>From SalonMagazine.CoM
-----The end of student activity groups?
---Right-wing Christian student groups are using the
------------courts to attack the legality of student fees --
--------and thereby changing the free speech debate on campus.
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�
BY KENNETH RAPOZA | "Christians have a choice when confronted with attempts
to silence their voices and limit their cultural influence: Saddle up and
fight or lay down and surrender. ADF has chosen to fight to level the
playing field. I'm convinced that if our ideas and practices are accorded
equal protection under law, we will win our part of the culture war because
Scripture promises that evil will never ultimately defeat the gospel or
God's people. But it won't happen overnight. We must dig in for the long
term, build on every victory we can -- no matter how small -- and never,
ever, give up."
-- From "A Vision for America's Future" by Alan Sears, president of the
Alliance Defense Fund.
Last fall, five Christian student groups at Miami University in Oxford,
Ohio, sued their school. They say that the approximately $480 per semester
they are required to give to the student fee system goes to political and
ideological groups they oppose. While these conservative student groups
maintain that they're only defending their constitutional rights, critics
argue that these groups are challenging the very principles of democracy.
"There are no specific groups that we're objecting to," says Russ Johnson,
a senior at Miami and the president of one of the suing groups, For the
Love of God. His voice cracks like he knows he shouldn't be divulging too
much information before his case goes to court. "The heart of the complaint
is that students should have the right not to support groups they disagree
with. If citizens had to give tax dollars to the Christian Coalition ... it
would be wrong."
Looking over the list of the 120 student activities that received the
$350,000 in Miami's activity fund, it is hard to find a forum that groups
like Johnson's might ideologically oppose. There's the Council on Family
Relations, which received $1,290; the International Club, which got $693;
Project Fight AIDS didn't get a dime last semester, but Sista II Sista, a
black women's group open to all students, got $1,413. The rest of the
activities relate to sports, health, academics and student government's
operational needs. For the Love of God received money, too. Only it
received its cash from a separate fund called the Marketplace of Ideas,
which was created by university administrators to designate a portion of
student fees to religious groups.
Randy Blankenship, the attorney representing the students against Miami,
argues that the case disputes the two-tiered system, not the ideology of
any specific groups. On one hand, the general student activity pot is
large, while the Marketplace of Ideas is a little under $10,000. Moreover,
religious groups are restricted to Marketplace funds, while all other
activities can take from both pots. "This is a state school and these are
state-mandated fees. Under the First Amendment, the government cannot
discriminate under the basis of the viewpoint expressed. So we see this as
viewpoint discrimination," Blankenship said.
None of this would be happening if it weren't for a conservative Arizona
group called the Alliance Defense Fund. It sent a mass mailing of 45,000
brochures called the "Defunding the Left Action Pak" to students nationwide
aimed at attracting interest in the student fee legal debates. The brochure
takes potential plaintiffs through a step-by-step procedure on how to sue
their school system. Unlike Blankenship, the ADF claims an ideological
basis for the fight: "This effort can literally eliminate millions of
dollars from those who oppose biblical values, religious freedom and the
spread of the gospel," its literature says. ADF has paid for three lawsuits
against the student fee system, of which Miami is the third. ADF's annual
budget is $5 million -- which comes from private donors as well as a number
of conservative groups such as Focus on the Family, Christian Financial
concepts and American Family Foundation.
N E X T_ P A G E .|. Equality for Jesus on campus
THE END OF STUDENT ACTIVITY GROUPS? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
- - - - - - - - - -
Clint Tolbert, a senior and former president of the Christian fraternity
Sigma Theta Epsilon at Miami, says that while his case is being financially
supported by the Alliance Defense Fund, he's never seen the "Defunding the
Left Action Pak." This isn't about pocketing student fee money, he says.
Sigma Theta always got its money: between $1,000 and $2,000 last semester.
"It's a case of equality," Tolbert says. "We have the right to be funded
the same way as other activities."
Scott Phillips, the assistant general counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund,
speaks with the passion of a Southern Baptist minister when talking about
the lawsuits. "We're not opposed to a system that lets students choose
where the money goes. We'd support an atheist student who didn't want his
funds to go to a Christian magazine," he says.
