Segregated fees are continually a hot-button issue — and rightfully so. They are the additional charges tacked onto our tuition to fund student activities that, in theory, further the education experience at the university.

But instead of encouraging fearless sifting and winnowing, these fees only ensure annual screaming and whining among greedy student groups and our inept student government, while also forcing us to ponder that age-old question: How much does one group actually need for a Poetry Slam?

In the 2006-07 budget, the Student Services Finance Committee answered that question definitively: the MultiCultural Student Coalition needed $9,284 to host a poetry contest. What happened to only needing a few comrades, a bit of creativity and a local coffee shop?

If you find this galling, we encourage you to stop by the SSFC section of the Associated Students of Madison website at asm.wisc.edu to explore how your student fees are being spent. Don't expect to find an oasis of fiscal responsibility.

Besides the outright inefficiency of this system, forcing ideologically diverse students to fund ideologically diverse organizations breeds a whole host of problems. In 1996, University of Wisconsin student Scott Southworth filed suit against the university, contending it was unconstitutional to force him to finance the activities of groups with which he did not agree.

The ensuing court battle over the constitutionality of segregated fees ended up in the United States Supreme Court. Delivering the court's unanimous opinion, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy declared the fees constitutional, provided they are distributed in a "viewpoint neutral" manner. Viewpoint neutrality requires that a group's ideological perspective be irrelevant in determining its funding.

In practice, though, viewpoint neutrality from ASM is about as believable as fairness and balance on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes."

So what's the big deal? The bureaucracy-riddled fee process does, after all, prepare those students for a future in public service. While this is probably true, the big deal is that it comes at our expense.

For UW students, it means a $730 segregated fee charge this year. If Chancellor Wiley accepts ASM's recently approved budgets, that number will spike an additional $85 next year, thanks largely to last semester's Student Union Initiative. ASM Finance Committee Chair Sree Atluru even told a Badger Herald reporter that the increase was "very disturbing" as well as "unfair and absolutely unacceptable."

While segregated fees cover more defensible expenditures including University Health Services, it also finances frivolous spending by student groups along with the ASM Bus Pass program, which cost students more than $2.2 million last year. Heck, after cutting that program for a few years, we could forget about buses altogether and help pay for Mayor Dave's trolleys ourselves!

Earlier this month, the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy and the Wisconsin Union Directorate's Contemporary Issues Committee hosted a panel to discuss both faith-based initiatives at a national level and the problems associated with funding religious groups at this university. During the discussion, panelist and UW political science professor Donald Downs suggested a forum be put together specifically to discuss UW's segregated fee system.

We could not agree more, and we encourage either of these groups to spearhead a formal segregated fee discussion in the coming months. Issues worth exploring include the inefficiency and bias of the current system, the social consequences of subsidizing certain speech in the marketplace of ideas, and the possibility of completely ending funding of student groups altogether.

Although this would be tough news for groups currently riding the segregated fee gravy train, groups worth their mettle can survive by cutting costs and finding alternative sources of funding.

Most average, everyday students have no idea what's going on with segregated fees — and we suspect they would be appalled if they did. Accordingly, hosting a panel to discuss these issues would be fruitful if for no other reason than to remind students about the uses of their segregated fee dollars.

Without question, the status quo is a mess. It is our hope a panel comes together where the campus community can begin discussing alternatives to this failing system.