The University of Wisconsin Roman Catholic Foundation members said Monday they believe Student Services Finance Committee members unfairly discriminated against their staff expenditures among other viewpoint neutrality violations.

UWRCF increased the number of student event coordinators within their organization from six to nine, but will only receive funding for four of those positions.

SSFC Chair Rachelle Stone said the committee's decision followed a consistent trend of being fiscally responsible and was not affected by UWRCF's religious affiliation.

"It's been consistent among SSFC members that anytime, in any of the student organizations, when there is a large increase from X number of student positions to another X number of student positions, they tend to decrease that to whatever they deem to be fiscally responsible," she said. "I don't think it had to do with anything about their background affiliation. It was just actual numbers and how the committee felt it was too high and too much of an increase from last year to this year."

UWRCF Director of Development and Small Groups Tim Kruse said during the SSFC meeting, where the UWRCF budget was proposed, committee members inappropriately focused their questions on the religious aspects of the organization.

"During open forum and during our budget hearing when our student event coordinators presented what they do, they were asked a total of six questions by [members Frey and Schlicht]," he said. "Every single question to our student event coordinators from those two members was about their religious practices."

Stone said the religious-based questions were asked to clarify the duties of the student event coordinators.

"I think they were trying to get a means of [whether] the positions were for the student center or for the church," she said. "Some questions that are asked in open forum don't necessarily match to what is being discussed in the budget portion of our agenda."

Kruse said even though UWRCF needed all the money they received last year, the SSFC consistently asked the organization to continue to find outside sources of funding.

"We used every penny [we received], plus we went and got more money," he said. "They're expecting us to continue to go out and find money for student event coordinators from outside funding and we're saying that's not fair."

The reason why UWRCF has relied on outside funding for the majority of its budget, according to Kruse, is because of a history of religious discrimination within the university that has denied the group recognition as a student organization with a "real" function.

"Just because we had to survive for years because we were discriminated against doesn't mean we should continue to be discriminated against," he said. "We have a real need, these students perform a real function; we want them to be funded."