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Montana PIRG loses student funding
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by Liv Swenson
Thursday, April 1, 2004
At last week’s meeting, the University of Montana Board of Regents motioned to cease the collection of student funds for the university’s campus chapter of the Montana Public Interest Research Group.
For 22 years, MontPIRG has been the only student organization collecting voluntary student fees as a percentage of its funding. MontPIRG is proposing to allow all student organizations at the University of Montana to be eligible for student fees, as is the policy at several other state universities, including the University of Wisconsin.
Members of Montana’s College Republicans announced their opposition to MontPIRG’s proposal at the regent meeting. Statewide College Republican chair Jake Eaton believes that the university should not be involved in funding political student organizations.
“The university doesn’t have any business collecting fees for a political organization through a student-fee system,” Eaton said. “It leads to uniformed decisions and can be a hassle for students.”
The regents resolved to concur with MontPIRG’s proposal but subsequently resolved to repeal the decision, five votes to two. The resolution does not specifically prohibit student organizations from receiving student fees but bans the practice at a university-system level.
“We don’t think it will have an effect on either the state or campus level,” MontPIRG statewide director David Ponder said.
According to Ponder, MontPIRG agreed with those who saw the previous student-fee system as unfair.
“We agreed that all student groups should get these fees,” said Ponder. “Then they turned it around to say that they don’t think anyone should get these fees.”
The University of Wisconsin’s chapter of PIRG, WISPIRG, collects student fees every year along with many other student organizations since the Supreme Court ruling in the Southworth v. Board of Regents case upholding the disbursement of student segregated fees, so long as they are allocated in a “viewpoint-neutral” manner. As a result of the ruling, all student organizations at UW (and, by extension, nationwide) are eligible for student fees regardless of political or religious affiliations, so long as they provide a viable “service” that enriches the intellectual life of the university and is open to all students who pay fees.
“If a student disagrees with a student organization, they have the right to create their own student group which is the opposite, and then be able to get student fees,” said Associated Students of Madison financial director Ben Hawke.
Ponder and others on the side of MontPIRG believe the regents’ decision was conservatively biased, since MontPIRG is an organization focused on the environment and liberal political-activism issues.
Ponder agrees with Montana regent Lynn Hamilton, one of the two regents who voted against the repeal, who said the vote was motivated by “a right-wing conspiracy.”
According to Ponder, MontPIRG plans to continue to find a way to collect funds from university students.
“The regents didn’t prohibit a campus-level policy, so we are going to find a fee policy that does not need regent authorization,” said Ponder. “If we can’t get a voluntary fee system, we’ll follow the Wisconsin model and try to make it mandatory. We’re grateful for the regents of Wisconsin for what they’ve done for student organizations.”