Taken at face value, such arguments, couched in the democratic language of
free speech, seem fair and reasonable. Campus religious groups want, and
should get, equal treatment. At the same time, they don't want their money
to go to activities that may promote values they oppose. ADF's plan to both
ensure equal treatment and avoid the funding of opposing ideologies leads
to one solution: to end student fees as we know them.
Eric Brakken of the Associated Students of Madison, the University of
Wisconsin's student government, believes ADF's definitions of democratic
free speech will ultimately limit what can be debated on college campuses.
He says its attacks are part of a desire to limit the political debates on
campus, and that the "Defunding the Left Action Pak" proves his point. His
school fought the first legal battle for student fees when a self-described
"extreme-right" Christian law student, Scott Southworth, sued the school
and won. Southworth and a few other students won by taking the
"opposing-view" route. The university appealed.
"This case is so much more than objecting to funding methods, objecting to
certain student groups. It's much deeper," Brakken said. "They like to
limit the argument to opposing views and separate funding." Brakken argues
that there might be professors on campus whose research students oppose and
academic departments that don't match students' ethics. "Should I opt out
of paying a portion of my tuition because of that?" he asks.
Judge Diane Wood heard the Wisconsin case and dissented, saying she feared
this could be the end of a student-run tradition that started with the
1960s free speech movements. "It is commonplace to require the funding of a
neutral forum," she wrote. "Taxpayers support the Mall in Washington which
is used by countless speakers with a range of viewpoints. Though the
government is not entitled to require a citizen to fund the Catholic
Church, it is entitled to permit the Pope to conduct a mass on the Mall ...
if the government had to censor the speech of Mall users to ensure it's not
offensive, [it would have to] close the forum."
For more than 30 years, student governments have managed the activity fee
money of their students. Independent newspapers, literary magazines and
social work all get funded through student fees. "If you are taking a class
and you think a particular speaker would add to the discussion outside of
the classroom, the money is there for that. It just adds so much to
learning," says Robin Hubbard of the Center for Campus Free Speech.
N E X T_ P A G E .|. Thomas Jefferson on the evil of student fees
THE END OF STUDENT ACTIVITY GROUPS? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
- - - - - - - - - -
While Miami University hopes for a ruling in favor of the status quo later
this year, the University of Wisconsin has already asked the Supreme Court
to hear its case against Southworth. If UW loses, it will spell the end of
the current student fee system nationwide. So far, neither Miami nor
Wisconsin has changed its policies.
Randy Blankenship will not say whether his case was going to strictly focus
on the way Miami University divides its fee money or whether he and the
other lawyer involved would follow in Scott Southworth's footsteps and
argue for the abolition of student fees in general. Rather, he reemphasizes
the notion that Christian student groups are being discriminating against
in a most un-American way. "In the history of the First Amendment," he
says, "Thomas Jefferson said it was evil to let people pay for the
viewpoints of others."
"The end goal is to dismantle the fee system," insists Hubbard of the
Center for Campus Free Speech. "So no one will have access to these funds
because everyone will be opposing one view or another. They'd love for
students to have to look off-campus for activity money."
And where might that lead? Wildlife Groups funded by Exxon? Vegan groups
funded by ADM, "Supermarket to the World"?
Private citizens groups have generally won Supreme Court cases against
public entities trying to enforce speech with which the groups disagree. A
1995 case in Boston went against a group of homosexual men who wanted to
march in a private St. Patrick's Day parade but were denied by the parade
marshals. In the first round, the state ruled against the veterans in
charge and said they had to allow the gay men into the march. But when the
vets took the case to the Supreme Court for round two, with Alliance
Defense Fund legal help, Massachusetts' rule was overturned and the gay
group lost.
ADF's first campus lawsuit was filed that same year. A student of the
University of Virginia was denied money from activity fees to publish a
Christian newspaper. The court ruled in favor of the Christian student,
saying all viewpoints should have access to the forum funded by the
mandatory fees. That ruling led schools such as Miami University to create
their present two-tier systems. Ever since then, public colleges have
become targets in similar lawsuits. The ruling stated that religious groups
can get activity money so long as they are not proselytizing, which the
groups say steps in the way of church-state separation.
