THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508300001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The University of Virginia has rightly complied with the U.S. Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision in Ronald W. Rosenberger et al. vs. the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia.
In bowing to the court, the U.Va. Board of Visitors behaved in an exemplary law-abiding way, unlike those Americans who refuse to obey Supreme Court decisions they don't like. What the court says, they are likely to argue, isn't the law. Only legislators, as they wrongly state it, can make law.
The U.Va. board doesn't like the outcome of Rosenberger, in part because the university must pay the plaintiffs' legal bill - $420,000 is the claim, which may or may not withstand scrutiny. The university itself spent a bundle - between $100,000 and $200,000, says U.Va. President John T. Casteen III - to defend its policy prohibiting student-fee funding of religious activities.
These big lawyers' bills trouble the board, which also fears more lawsuits and more bills - possible because the student-fee funding guidelines also forbid underwriting ``political activities.'' What if student Republicans, student Democrats or, should there be any, student socialists demand a piece of the activity-fee pie? The choice before the board would be to declare them eligible or go to court. Or the board could decide simply to end all student-fee funding of student publications.
But that's in the future, though perhaps the near future. For now, the board has amended the activity-fee funding policy to permit subsidies to student ``news, information, opinion, entertainment or academic communications media groups'' that express or advocate religious ``ideas or viewpoints.'' The new guidelines will not bar subsidies to any group because it ``primarily promotes or manifests a particular belief(s) in or about a deity or an ultimate reality.''
The most obvious beneficiary of the changed policy will be the evangelical-Christian magazine Wide Awake, whose student sponsors successfully challenged the university's prohibition against using the $28 activity fee to underwrite religious activities.
Other religious supplicants are a reasonable prospect. Groups representing assorted religious traditions are active on the Charlottesville campus. Among such organizations previously denied funding are the Jewish Students Association and the Black Voices gospel-singing group. Presumably, any religious society henceforth presenting a credible plan and budget will be eligible for consideration for a share of student fees for expressive activities. So might atheist, agnostic, humanist and Wiccan groups, should any emerge.
The U.Va. student-activity fee already supports scores of activities deemed meritorious by the student committee allocating funds. Some controversial causes get money now. Will funding religious activities intensify controversy or provoke pleas to allow students to donate to only those activities they approve?
Stay tuned. Adherents to this or that religion tend to resent being compelled to contribute to other religions. Members of one political party are not disposed to dip into their pockets to aid other parties. The aftermath of Rosenberger - at U.Va. and on U.S. campuses generally - could be, at the very least, instructive. by CNB