[media-credit name=’CARL JAEGER/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]The Associated Students of Madison's Student Judiciary adjudicated a dispute Sunday between the Student Services Finance Committee and the Asian Pacific American Council, which was denied funding by the committee.
The petition was brought by Johnny Ly, chairman of the Asian Pacific American Council. APAC was denied contract eligibility by SSFC on Sept. 13 for the 2007 academic year.
APAC rejected SSFC's rationale for the rejection and contended the decision violated ASM bylaws, specifically the clauses assuring viewpoint neutrality in deliberations. The complaint did not take issue with the actual rejection in which SSFC has wide discretionary power.
The basis for SSFC's rejection of APAC's eligibility rested on ASM bylaw 2.03B3C, which states in part: "This benefit or service may include event programming and/or leadership development opportunities, but must also have significant additional components."
In justifying its 2-3-1 vote not to extend contract eligibility, the members of the committee cited the last portion of the clause as where APAC fell short.
APAC, which functions as an umbrella organization for seventeen Asian student organizations, contended that simply fostering cooperation between these registered student organizations constituted a "significant additional component" to its operations, while the committee disagreed.
Several statements supporting APAC's position were read prior to opening arguments.
Ly's case and statements revolved around four main contentions: SSFC considering the order of items in the eligibility application to determine importance and significance, when the order was immaterial to the actual application; the committee members looked at the group's budget when determining eligibility; the committee held the group's newsletter was not adequately distributed, when this had little bearing on eligibility; and the committee looked to the group's history, which isis prohibited in bylaws.
Chair Alex Gallagher, Legal Counsel Patrick Elliot and Secretary Kurt Gosselin represented SSFC in the proceedings.
Elliot did the bulk of the speaking, eventually providing an extensive rebuttal to Ly's four main points.
Elliot said the quotes used to bolster APAC's claims were taken out of context and submitted the whole 86-minute recording of SSFC's proceedings as an exhibit.
Elliot stated an SSFC member did move to consider the order of activities listed in the application to determine importance, but was eventually stopped by Gallagher.
Similarly, the issues related to budget and the group's newsletter were considered by the committee, but only to determine how they showed "significant additional components" in the organization's activities.
With regard to history, Gallagher pointed out while ASM bylaws prohibit discrimination against registered student organizations lacking an organizational history, there is no obligation to disregard that history if it exists.
SSFC has taken a harder line this year with regard to eligibility for segregated student fee funding.
"Many of the groups that we have denied say that they do lots of event programming, without providing a service, and that's really the biggest distinction here, and it's something that should have been made in previous years, but at least it's being addressed now," Gosselin said.
Ly said his organization is necessary on campus and hopes to get the previous ruling overturned.
"The most harmful thing about all of this is that we can no longer be that unified voice for Asian student organizations going forward," Ly said.
A ruling on APAC is expected in the coming week.