Over the past months, the Student Services Finance Committee and the Roman Catholic Foundation have waged a legal battle over denials of funding to the  student group. It serves as the perfect example for a need to change the system that is in place to fund student organizations.

For those who are unfamiliar with the system, segregated fees are tacked on to tuition each semester. The total for this semester, at least for me, amounts to $430. The majority of this money goes toward fixed costs, such as administration, UHS or the student unions. However, 12 percent of the segregated fees are allocated to funding student groups.

SSFC, the funding branch of the Associated Students of Madison, allocates money to student groups that provide ?non-academic but educational service to a significant portion of the UW-Madison student body.? Yet I feel students could muster some strong reasons to object to funding several of these student organizations.

The strongest case is against the RCF. Here is how they describe themselves on the SSFC website: ?[The] duty of the Roman Catholic Foundation [is] to make the truth of Jesus Christ known to the students of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and assist them in their love and service of Him.? Personally, I have no desire to help fund an organization like this, and I?m sure many other students don?t either.

Beyond the RCF, which is a pretty regular source of fiscal outrage, there are other organizations that some people may object to. Some people might consider Sex Out Loud, the Jewish Cultural Collective, the Multicultural Student Center or any of the other organizations to be a spurious use of their money. Other students might prefer to donate all of their money to a single organization. I believe students deserve the chance to distribute at least some of their segregated fees according to their priorities.

The simplest way that I can think to implement this system would be to make it a voluntary process administered through the ?MyUW? website. At the beginning of each semester, students could log on to MyUW and navigate to a page that presents them with a list of student organizations that are fundable through segregated fees. Students would select which organizations they would like to fund and how much to give them out of their segregated fees. The distribution of this money would occur after the selection period ended and take it out of the pool of allocable segregated fees.

Any students who do not choose to specify which organization(s) receives their segregated fees will have their money remain in the pool for student organizations to apply for. I see little choice but to leave the current system in place for distributing this money. The money left over should ensure that student organizations can maintain at least some level of funding.

Of course, each of these organizations should continue to have to submit budgets for approval by the SSFC to ensure that the funds are being spent according to established regulations. The SSFC would also still have to determine that student organizations are eligible to receive the money. This plan does not reduce the amount of oversight for these organizations.

Hopefully, this plan or a similar setup would help avoid the sort of legal wrangling that has gripped the SSFC and RCF. Letting the students decide what organizations should receive their money reduces the burden on the SSFC to strike some sort of balance among the groups. Furthermore, it might actually increase the chances that students would look into joining these groups. If students actually choose to give some of their segregated fees to a group ? even if they weren?t involved in it beforehand ? they might be persuaded to check it out.

The only real way to influence this issue at the moment is to hold a seat on the ASM Student Services Finance Committee. Clearly, this prevents most students from exercising power over where their segregated fees are spent. Allowing students to vote with their money rather than passively watching from afar is a far more democratic and favorable system than the current student organization funding process.

Let?s get to work.

Andrew Wagner ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in computer science and political science.