viewpoints should have access to the forum funded by the mandatory fees. That ruling led schools such as Miami University to create their present two-tier systems. Ever since then, public colleges have become targets in similar lawsuits. The ruling stated that religious groups can get activity money so long as they are not proselytizing, which the groups say steps in the way of church-state separation.

"There are two types of free speech," declares ADF's Scott Phillips. "And when it comes down to private speech, you can't be forced to pay for it if the speech violates your beliefs."

At the heart of the conflict are two dueling belief systems, both in agreement that college is more than the classroom and student activities more than sporting events. While student fees almost never constitute more than a tiny percentage of a student's overall university payment, the groups that such fees support often have an indelible influence on both the tenor of campus life and student beliefs. Even some conservative pundits have registered their concern that dismantling the student fee system will have unfortunate effects on the free currency of ideas on college campuses. George Will in the Washington Post called it a "recipe for an administrative nightmare, and an incentive for universities to withdraw from funding any group potentially offensive to anyone." Among the student population, there seems to be strong support for keeping the system in place. Roughly 74 student organizations statewide signed a legal brief to support the University of Wisconsin in order to convince the Supreme Court to keep allowing all students to have equal access to the student fees, without moral evaluation.

Yet even such opposition doesn't faze the crusaders at Alliance Defense Fund. They seem prepared for a long, hard battle. "If the Supreme Court chooses to take this case, we'll focus on that," says Philips. "If not, we have other colleges waiting in the wings."
SALON | March 8, 1999

Ken Rapoza is a freelance writer living in Boston.