Zheng is a first-year electrical engineering student.
By Lei Zhang
I’ve been following the articles regarding student fees
and USAC for the past couple months. After reading the April 3
article “Court rules against student fees,” (Daily
Bruin, News), I couldn’t believe that the Daily Bruin is not
only still giving incomplete information about the issue, but now
it is also ignoring the most important facts. I think it’s
important for students to understand what’s at stake over the
next few weeks.
The one thing The Bruin completely omitted is the foundation of
the whole issue. In 2000, The Supreme Court made a landmark 9-0
ruling in the case of the University of Wisconsin vs. Southworth,
overruling previous decisions made by U.S. District Court Judge
John C. Shabaz and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In Southworth, the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that
it is essential to the mission of universities to protect all
speech regardless of the viewpoints expressed.
In order to implement this standard, the Court said that all
funding decisions made by student government must be
“viewpoint neutral.” This means that funding decisions
may not be made on the popularity or unpopularity of a particular
organization’s viewpoint.
In the wake of this decision, our own student council decided to
ensure that at UCLA, funding decisions are based entirely on the
programs run by a student group and not on their views or
beliefs.
Many students here on campus have misinterpreted viewpoint
neutral to mean that all student groups must receive the same
amount of funding. Unfortunately, the Bruin has run articles based
on this incorrect assumption.
Groups who do the most programming should still receive the most
resources; the process is just to ensure that the funding decisions
are based on the activities of the group and not the beliefs they
hold.
USAC has been working for the past few months on fixing
UCLA’s constitution and bylaws to ensure that our school
complies with the Southworth decision. They have already made a
great deal of progress and are on the final stretch towards full
compliance.
Right now, student government has a historic opportunity to
change the way student groups are funded. The administration has
been demanding these policy changes for years, and now we have a
student government with the ability and determination to start
empowering students. We have reached a point where it is absolutely
essential for the members of the board to forgive each other for
differences in the past and work together to protect all student
groups on campus.
I’m afraid that if USAC waits too long, the administration
will step in and make the changes for us to avoid lawsuits. We
elected these students to USAC because we trusted them to make
decisions like this for us.
The Supreme Court entrusted the responsibility of making funding
decisions solely to the student governments of our
universities.
This was to ensure that decisions about students and their money
are made by students. It’s imperative that the members of
student government cooperate to make changes that are fair and
beneficial to all the student groups on our campus.