"There are two types of free speech," declares ADF's Scott Phillips. "And
when it comes down to private speech, you can't be forced to pay for it if
the speech violates your beliefs."
At the heart of the conflict are two dueling belief systems, both in
agreement that college is more than the classroom and student activities
more than sporting events. While student fees almost never constitute more
than a tiny percentage of a student's overall university payment, the
groups that such fees support often have an indelible influence on both the
tenor of campus life and student beliefs. Even some conservative pundits
have registered their concern that dismantling the student fee system will
have unfortunate effects on the free currency of ideas on college campuses.
George Will in the Washington Post called it a "recipe for an
administrative nightmare, and an incentive for universities to withdraw
from funding any group potentially offensive to anyone." Among the student
population, there seems to be strong support for keeping the system in
place. Roughly 74 student organizations statewide signed a legal brief to
support the University of Wisconsin in order to convince the Supreme Court
to keep allowing all students to have equal access to the student fees,
without moral evaluation.
Yet even such opposition doesn't faze the crusaders at Alliance Defense
Fund. They seem prepared for a long, hard battle. "If the Supreme Court
chooses to take this case, we'll focus on that," says Philips. "If not, we
have other colleges waiting in the wings."
SALON | March 8, 1999
Ken Rapoza is a freelance writer living in Boston.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From www.alliancedefensefund.org
<<This reads like it came straight off of Sally or Ricki ... find the most
extreme case of anything and use it to illustrate a point. The anomaly is
not the rule. A<>E<>R >>
Defending the Family in the Public Square
The Christian mother of two young boys divorces her husband after he
undergoes a sex-change operation and moves in with another surgically
altered man.� The former husband demands visitation rights with his sons;
the woman goes to court to stop him.� She wins custody, but a judge says
the father, who has renamed himself Susan, can have lengthy, unsupervised,
face-to-face visits.
Sounds outrageous?
This story began in 1995 , but the mother, Karen, only recently won her
final victory; a state court of appeals has ruled that the boys will not be
required to spend time with "Susan," who continues to dress as a woman and
engage in homosexual practices.�
In 1995, the case was unprecedented. Not anymore.
Child-custody cases involving parents turned homosexuals is proving to be a
growing problem.� Homosexual activists are working on a number of fronts --
same-sex marriage, adoption, custody battles -- to redefine the family.�
These activists are making gains through our nation's courts, the sort of
challenge for which Alliance Defense Fund was created.
Nearly five years ago, Focus on the Family and other Christian ministries
founded ADF to defend believers against legal assaults.� It had been an
unfair fight for years.� The American Civil Liberties Union raised millions
of dollars each year and recruited thousands of lawyers to harass school
districts that celebrated Christmas or to silence valedictorians who hoped
to cap their academic career with a prayer of thanks from the podium.
The ministry leaders asked me, then a federal prosecutor, to lead the
charge.� And I started this job with a dream -- that someday all believers
in Christ would have competent legal help to defend their rights.
Five years later, ADF has made great progress.� We helped Karen defend her
boys.� And we expect to help many more parents like her.� Last year ADF
offered intensive training in custody and family law to 40 attorneys if
they, in return, would agree to donate 450 hours of their services to these
especially difficult homosexual custody cases.
Since then, the attorneys have provided help to embattled parents from
Florida to Utah; their time has been valued at more then $600,00.
ADF will conduct training sessions on other areas of law in the coming
years, equipping layers throughout the nation with tools to defend
religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, parental rights and the
traditional family -- training they didn't receive in law school.
Our goal is to create an army of volunteer lawyers who can more than match
what the ACLU and its allies can produce. � And we cannot waste any time.�
In just one month, ADF received $759,000 in urgent grant requests.� At
least a third involved cases with profound significance for all believers.
I wish we could say that none of those desperate people will be denied a
trained attorney.� But ADF's dream is unfulfilled.� There is still so much
to do, so many lawyers to recruit.� And it will require resources of God's
people to make it happen.
If you'd like to join in the ADF vision, send a donation to Alliance
Defense Fund, P.O. Box 54370, Phoenix, AZ 85078-4370. � In Canada call
Focus on the Family's legal defense fund at (604) 609-7959.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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