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http://clem.mscd.edu/-themet
Apnl 2, 1999
lssue24
Volume21
Spring green Tulips bloom under the reflection of the afternoon sun in the north courtyard in the Auraria Ubrary on March 30.
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John Swift/The Metropolitan
, Supreme Court to hear fee case By Sean Weaver The Metropolitan
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Students who disapprove of their student fees going to groups with political agendas will have a date with the Supreme Court. The court announced March 29 it will hear a case involving the allocation of student fees to campus groups. The plaintiffs, five students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, filed suit against the university in 1996, claiming the mandatory fees to fund organizations that advocate political viewpoints violate their First Amendment rights. Groups the students targeted include the university's chapter of the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Campus Center, and the International Socialist Organization. The students won the case in U.S. District court and
the Board of Regents appealed. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Illinois also ruled in favor of the students Aug. 10, 1998. "The (university) does not dispute that these and other organizations engage in political and ideological speech," wrote the appeals court judges. "Instead the regents argue that the First Amendment protects the right of these organizations to engage in such speech. Of course it does. But the students do not ask that we restrict the speech of any student organization; they merely ask that they not be forced to financially subsidize speech with which they disagree. 'The Regents (of the University of Wisconsin) argue that because the organizations do not purport to speak for all students, the First Amendment is not -violated," the judges continued. 'This is irrelevant The First Amendment protects the right to free speech and the corresponding right not to be compelled to fund private speech."
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Susan Ullman, the assistant attorney general for Wisconsin, disagreed. 'The fees aren't going to fund specific speech," she said. "It is going to the funding of a forum for all ideas. This is the point of universities; to have all ideas to learn from." The Supreme Court will include the case, Board of Regents vs. Southmore, in this year's session, which begins in October. Karen Bensen, director of Auraria's Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Trans Student Services, said she is concerned . about the outcome of the case. "Programs can't survive on that kind of tenuous funding," she said. "I think of student fees like taxes," she said. "While we have representation, we don' t get to choose where (the taxes) go. If I had my way, I wouldn't support taxes that go to war. People don't use all of the services the fees pay for, but it ma!<es sense that they are there."
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