Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1999/08/26/funding_ideology_student_fees_on_trial.php
Thursday, August 26, 1999
This fall the Supreme Court will make a decision with a far-ranging impact on campus student organizations, especially those that engage in political activities.
Most American colleges, including Dartmouth, finance student organizations through mandatory fees paid by students. Organizations range from social groups to issue-oriented groups. Though many schools maintain a policy of not funding overtly partisan political activities, some official student organizations do use college funds to sponsor such activities. Beyond that, student organizations around the country use college funds to further a political agenda, if not elect a candidate.
Well-known among campus advocacy organizations are the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), student groups affiliated with Ralph Nader. PIRGs exist at campuses around the country and—especially since they are not officially partisan—receive college funding. Established to advocate consumer protection, PIRGs' activities often include radical attacks on corporations; they even hire lobbyists in state capitals and in Washington. CALPIRG used mandatory student fees to subsidize a lawsuit against Shell, in which they won a $2.2 million decision.
PIRGs are not the only organizations using student fees to fund radical political causes. The Ten Percent Society, a funded student group at the University of Wisconsin, vandalized a local minister's home to promote their agenda.
In response to these organizations, three students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison filed a lawsuit objecting to the mandatory student activities fees, arguing that the university policy forced them to finance political groups with which they did not agree. The students, led by Scott Southworth, are conservative Christians who feel that they should not be forced to pay for groups that supported causes they opposed—like 'abortion, homosexuality, socialism, [and] extreme environmentalism.'
Among the eighteen UW groups they specifically cited were groups that opposed the free enterprise system, the death penalty, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson's policies, and groups that physically attacked local religious organizations. The plaintiffs acknowledge the First Amendment rights of the student groups, but felt that their own First Amendment rights were violated when they were forced to financially support the groups they opposed.
The students also challenged the University's claim that the mandatory fees create a 'marketplace of ideas.' The University defunded a campus Christian group, for example, after the Ten Percent Society lobbied against it as a 'hate group.'
'Ninety percent of the groups' advocating on at the UW-M campus, according to
Southworth, 'are extreme-leftist groups.' Still, Southworth believes that students should not 'be forced to pay for any groups we agree with, either.'
Last August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit unanimously agreed with Southworth, saying, inter alia, that a student 'has freedom to say what he wants to say and conversely not say what he does not want to say.'
The 'funding of private organizations which engage in political and ideological activities,' the court said, 'is not germane to a university's educational mission, and even if it were, there is no vital interest in compelled funding, and the burden on the plaintiffs' First Amendment right to 'freedom of belief' outweighs any governmental interest.'
The decision requires that public universities in the Seventh Circuit—Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois—establish a system in which students are allowed to choose which groups they want to fund, and are not required to finance political activities to which they object.
The UW system proposed two different funding methods. The first plan requires each university to define particular organizations as political or ideological. The alternative designates all organizations as political or ideological.
In either case, a student would choose to fund all or none of the organizations so defined. A student who chooses not to fund any of the organizations would be prohibited from taking part in any group.
Not surprisingly, the proposals were unsatisfactory to the plaintiffs. The lead plaintiff, Southworth, said he 'would oppose any fee system which does not allow students to directly decide which groups they fund.'
The debate on a system is currently on hold, however, since the UW Board of Regents has appealed to the Supreme Court. The case, Southworth v. Grebe, will be taken up in October.
Student organizations and fifteen states have already filed a dozen amicus curaie briefs on behalf of the UW Regents. The briefs support the defendant's claim that the Seventh Circuit decision 'undermines the traditional role of universities as centers of free speech.'
The University further defends its use of mandatory fees on the ground that 'learning to sort through, and at times turn off, the multiplicity of ideas that find expression on a university campus' is an integral part of education.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the students, disputes the university's claim. 'While a university may have a compelling interest in exposing students to various conflicting viewpoints,' the Foundation writes, 'it does not have a compelling interest in coercing support for those viewpoints.'
If the Supreme Court finds in favor of the students, as did the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, then public universities will need to find a method of funding that allows for student choice in funding campus groups—or simply let the groups learn to survive on their own.
Dartmouth College continues to employ mandatory student fees, by which students must finance advocacy groups on campus. A Supreme Court decision would not bar the College, a private institution, from continuing its policy. Still, a Court holding that mandatory student activities fees violate the First Amendment would seriously undermine the College's credibility in coercing students to fund advocacy organizations, and threaten Dartmouth's status as an institution of liberal education.
Liberal education rests on a free and open exchange of ideas. Education, especially at the college level, should be a process of sorting out the respective merits of differing viewpoints and opinions. Through evaluating divergent ideas, students become rational and responsible citizens. The liberal enterprise always rests on a student's right and ability to define his own beliefs, to identify and pursue one's own conception of the good life.
Compelling student support of political activities one opposes is a manifest violation of the freedom of belief that liberal education requires. Similar mandates have been struck down in other areas of society—most notably by the Supreme Court with regard to union dues.
While not as politically active as other campuses, Dartmouth has its share of overtly political messages expressed by groups that are subsidized by the College. Last Spring, the Collis TV lounge featured Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered family portraits. Many students, with differing views on same-sex marriage and adoption, were upset by the prominent placement of the pictures, holding that the College effectively endorsed a highly controversial viewpoint inside the student center—and did so with student fees. There is a double standard, some students argue, where the Committee on Student Organizations will not fund religious groups, but will find groups with an ideological agenda, however contentious.
Other students object to the use of their dollars to support the political activities of the Conservative Union at Dartmouth or the Young Democrats.
A liberal institution ought not mandate the funding of certain viewpoints—wherever they fall on the political spectrum. Ideas should be able to stand up on their own. In a true 'marketplace of ideas,' ideas compete for popular support, rather than receive an artificial financial boost from coerced student fees.
'It is error alone which needs the support of government,' wrote Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, which was cited in the Seventh Circuit Court's decision. 'Truth can stand for itself.'
The Supreme Court may now mandate that universities adhere to the original mission of liberal education: the search for truth—not a truth imposed by the college itself, but the truth as it emerges when ideas are left to compete on their own merit.