|
« AAUP Homepage
|
High Court Upholds Mandatory Student Fees
By Hans P. Johnson
In a reversal of two lower-court decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 22 that public colleges and universities can impose compulsory fees on enrolled students and funnel proceeds from those fees to campus organizations whose missions some students might find disagreeable. The unanimous Court held in Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin v. Southworth that:
The University may determine that its mission is well served if students have the means to engage in dynamic discussions of philosophical, religious, scientific, social, and political subjects in their extracurricular campus life outside the lecture hall. If the University reaches this conclusion, it is entitled to impose a mandatory fee to sustain an open dialogue to these ends.
The Court’s ruling dealt a setback to students at the University of Wisconsin– Madison who had protested the appropriation of funds derived from student fees for student groups advocating on behalf of gay and lesbian, socialist, and public-interest issues. "The First Amendment permits a public university to charge its students an activity fee used to fund a program to facilitate extracurricular student speech if the program is viewpoint neutral," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the opinion. However, three justices—Souter, Stevens, and Breyer—objected to the viewpoint-neutrality stipulation, though they joined in upholding the mandatory student fees.
"University faculty should take comfort from the generally sympathetic view of the governance process that underlies such essentially educational facets of student life in the state university," says Robert O’Neil, former chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression located at the University of Virginia. O’Neil also notes "the Court’s appreciation of the basically educational value of student political and social activities."
|