Eric Langborgh

The Supreme Court will begin hearing a case this fall on whether to uphold or overturn a Wisconsin appeals court ruling that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is violating students’ free speech and other First Amendment rights by coercing funds that ultimately serve the cause of various leftist organizations on campus. Mandatory student activities fees are in place at most colleges and universities in the U.S., compelling students to subsidize groups whose political and ideological goals may differ from their own.The case began in 1995 when five self-described Christian, conservative students objected to their money being forcefully taken, destined to be used by 18 groups with which they disagreed. Students who refuse to pay their student activity fees are precluded from receiving their grades and diplomas.

According to the brief filed by the plaintiffs in court: “In order to attend the UW-Madison law school, the…plaintiffs must subsidize groups that contradict their views opposing abortion, homosexuality, socialism, extreme environmentalism…[and] support groups that contradict their views in support of the free enterprise system, Governor Tommy Thompson’s policies, keeping sex within marriage, the death penalty, the Bible as a standard of truth….”

“I would be paying for them to lobby on one side through my fee, and I would be lobbying on the other side myself,” said Amy Shoepke, one of the students who challenged the fee. Added fellow plaintiff Scott Southworth, “No students should have to pay for the political or ideological activities of any group on campus, no matter what they believe.”

Students at UW paid a mandatory student fee of $165.75 per semester in the 1995-1996 school year, amounting to a total of $974,200. In addition to paying for health services and bus transportation, this money was doled out through a political decision-making process to certain approved student groups.

At issue for Southworth, Shoepke, and others in the Southworth v. Grebe case were 18 leftwing groups that they opposed on religious and philosophical grounds, citing the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, religion, and association.
The following were cited as examples in their brief:

* WisPIRG: The Wisconsin Public Interest Group, which received $50,985 for the 1996-97 school year, distributed over $2,500 directly to its parent organization USPIRG for use in lobbying Congress on mining bills and developing candidate voter guides in support of specific candidates.

* UW Greens: Received $7,100 in ‘96-97, using those funds to distribute literature for the Green Party USA and to support Ralph Nader’s bid for President on the Green Party ticket. Also, worked in conjunction with WisPIRG, the Progressive Student Network (another group funded by student fees), and other groups to lobby legislators to limit mining in the state and to march on the state capital in opposition to the governor’s budget.

* Campus Women’s Center: Received $35,281 in ‘96-97, using those funds to support its bimonthly newsletter to advocate its leftwing feminist views¾including advocacy of same-sex marriages¾and staged opposition to the Wisconsin Informed Consent Bill, which proposed a 24 hour waiting period before a woman could have an abortion.

* Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus Center: Received $35,281 in ‘96-97, using those funds to promote “gay positive university policies,” its pro-homosexual newsletter, and pro-homosexual religious groups. It also distributed sexually explicit materials on campus, including the showing of a hard-core gay porn film.

Also cited by Southworth, et al, were the International Socialist Society (which advocated the overthrow of the government and disrupted a church meeting by chanting “Bring back the lions” in reference to the Roman persecution of Christians), the Ten Percent Society (which lobbied for same-sex marriages and vandalized a minister’s home in town), and the Progressive Student Network (which lobbied against the GOP Contract with America). Many other liberal groups including the United States Student Association, the Militant Student Union, Amnesty International, and Students of National Organization for Women, were mentioned, as well.

“It’s not that these groups should be silenced. We’ve always stated they should have the freedom to espouse their views,” attested Jordan Lorence, general council for the Northstar Legal Center and representative for the prosecution. “What they don’t have is the right to force unwilling students to fund it.”

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, stating that an individual student has “freedom to say what he wants to say and conversely not say what he does not want to say.”

The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in 1995 that public universities and colleges cannot create a “public forum” for students and then withhold subsidies from groups based on viewpoint. That decision, Rosenberger v. the University of Virginia, was in response to the University of Virginia wrongly withholding funds from a student-run Christian magazine because it was deemed religious, while Jewish and Muslim groups were labeled cultural. The court called the University of Virginia’s practice “viewpoint discrimination.”

In the spirit of that ruling, the 7th Circuit Court said: “If the University cannot discriminate on the disbursement of funds, it is imperative that students not be compelled to fund organizations which engage in political and ideological activities¾that is the only way to protect the individual’s rights.”

