Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508220057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
The decision to lift the funding ban was made to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Many public colleges that have a similar funding exclusion for religious organizations and mandatory fees have been watching how Virginia deals with the legal challenge.
``A lot of schools are looking to the University of Virginia to see how this plays out,'' UVa Rector Hovey Dabney said.
The UVa Board of Visitors followed the advice of the state attorney general's office and cast aside two other options - doing away with the student activity fund or allowing funding for all three excluded groups, religious, political and social.
``The board put itself on the line for students,'' said student council President Carlos Brown, who argued before the board that 60 percent of a college student's education occurs outside the classroom. ``Doing away with the fees would have been traumatic and disastrous.''
To defend against future lawsuits, the board asked the administration to come up with a long-term policy for funding student groups with activity fees and to develop a plan that would allow students to withhold at least a portion of their activity fees.
``What's at stake in all this is requiring people to support forms of speech in which they fundamentally disagree,'' UVa attorney Earl Dudley said.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that the university acted unconstitutionally when it refused to give students $5,000 in 1991 to publish Wide Awake, an evangelical Christian student magazine.
The justices' 5-4 decision said the university could not discriminate against a religious viewpoint when doling out money from a student activity fund. But the court did not specify any direct action to be taken by the university.
The board sets the overall policy for the activity fund, to which every student contributes $28, and the student council allocates the $484,000 in revenue to about 130 organizations, Brown said.
Brown said he could not predict how many of the 20 religious organizations on campus, such as the Jewish Students Association and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, might apply for funding to spread their messages this fall.
``More groups will have a voice, but each group will likely have less money,'' said Alvar Soosar, the student council vice president.
The UVa board members asked the administration, working with the attorney general's office, to come up with a set of options for them to consider at their November meeting.
by CNB