For the last five years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been waging a fierce rear-guard action against equal treatment of religious speech on campus. While the university uses its mandatory student fee to fund a wide variety of student groups on campus, it has systematically shut religious groups out of funding — preferring instead to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into favored, liberal student organizations.
In September, the Seventh Circuit dealt a stinging blow to the university’s efforts to discriminate against religious speech, holding — in no uncertain terms — the university could not engage in viewpoint discrimination when dispensing student-fee funds, even if the funds were given to student groups engaged in prayer, worship, and “proselytizing.” In its opinion, the Court of Appeals relied on decades of Supreme Court authority (including previous litigation against the University of Wisconsin) and reaffirmed that “universities must make their recognition and funding decisions without regard to the speaker’s viewpoint.”
The University of Wisconsin has filed a cert petition seeking to overturn the Seventh Circuit’s decision. Given its long-running crusade against religious speech, this is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is the University has received some substantial establishment support. The American Council on Education — along with multiple other higher education associations — has filed an amicus brief in support of the University’s position, essentially asking the Court to overturn its own precedent and ratify viewpoint discrimination against any speech universities subjectively deem too religious. The Council claims the Establishment Clause requires universities to make these determinations, yet the Supreme Court rejected that argument 30 years ago and has rejected it several additional times since. In reality, the Council (and their allied groups) are asking the Court to reverse its own precedent and to expand the scope of the Establishment Clause.
But why? If the university gladly sends tens of thousands of dollars to radical groups like Sex Out Loud, why begrudge a Catholic student group its own piece of the very pie their students helped fund? The answer is clear: The University prefers one message over the other, and would rather fund events like “Condoms and Candy” than a Catholic meeting centered around — gasp — prayer.
Why? In case you don't know the answer, it's because higher education, but for a very few conservative private schools, is entirely controlled, from top to bottom, by leftist radicals. Administration, faculty and, thanks to them, students are overwhelmingly leftist in viewpoint.
Furthermore, they are godless and hate religion, particularly Christianity, since it is the predominating faith in America. Leftists are like teenagers, against everything perceived as establishment. They never grew up. They hate the established culture, because it is the established culture. They have no reason. They just hate it. It makes them feel powerful to suppress the expression of establishment points of view, including religion. It makes them feel powerful to ridicule and oppress conservatives when they can.
I'm certain evil forces on the other side of the veil are doing everything within their power to encourage these lost souls to disrupt what is good for humanity. After all, they want to destroy humanity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOn February 15-17, 1910, the University of Wisconsin hosted the Third Annual Conference of Church Workers in State Universities. In his welcoming address to the conference, President Van Hise bragged of five men serving as University Pastors. He had good reason to brag. The University of Wisconsin was at the time a pioneer among state universities in promoting affiliation agreements with various churches.
Years later, Upton Sinclair would complain about these agreements in The Goose Step.
In the meantime, why not push for Voluntary Student Union? It works in Australia, and it can work here. If you truly want no-frills public universities, there are few better places to start than by abolishing mandatory student fees.
There is a latent constituency of working class students who resent paying for the wastefulness of student government. There is also a latent constituency of taxpayers who would be more supportive of higher education if they knew their universities were frugal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat are “student fee funds” anyway?
Do I understand this correctly?
Universities charge students, a great number of whom are paying for their education with government and private subsidy and/or government subsidized loans. Then the university disburses this money back to student organizations and activities to support speech, and activism for this that and the other? Sounds like a scam. How much campus activism is funded via this questionable method?
