Friday, October 03, 2003
How high can you go?
Alicia Criado, Peter Gee and Bahar Khanjari. They invoke "ASUC Riverside v UC Regents," a case that doesn't quite exist under that name. The case in question was settled, so there's not really a court opinion to invoke. (Thanks to The Angry Clam for finding the case. Also, according to the Clam, the case said basically the same as Southworth did, that it would not be illegal to allow student government lobbying, but without any requirement for the university to do so. But see below)
They also invoke University of Wisconsin v. Southworth, which is pretty clearly not relevant, because it merely allows universities to allow student governments to lobby and such, it doesn't require anything.
"The court ruled that refusing to fund political speech is program viewpoint discriminatory (as long as funding decisions are viewpoint neutral)."
This is clearly not the case. A quick google search can turn up the case and it reads as follows:
"The First Amendment permits a public university to charge its students an activity fee used to fund a program to facilitate extracurricular student speech, provided that the program is viewpoint neutral." (emphasis mine)
What is not allowed is discriminatory funding (sure, people of one opinion can get money, but not those of another), but the case does not declare that denying a student government a certain class of action is in any way discriminatory.
In general, any letter which begins with "TRUTH GOOD":
"What happens when you don't have the truth? It leads to misinformation. This proves to be the case with the majority of campus because of the lack of real information from The Daily Californian and the university administration. The truth still has yet to be heard in regards to the ASUC spending funding on the "No on Proposition 54" campaign."
and proceeds to make a bunch of assertions is immediately suspect.
Supreme Court cases aren't going to come to the rescue of the ASUC and GA. Southworth doesn't help them, and Riverside came to a settlement. The changes to the policy, however, may come in handy for the spenders in question.
Guideline 83.10 in University of California Policies Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations, and Students is the relevant passage, and was modified as according to these revisions:
"This revision reflects a condition of the Settlement Agreement in ASUCR v. Regents (U.S. District Court No. C98-00021 CRB), and permits the funding of official student government lobbying activities on student-related matters by compulsory student fees available to such governments, provided that any student is entitled to a pro rata refund under the procedures outlined elsewhere in the Guidelines."
The GA has made the case that the funding is student-related, after all.
What would really come in handy is the current Statement of Understanding Between the University and the ASUC. I don't know where to find such a thing, however.
In any case, despite the stupidity involved by certain individuals invoking irrelevant or nonexistent court opinions, it looks like the University has a way out of this mess which will turn out to be in favor of CalSERVE and co.
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