Student Fees Upheld

[Leslie Goldstein]

It seems to me there is a difference between direct-content-non-neutrality and
incidental-content-non-neutrality.  My university used to try to ban funding
for partisan student groups and speakers (so we could have an anarchist club
but not young Dems or young Republicans).  I believe they have ceased such
nonsense.  Now there is a student board that disburses funds to student groups
based on such rules as do they have an appropriate charter, do they provide a
clear accounting of their expenditures, do they have a faculty sponsor, and
what is the level of student interest in or participation in their activities,
etc.  It is true that level of student interest will incidentally affect
content or viewpoint of how much a group gets (same as presidetnail campaign
financing) but content or viewpoint is not the basis of the funding.  The
impact is incidental.  One would not expect the university to give funds to a
group consisting of one or two student members, would one?
And the conservatives who complained also were free to get student funding,
right?
Leslie F Goldstein
earl maltz wrote:

> At 08:28 AM 3/22/00 -0800, you wrote:
> >The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the University of
> >Wisconsin's mandatory student activity fee program.
> >But significantly, the Court made clear that the
> >program must be viewpoint neutral. This led Souter,
> >Stevens and Breyer to write a concurring opinion
> >objecting to the Court's decision to "impose a
> >cast-iron viewpoint neutrality requirement" on
> >mandatory student fee programs.
> >
> >Any comments?  --Rick Duncan
> >
> >_Other than a  lottery, can anyone describe a system that is truly content
> neutral?_________________________________________________
> >Do You Yahoo!?
> >Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
> >http://im.yahoo.com
> >