University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire Wages Campaign Against Student Viewpoints
April 27, 2005
Posted by jkhat at April 27, 2005 02:41 PM
The trackback entry for this page is : http://www.inthehat.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/860
I'll try to write something on this later, as I'm now something of a First Amendment scholar, but for now see the F.I.R.E. release here.
Defying the First Amendment, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) has decided to prohibit student organizations with religious or political viewpoints from receiving student-fee funding. The UWEC Student Senate approved the unconstitutional changes to student organization funding policy in mid-March, banning student groups or events that endorse "a particular ideological, religious, or partisan viewpoint" from being eligible for student-fee funding. Though FIRE has twice written UWEC about the university's responsibility to be viewpoint neutral when distributing student-fee funds, UWEC has yet to retract the unlawful new rule that violates the rights of all students to freedom of expression and legal equality. For full details, please read below.
Posted by jkhat at April 27, 2005 02:41 PM
The trackback entry for this page is : http://www.inthehat.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/860
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Comments
| # April 27th, 2005 9:36 PM bilklinton |
| Well, I work in a union shop and do have the right to not have my dues pay for certain political viewpoints and I'm a student at UWEC -- because I'm a student, I should have to fund activities for the Campus Crusade for Christ, the High and Mighty Jugglers for Peace, the Horan Hall Maoists, and the Holocaust Denial Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club? But my union dues can't go to political causes? Should UWEC have to have a check-off for all the activities I wish my student segregated fees to go/not to go to? Should students be forced to use the blunt instrument of withholding all their segregated fees and thus not allow any activities on campus? |
| # April 27th, 2005 9:49 PM james |
| bilklinton, as a student you have to fund student organizations. the organizations' viewpoints (and whether they even have viewpoints at all) are irrelevant. you and the university don't get to make judgment calls about which viewpoints you agree with and which ones you don't.
this summary of southworth v. wisconsin addresses some of your questions about the union thing. |
| # May 24th, 2005 11:55 PM Matlock |
| I went to UWEC and also was a member of the Student Senate, so I have some insight on how the Senate viewed this issue. If you look at the activities funded, they are relatively innocous. Athletics, student health, rec department, music, etc. are the best examples of the funded activities. Before the Flip Side came along, the closest we came to funding an ideological viewpoint was the student newspaper and we even grumbled about de-funding them. We specifically did not fund ideological, religious or partisan student groups for several reasons. One was that we wanted the funding to be used on groups that had a broad student appeal. A student may not ever use the student health center or the recreation department or read the student newspaper. But most reasonable people would agree that they served the general student body. Campus Crusade for Christ is a worthy organization that does good things. But it only serves Christian students. The LGBT group only serves a group of students that believe its agenda. We found all of the issues concerning funding such groups to be thorny and distasteful. Also, there is a limited pool of money available. Currently, making a decision about how to spend that money has no ideological bent -- it comes down to which organization will use it better. But when you add ideological groups to the mix, the decision is automatically viewed through a ideological prism. The LGBT group might have a better plan and be more worthy than the College Republicans to recieve money. But I'll bet you any amount we'd be viewed as raging liberals for making that decision, even on the merits. And what if the Kampus KKK group had a sound plan for spending the money? Student government should never fund based on whether they like a group's ideology (and I think we did that in funding the Flip Side), but we should be able to decide if we want to fund any ideologies at all. |