Friday, November 7, 1997
Freedom of spending
FUNDING: Supreme Court, UC Office of the President set new
guidelines for using mandatory student fees to fund programs
By Stefanie Wong
Daily Bruin Staff
For those students who felt the undergraduate student government
had no right to use mandatorily collected student fees to pay for
their political views published in the Nike and Columbus Day
resolutions – well, surprise! The law says that they can.
Student governments can now use mandatorily collected student
fees to fund organizations and programs that are political,
religious or ideological in nature – something they couldn’t do
before.
This change comes with a set of guidelines established by the UC
Office of the President (UCOP) and a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court Case,
Rosenberger vs. the University of Virginia.
Prior to that, the 1993 California Supreme Court case of Smith
vs. UC Regents banned the use of mandatorily collected student fees
to fund organizations that were political, religious or ideological
in nature.
The Smith ruling also required the development of a refund
mechanism where students have the option to apply for a partial
refund of their fees.
Two years later, in the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the
Rosenberger case, the Smith ruling was reversed and student
governments could use student funds as they chose.
Because the Rosenberger ruling was handed down from the nation’s
highest court, it supercedes any state rulings and laws.
And while student governments were not completely complying to
the laws under Smith, Rosenberger puts a legal stamp on most
funding that student governments do.
In January of this year, UCOP proceeded to write a set of
funding guidelines that met the standards established by
Rosenberger.
These guidelines also determined general funding procedures for
the universities in the system. Each school was then responsible
for creating campus-specific guidelines and implementation
plans.
In the UCOP guidelines, student organizations were still
prohibited from using mandatorily collected student fees to lobby
state legislatures.
The refund mechanism originally established after the Smith
decision was also upheld, giving the students an opportunity to ask
for part of their fees back.
However, a refund can only be granted if the money was used
towards a program that was political, religious or ideological in
nature.
A draft of UCLA’s guidelines was finished in September of this
year and is currently under review by the undergraduate (USAC) and
graduate (GSA) student councils.
While the UCLA guidelines do place some limits on how
mandatorily collected student fees can be spent, most members of
USAC are happy with the newly gained freedom.
No longer will an organization being "political or ideological
be used as a litmus test in funding organizations," said USAC
Academic Affairs Commissioner Max Espinoza.
"We are interested in protecting the students’ ability to make
decisions regarding student fees," he added.
However, on the graduate side, the funding guidelines do not
really effect GSA’s funding procedures.
"Those funding guidelines don’t affect GSA very much because GSA
does not give preference to any group for funding," said GSA
President Andrew Westall.
"There are six interest groups that it would affect, but we
don’t have any money to give those groups," he added.
GSA, along with USAC, have expressed concerns over the document.
Specifically, there is a section that explains how the student
governments will provide notice on what mandatorily collected
student fees are being spent on.
"Notice of GSA and USAC decisions on annual program funding and
organizational support will be provided in the Daily Bruin during
the first two weeks of instruction of the fall quarter," the campus
guidelines state.
According to Westall, GSA is having financial difficulty and the
guidelines may place GSA in a financially binding situation that it
cannot handle.
"Financially, we can’t print full-page resolutions in the Daily
Bruin. Even though it’s important that graduate students know this
information," we can find other, less expensive ways of
disseminating the information, Westall said, such as e-mail.
Full-page ads in The Bruin cost $750.
USAC’s concerns over the guidelines extends beyond the idea of
being financially committed. They feel that the administration’s
step-by-step explanation of how students should be notified takes
away USAC’s control.
After a five-member USAC committee reviewed the administration’s
draft of the guidelines, the section on notice was almost
completely replaced.
USAC’s recommendation for that section was a more general
wording of notice. The text was actually taken from the original
UCOP guidelines.
The UCOP guidelines give the student government options such as
the campus newspaper, electronic bulletin board or "by other
appropriate means" and as long as it "provides students with timely
notice."
"What we’re trying to do is make sure that the university is not
making decisions for us," Espinoza said.
"It was good that UCOP said to give notice and gave examples,
but the administration told us exactly what to do," he added.
Members of USAC feel that how they are required to give notice,
as an example of larger control issues, should be kept in the hands
of students and not the administration.
However, administrators are puzzled over USAC’s recommendation
to strike the section originally written.
"I don’t understand why they wouldn’t inform their constituency
about how they’re using fees in the same way they would inform
(students) about their actions and views on other things like
public issues," said Lyle Timmerman, administrative adviser to
USAC.
And while USAC did replace the section with text from the UCOP
guidelines, Timmerman does not believe the replacement is adequate
for UCLA.
"Typically, university-wide guidelines are general and each
campus – based on its own behavior patterns and way of doing things
– implements plans that are suitable to each campus," he said.
Members of USAC, while understanding that these guidelines
should be more specific for UCLA, still feel that certain decisions
should be made by the students and not administrators.
The new general wording proposed by USAC to replace the section
written by the administration ensures control by the students and
student government.
"We want to respect the law, and we want to implement it in good
faith but we want to make sure that students are the ones making
the decisions on how our fees will be used," Espinoza said.
A final draft of UCLA funding guidelines should be completed by
the end of the fall quarter.