THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 26, 1994 TAG: 9411260085
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
It was a short-lived effort by three University of Virginia students to put out a magazine with an evangelical Christian viewpoint, a publication that died after four issues.
But now, nearly four years after the university refused to award $5,862 from student activity fees to help Editor Ronald W. Rosenberger and two friends publish the magazine, the issue is scheduled to come before the U.S. Supreme Court. Legal analysts say the question of whether the university should have helped to support the magazine is a classic confrontation involving free speech and the separation of church and state.
The high court agreed last month to hear arguments - probably in February - on whether the university violated the First Amendment when it rejected the request by Rosenberger, of Great Falls, Va., and two other students to fund the magazine on the grounds that it constituted ``a religious activity.''
Rosenberger and fellow students Robert J. Prince, of Annandale, Va., and Gregory W. Mourad, whose parents live in Gaithersburg, Md., describe themselves as born-again Christians. They said they came up with the idea for their magazine, called Wide Awake, after deciding that student publications at the university mentioned religion only in the form of ridicule and antagonism.
They got seed money for the project by selling ads to Christian business people in the Charlottesville area and from a donation from the Christian Fellowship Church in Vienna, Rosenberger's home congregation.
The first issue of Wide Awake was distributed free on campus in the fall of 1990. The magazine stated that its goal was to ``challenge Christians to live, in word and deed, according to the faith they proclaim and to encourage students to consider what a personal relationship with Jesus Christ means.''
In February 1991, its founders appeared before the student committee that allocates money from the annual $28 activity fee assessed to the university's 20,000 students.
The committee rejected the application, citing university funding guidelines that bar grants to religious organizations, fraternities, sororities, honor societies and political clubs.
Rosenberger and his friends published three more issues, once a semester, before running out of money. Each 24-page edition focused on a theme: racism, eating disorders, homosexuality and the music of the rock band U2, which has three members who are Christian activists.
The students said they got the idea to sue the school because they had met while writing for a conservative political magazine, the Virginia Advocate, which also had been denied funding until it threatened to sue.
In July 1991, the students sued the university in federal court in Charlottesville, claiming violation of their rights of free speech, religion and equal protection under the law. Judge James H. Michael Jr. ruled in favor of the university. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Michael's ruling on Aug. 28, 1992. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The action, which legal scholars say has the potential of being a landmark case nationally, also has acquired a political dimension within the state.
Virginia Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, a Republican who was elected with strong support from Christian activists, reversed a decision of his predecessor, Democrat Mary Sue Terry, and sided with the students and against the university, which is his client.
Gilmore said his motives aren't political.
``This case offers the promise of a landmark decision regarding freedom of speech,'' Gilmore said, ``and I have concluded that it is important that we not go before the Supreme Court speaking out for discrimination in speech. Instead, we should uphold the Bill of Rights.''
Although Gilmore has filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the students, he has told the school's general counsel, who is an assistant attorney general assigned to the university, that he can continue to represent the school.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SUPREME COURT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
by CNB