A federal court ruled in favor of the Student Services Finance Committee Wednesday evening in a 2009 case involving the committee’s refusal to allocate funds to a conservative student group on campus.
Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow filed the case against the sector of the University of Wisconsin student government after SSFC ruled the group ineligible for funds because it did not meet the 50 percent plus one direct service criteria, SSFC Chair Sarah Neibart said. The criteria is used to determine whether student organizations devote enough of their resources toward UW students to make funding appropriate.
According to the court’s ruling, CFACT brought the decision on the grounds of a First Amendment violation.
CFACT argued neutrality was violated because of the committee’s allocation of funds to the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group – an organization CFACT alleged paralleled its own composition and purpose too closely to not give both organizations equal consideration.
“[CFACT] alleges that its members have been deprived of their rights under the First Amendment by the university’s system for distributing campus student-activity fees,” the ruling said. ” … In the present case, CFACT alleges that the defendants have violated the viewpoint-neutrality requirement by denying it eligibility for fees from the General Student Services Fund … while at the same time granting eligibility to WISPIRG, another student group at UW-Madison that engages in the same types of activities as CFACT but from a different viewpoint.”
Still, Neibart said the comparisons to WISPIRG were irrelevant and could not be considered in order to maintain responsible and legal eligibility processes.
“As an SSFC member, you cannot take that [comparison] into account because it is violating viewpoint neutrality,” Neibart said. “You cannot compare groups to one another.”
The group was denied eligibility because it committed an intentional violation of SSFC bylaws, Neibart said in an email to the committee Oct. 9. She said the group failed to return equipment owned by the Associated Students of Madison after its eligibility for the year had expired.
While Neibart said the decision will not have much impact on her session, she said the ruling highlights SSFC’s importance to UW as an entity.
The decision, Neibart said, not only upholds all of SSFC’s decisions since the case went to court, but also sends a strong message to the UW community and for future eligibility hearings.
“The court today found that our practices are indeed viewpoint-neutral and that sets a very significant precedent,” Neibart said. “It is very significant that we win this case because it shows we have been going through our processes properly and that even UW Legal is confident in students in allocating student money – it shows we are economists and we are responsible.”
Neibart said the court’s ruling will not have an impact on CFACT’s eligibility for this year, but said the group was on probation for two years because of the intentional violation–standard ASM protocol. The group is in the midst of its current eligibility hearing process.
