Equal Access
The Constitution ensures that all student groups have same rightful access to official recognition and university resources that are often associated with recognition. A Christian student group, a conservative debating team, or a “support the Iraq war” club has the right to utilize campus resources as readily as other student groups. Consider the scenario below:
Your university has one of the largest Catholic student organizations in the country. While membership is generally open, the group asks that each member support the mission of the organization. The group applies for student fee funding, hoping to be funded at the same level as other groups of similar size and activity level. Yet the group is not only denied funding, it is stripped of its recognition because its membership policies are considered “discriminatory.”
This scenario happened at the University of Wisconsin. After the Roman Catholic Foundation challenged its derecognition and funding denial in court, a federal judge quickly issued an injunction that allowed the Foundation to require members to agree with its mission. Shortly thereafter, the University settled the lawsuit and granted the group more than $100,000 in student fee funds.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also established that all student groups have the right to equal access to student activity fee funding at public universities, and may not be discriminated against on the basis of the content of the group’s expression. In Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, the Court held that a public university must distribute student activity fee funds equally to each recognized student group on campus without any consideration of the group’s viewpoint.33 Under Southworth, if the university does not comply with this limitation, it may not charge mandatory student fees to support extracurricular activities.
Regardless of the group’s ideology, the purpose and content of the organization may not be grounds for denying equal access to campus facilities and student activity fees. A group may be denied recognition on other legitimate grounds, such as insufficient membership, but the purpose and belief system of the group should never be the factor that prevents it from gaining recognition and equal access.
