Sometimes things can start to sound like a broken record.

Last Thursday, the Student Services Finance Committee presented Chancellor Wiley with next year's student organization budgets for his approval. The UW Roman Catholic Foundation is among the recipients of funding in a budget totaling more than $27 million.

After numerous appeals before the student judiciary and council, UWRCF's allotment of more than $147,000 seems to be the only organization drawing protest — from both within and outside the university.

In her letter to Chancellor Wiley last week, Freedom from Religion Foundation President Annie Gaylor urged Mr. Wiley to "veto the misguided decision by students." Ms. Gaylor referred to UWRCF's funding as an "unlawful and misguided expenditure by students — who are not attorneys and have been intimidated by a powerful non-student institution … ."

Of course, Ms. Gaylor is not an attorney, either. And her letter to Mr. Wiley demonstrates this fact quite clearly because her acumen of the law seems to be deficient.

In the 1995 Supreme Court decision of Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, a group of students had requested to use student fees to publish Wide Awake: A Christian Perspective. However, a policy at the public university stated that fees could not be used to fund the publication because it "primarily promotes or manifests a particular belief in or about a deity or an ultimate reality."

Indeed, it was patently obvious the publication carried a religious message. The first issue stated that the newspaper seeks to offer a "Christian perspective on both personal and community issues, especially those relevant to college students at the University of Virginia."

Yet the high court held the university engaged in viewpoint discrimination when denying the publication funding on the basis of their religious message. The court held the rejection of funding by the university was "a denial of the right of free speech and would risk fostering a pervasive bias or hostility to religion, which could undermine the very neutrality the Establishment Clause requires."

Justice Kennedy eloquently articulated the threat viewpoint discrimination presents to our society and individual liberty — especially in a university setting. He wrote in Rosenberger, "That danger is especially real in the University setting, where the State acts against a background and tradition of thought and experiment that is at the center of our intellectual and philosophic tradition."

Rosenberger has hit close to home once again in the case of UWRCF.

In an interview with The Badger Herald, Mr. Wiley remarked, "I can't take forward [to the Board of Regents] something I know to be illegal." Referring to UWRCF's budget, he continued, "So we will do a legal analysis of a few items of the proposed budget, and if they are illegal, I can't take them forward."

I might have an idea of what could be changed.

The chancellors' representatives on SSFC this past year seemed quite reluctant to grant UWRCF funding for the rent and utilities portion of their budget. A memo originating from the Dean of Students Office and presented to SSFC stated that university funds "cannot be used to directly support the operating costs of a church or a strictly church-related activity … ."

However, UWRCF operates solely as a non-profit organization, and the mere consideration of the religious viewpoint of the recipient of student funds violates the very essence of viewpoint neutrality. So the DSO changed their position and found another memo for SSFC to use to deny UWRCF funding. They argued UWRCF's rent and utilities could not be funded because SSFC could not fund the rent or overhead of non-university controlled properties.

Once again, the DSO has found itself in a bit of a quagmire.

The memo has only been applied to UWRCF. Other organizations, including the Tenant Resource Center, Wisconsin Public Interest Group, Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow and WSUM — among other organizations — receive segregated fee funding to cover rent, utilities and overhead costs for non-university controlled buildings.

But, then again, this hypocrisy should only be seen as predictable. After all, it was the chancellor's representative to SSFC, Interim Associate Dean of Students Elton Crimm, who paid a visit to the committee last semester to question whether UWRCF should even receive segregated fee funding. No other student organization received such special attention.

Ms. Gaylor concluded her letter to Mr. Wiley by stating that "Even given today's courts, we do not believe judges will uphold outright subsidy of worship through a public institution."

Yet this nation's highest court has reasoned otherwise. And if a federal judge wouldn't tolerate this viewpoint discrimination, the administrators of this university and the UW System shouldn't sustain it either.

Darryn Beckstrom ([email protected]) is a doctoral student in the department of political science and a second-year MPA candidate in the La Follette School of Public Affairs.