However, the University and supporters of the mandatory fee contend that despite the court’s ruling based on free speech concerns, free speech and public discourse on campus will ultimately be jeopardized if the Supreme Court upholds the Southworth v. Grebe decision.

“We look to the Supreme Court to stop this narrow-minded assault on a neutral system for supporting campus dialogue,” said Patricia Logue of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a pro-homosexual group.

Logue and others argue that the student activity fee is not used to promote any individual view, but the forum in which speech is made possible. Explained Kevin Cathcart, executive director for Lambda, “Just like we all must pay for a public park, no matter who sets up a soap box there, students can be required to contribute to a university fee system for all student groups, regardless of the recipients.”

“It’s actually a subsidy,” asserted Lorence to Campus Report. “Although it is a forum in the sense that everyone can apply for it, everybody can’t have access to it because it is a finite number of dollars.” Lorence contrasted this with an auditorium or bulletin board, which are “renewable resources” once one person or group is done using it, it is still there for others.
Despite UW’s stated willingness to tolerate funding of all forms of speech, in practice it has acted against its professed ideals. Noted Southworth, “The Ten Percent Society lobbied the student government to get our Christian group defunded, and they won. They called us a hate group.”

University officials said they have a policy against funding student groups with a partisan or religious viewpoint. This despite the aforementioned 1995 Supreme Court case which forbade religious discrimination in the disbursement of funds.

In fact, claims that fee-funded forums on campus are non-discriminatory and foster debate on a wide range of views prove disingenuous when the political process of determining fee allotments to various student groups is examined.

Southworth explained that a lot of these liberal groups at UW are run by the same five or so people, therefore creating a multitude of groups with the same purpose and partisan goals. More groups equal more money from the fee allotments.

“There is more pork barrel politics going on with these activity fees than supporters of it would admit,” charged Lorence.

“Only about 5 to 10 percent of students vote, and if you take the membership of the organizations getting the funding it’s about 5 percent of the students,” expounded Southworth. “Those in student government are all in the groups getting the money.” And, according to Southworth, 90% of those groups are “extreme-leftist groups.”
Conservatives and other students who object shouldn’t have to fund these groups, he said, and “on the other hand, we don’t believe that any student should be forced to pay for any groups that we agree with, either.”

The defense insisted during oral arguments in 1997 that its educational mission requires compelling the fees of all students. They cited a 1992 2nd Circuit Court case involving the State University of New York as precedent that students could be required to support activities that contributed to a “marketplace of ideas,” including ideas they don’t like. In its Supreme Court appeal, UW said the 7th Circuit decision “undermines the traditional role of universities as centers of free speech.”

Students whose fees go to support a panoply of viewpoints within a public forum are not being compelled to support any one message, the University argued. Instead, their fees support the forum itself.

“Learning to sort through, and at times turn off, the multiplicity of ideas that find expression on a university campus” is a valuable part of the educational process, UW’s brief said.
Many in support of mandatory fees have argued that elimination of these fees will spell doom for many of the student organizations and deprive students a complete university experience. Said Ruth Harlow for the defense, “Today, the target is our client, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus Center, and other groups whose speech these extremists oppose. Tomorrow, every student group with detractors could lose funding.”

Southworth doesn’t have much sympathy for this point of view. “In the free marketplace of ideas, if an idea doesn’t have enough merit to survive without public funds, then it disappears,” he told Campus Report. “If no one supports your opinion and you’re not willing to pay for your own opinion, than I’m not going to worry about it.”

The 7th Circuit Court echoed this sentiment in quoting Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia: “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand for itself.”

However, Lorence believes alternative views have nothing to worry about. “It is very unrealistic to say that there is no one at the University of Wisconsin that would, for example, fund a homosexual group, and that all their funding will totally dry up and that voice will disappear from the marketplace.”

“At Wisconsin, only 29 percent of the registered student organizations on campus received any money at all from the student fee,” Lorence pointed out. What they should do, he said, is “talk to the 71 percent that raise their own money” and follow their example.

“If their argument is that free speech demands people pay money to support people they disagree with, then let’s not stop there. Under Freedom of Religion, let’s force others to build our churches for us. Under the Second Amendment, why don’t we have people buy me a gun because I have the right to keep and bear arms,” illustrated Southworth.

“They are saying, ‘If I have a right to speak, I now have an entitlement to your money to speak, and if you don’t pay for it, you are violating my rights.’”