University’s refusal to fund religious activities deemed “viewpoint discrimination”
Jan 18th, 2008 by Rob
President Bush proclaimed this Wednesday, January 16, 2008, as Religious Freedom Day, calling on the need to “recognize the importance of religious freedom and the vital role it plays in spreading liberty and ensuring human dignity.”
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may have benefited from such an outlook this week, as a U.S. District Court judge ruled Thursday that the university could no longer deny student activity funds to groups that would use them to pay for religious events. The Roman Catholic Foundation, the group entering the suit, contends that they school was withholding the funds because of the group’s religious affiliation.
School administrators had expressed concern that if they were to give money from the activities fund (included as a part of each student’s tuition) to the RCF, it would be interfering with the doctrine of separation of church and state, in its capacity as a public institution.
The University had already once settled with the student group out of court in May 2007 and agreed to pay $250,000 in withheld activities funds, but according to a report in UW-M’s Daily Cardinal, university officials say they do not yet have to reimburse these expenses.
This latest development reveals a delicate balance in the role of religion on public university campuses. Clearly, an institution cannot discriminate on a case-by-case basis. This would seem to leave them with only two policy choices, then:
1) Deny funding to ALL religious groups
2) Grant funding to ALL religious groups
The UW-M case suggests that denying funds to ALL religious groups is, in itself, viewpoint-discrimination. The flip-side of the argument, one that will inevitably come up for discussion, is the administration’s consideration of whether Wisconsin taxpayers feel comfortable paying for religious activities – not to mention, what constitutes a “religious activity” in the first place.
I went to a private undergrad, so this may be moot. But there, money from the activities fund was only allocated to student organizations if the planned activity was something open to the entire student body. In that way, a school could avoid the religious aspect of it altogether if the function was only for Catholics.
But this sounds a lot like faith-based initiatives. People argue that they don’t want the government to give grants or funding to religious organizations’ social programs (like food pantries or homeless shelters) because it’s their tax dollars going to fund religions they don’t necessarily agree with. (However, they can give money to things like womens’ centers that offer abortions and anti-abortion groups can’t do anything about it.)
Tricky subject, but I agree. It should be all or nothing. But that is almost never possible.
My first instinct is to say that the school should offer funding to the religious groups if the activity being funded is something that’s not necessarily religious. If Campus Crusade wants to paint a nursing home, I say let them do it.
But that means the university would have to examine all student group activities being funded. Not only would this take a lot of time, but it could allow the school to discriminate in other ways.
Should the anthropology club (they have those, right?) be allowed to use school funds to visit the Creation Museum? Should the conservative students’ organization be allowed to do the same thing? What about those religious groups?
It’s the same activity. But the different groups might have completely different reasons for doing it. And a religious and a political organization might have the same reason. Why deny funding to one but not the other?
And how is the university to know whether Campus Crusade will do more than paint on their trip to the nursing home?
Very tricky.