Why not just lower the student fees and don’t support any “speech.” Let free speech be free. Rather than attract students with funded clubs and organizations, attract them with lower tuition and seriousness. Or would this option not be attractive to the customer demographic? Worse, do they not understand that they are customers?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is not that Universities are against free speech. Quick of the right to jump on that band wagon. However, when it comes to public entities, they fail to remember "separation of church and state" from the US Constitution. Far be it for me, a humble Joe Public citizen that doesn't have the benefit of a college education or family wealth to inform the right of this. Tax payer dollars have historically be banned from religious use. What part of that is hard to understand? Personally, if the religious want to spout their rehtoric, build your own darn school and spend the money there. No, it's preferable to create a conflict where there really is not one.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo rockysfan: You may not have a college education, but anyone with internet access can look up and read the U.S. Constitution. Please let us all know where this grossly misunderstood "separation of church and state" is found in that document--or any of our country's founding documents for that matter. Until you can find it, please don't post again.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree with the separation of religion from University. IF you wanted a religious education, you were free to choose a religiously based school. You can have all the free religious speech you want, yell it out on the sidewalks - you're free to do that, but when it comes to money - no. Any church can afford to fund a college student's group, AND you're free to use the facilities at the University to organize and hold meetings. It's the money you want. The truth is your religion is too cheap to fund student groups, why aren't you asking them that question, when that's the REAL issue here?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusewasf:
Student fees are on top of tuition; they are a tax levied by student government on all students.
Yes, student fees are a scam. It isn’t just student activism, though. Student government gets funded. The student newspaper gets funded. Exercise buildings get funded. The student union gets funded. Parties get funded. Festivals get funded. Live bands get funded. Outside speakers get funded. If a fraternity or a sorority wants a new computer, student government will usually appropriate money for that. Once a year, student senators will come under a huge amount of pressure to hand over an annual appropriation for the International Center, and possibly a few other cultural centers too.
Student fees cover lots of things – bus trips to College Bowl meets, airfare to chess tournaments, motels for student government representatives to statewide meetings of the official student lobbyist group, hiring an official student lobbyist, and free or subsidized tickets to football, basketball, and hockey games for well connected students. In my home state, the state’s official student lobbyist group nominates the student representative to the state board – it’s required in our state constitution.
Historically, the recent explosion in student affairs budgets since 1970 has come from student fees. Actually, one of the main reasons for the rise of student affairs in modern times is as a de facto police force to control college campuses after the rioting of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s; the staff for this force is often former college radicals who are trusted by administrators to police their own kind.
The main change since the 1960’s is the nature of the scam. Before 1970, fraternities and sororities were the main beneficiaries of student fees; it was a classic regressive tax where rich students could force poor students to pay for their own frivolity. Now, progressive and multicultural outfits are also on the gravy train. Student government is still dominated by fraternities and sororities, but wise student politicians know better than to keep all the goodies to themselves.
So yes, it is a racket. And it’s nothing new. Back in the 1930’s, my grandfather worked his way through college. At graduation, he was forced to borrow money from his older sister because of an unexpected expense. Rich students in student government forced all students to buy a one-year membership in the alumni association. Although he later became prosperous, that story got passed through the generations. I think my grandfather would have loved Voluntary Student Union.
Where do you think our future leaders learn to be pork barrel politicians?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy do universities oppose religion? Simple, they view themselves as the one true religion and can't stand competing ideologies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think we need to ask another question. What is a religion?
Is college football a religion? Is college basketball a religion? Is college hockey a religion? Are sociology or economics actually religions? Is classical philosophy a religion? Would listening to Homer or Goethe be a religious ritual?
In actual fact, I don’t think universities can avoid religion in the classroom. It would be difficult to teach about the Civil Rights Movement without making reference to its religious nature. The question is whether our universities teach or whether they indoctrinate. The question of indoctrination is just as important whether it is religiously sectarian, politically ideological, or even an assigned engineering project that forces a student to design something he regards as unethical.
In reality, the “separation of church and state” is a truce among religious sects. The problem is that some religions don’t call themselves religions. Religions such as socialism, communism, libertarianism, and college football masquerade as something else.
State universities are, by their very nature, battlegrounds among various sects and ideologies. Their non-sectarian nature not only separates them from Pepperdine or Princeton, but also from the New School or Brandeis. The question is whether we are able to recognize the establishment of a state religion when we see it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAlexis:
Thanks for the explanation and… wow! I guessed it was bad; it sounds worse. Some of those fees strike me as reasonable – newspapers for one. But most of it sounds frivolous.
I guess the incentives aren’t conducive to changing this. To compete, schools must tout baubles to attract customers with immature prefrontal cortices spending artificially inflated supplies of money that isn’t theirs.
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