This past Thursday, U.S. District Judge John Shabaz
delivered a decision that mandates a return to the viewpoint neutrality that is
the Student Services Finances Committee?s modus operandi. He did so by ruling
that the University of Wisconsin must reimburse the Roman Catholic Foundation
of UW for expenses that should have been covered by SSFC in the first place.
What does this decision mean? Is it a victory for freedom of speech? A massive
slap in the face for the Establishment Clause?
Well, neither actually. It?s a constitutional necessity but
an unfortunate defeat in the battle against lower tuition.
The Establishment Clause prohibits the creation of a state
religion. However, SSFC funds any organization, religious or otherwise, worthy
of segregated fees. So the Jewish Cultural Collective and the Campus Women?s
Center, for example, should also be covered in its budget. What is troubling is
the fact that this funding for student groups has been allowed to expand so
dramatically.
The idea that students should fund student groups by
mandate, and not voluntarily, assumes as its premise, that SSFC has a better
idea of what to do with our money than we do. It also means that not only is
the SSFC going to protect everyone?s right to free speech ? a worthy cause ? it
is also going to subsidize it. While the idea of taking a relatively minor
contribution from every student in order to fund a wide variety of
organizations is not detestable in and of itself, the implications for students
can be dangerous if caution is not used.
How can SSFC objectively determine what is essential to an
organization?s mission? RCF-UW, for example, won $30,000 in the decision for
expenses incurred from running evangelical camps and printing Lenten booklets,
among other things. The final SSFC budget for the Roman Catholic Foundation
amounted to $288,334 for this year alone.
Trust me on this. I?m Catholic. Every time that collection
basket gets passed around, everything is silent from Washington all the way up
to Franklin, except for the rustle of dollar bills. It is not like we need the
money.
However, RCF-UW is not the only recipient of extravagant
funding. Other contestants for shopper of the year included the MultiCultural
Student Coalition at $379,090, the Asian and Pacific American Council at
$173,801 and the Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow at $196,556.
If all these other groups are going to get SSFC money, then
RCF-UW should get it too. And if the pie isn?t big enough for everybody, why,
we should just expand the pie!
At this juncture, funding grants that go above and beyond an
organization?s actual requirements are almost whimsical, because they cost so
little. But the General Student Services Fund, which pays for student groups,
has seen its budget expand by 226 percent since the 2001-02 academic year.
The budget is metastasizing at so fast a rate that the
concerns of cash-strapped students may start to be outweighed by the
dangerously vague concept of an ?extracurricular educational experience.?
If rising tuition rates are truly a problem ? and I?m not
the only person convinced that they are ? we must become cognizant of the fact
that there is no single culprit who is responsible. It starts with a series of
ideas and programs, noble in their aims and modest at first. They are for the
good of everyone, the reasoning runs, so why shouldn?t everyone pay the price?
With the bus passes and the Wisconsin Union, as well as the student groups,
that may be true. But awareness of our shared responsibility in the climate of
a university is far from a blank check.
We shouldn?t arbitrarily cease funding student groups.
Although any fiscally responsible person would oppose most kinds of
extracurricular fees leveled on the students on principle, there is a clear
educational benefit to be had from removing some of the financial obstacles to
any valid organization that wants to get its message across. Nonetheless, if
there was ever an opportunity to exercise restraint, the time is now. The GSSF
budget must not expand by another 226 percent.
The cry will inevitably be raised that any column expressing
the view that SSFC should become more responsible in its spending decisions
across the board is a heartless Republican crossbow aimed at the intellectual
heart of this university.
Far from it. This is an appeal to caution and reason.
If the GSSF budget has grown this much in the past, there is
little reason to believe it will cease to do so in the future. What is needed
now is a crystal-clear reminder that no matter how desirable it is to grab,
there is no such thing as a free lunch.
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Sam Clegg ([email protected])
is a freshman majoring in creative
writing.
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