EDITORIAL BOARD Christine Byrd
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Thanks to a change in the Undergraduate Student Association
Council’s bylaws, any group with a constitution and a sponsor
is now eligible to receive funding from student fees regardless of
what they stand for or what they do.
Last week, USAC approved an amendment to its bylaws extending
funding eligibility to all university-recognized groups. Given the
results of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year, council had no
viable alternative. Without the amendment, the council would have
risked potential lawsuits.
The decision, University of Wisconsin v. Southworth, stated that
public universities can only collect fees from students to fund
activities if the funds are distributed on a content-neutral
basis.
In previous years, USAC sponsored “student groups
advocating for and representing student populations which have
historically been and are currently being denied access to power
and the decision-making process.”
Now, all 450 student groups at UCLA can qualify for funding,
office space and computer access.
Yet trying to allocate funds within the flawed legal framework
established by the case creates a wide array of problems, largely
due to the “content-neutral” concept introduced by the
court. For one thing, no effective method of disbursing funds on a
content-neutral basis exists.
Funds cannot be distributed in terms of what groups do in the
interest of culture and diversity because this violates the
content-neutral policy. Consideration of the type of programming
the organization would put on during the year also isn’t
content-neutral. What exactly is “neutral” anyway?
USAC may not even be able to take group size into consideration,
since this also violates content-neutrality. Students in smaller
groups can argue that their organization was not given fair
consideration, simply because their ideas appeal to only a smaller
number of people.
This leaves USAC with only ineffective methods of fund
distribution. A lottery-type method appears the only way of
ensuring absolute neutrality. Though legal and neutral, this method
does not make any sense. Should the 20 smallest groups on campus be
selected for funding, all major advocacy groups and their campus
components could potentially receive no funding at all.
USAC does have another option, however. It could distribute the
funds to all groups applying in an equal manner. In other words, if
all 450 campus groups applied, USAC’s budget would be divided
in 450 parts. This would noticeably affect groups such as MEChA,
African Student Union, Samahang Pilipino and the Asian Pacific
Coalition that alone received up to 40 percent of the budget in
previous years.
Dividing USAC funding among so many groups would be detrimental
to all of them. No group would have sufficient money to fund an
activity or program on a large scale. The largest groups would find
themselves considerably deficient in funds, while the smallest
groups might receive funds they could do without.
But the real problem lies within the law itself. As our student
representatives, USAC members need to demand that legislators
clarify what the law means by “content-neutral” and ask
for a method of applying the law in allocating funds. If laws
directly affecting students, their groups and their fees are
unclear, USAC has a responsibility to demand clarification.
USAC’s approach was too passive in responding to this
process. We sincerely urge our elected student leaders to take
immediate steps in lobbying for the students they promised to
represent. President Elizabeth Houston may feel a winner since the
amendment was consistent with her platform goals, but now she must
ensure campus organizations are not losers in terms of the
receiving funding they need, by looking for a solution.
We strongly urge students to get involved by asking their
representatives in USAC to go to the legislature and find answers.
After all, the money they distribute to all of these groups comes
from student fees. Students should make an effort to find out where
their money goes.
USAC cannot allocate funds on a content-neutral basis until they
address the legal flaws involved. A content-neutral policy may be
fair in theory and may work at smaller schools, but the idea is not
feasible at a school like UCLA that has 450 groups. Attempting to
distribute funds in a content-neutral manner in order to be fair to
all students may result in not having organizations for students to
go to at all.