After the Student Services Finance Committee denied the Multicultural Student Coalition funding in October, the group appealed the decision to Chancellor Ward last Friday.
In the appeal,the group said UW-Madison administrators are facilitating SSFC’s “student fee mismanagement, overt multicultural incompetence, and downright discriminatory methods of institutional racism that are at work.”
The group said Dean of Students Lori Berquam should have reached out to MCSC to ensure the right of all students to allocate student fees were protected.
But SSFC Chair Sarah Neibart said Ward upheld her committee’s ruling because SSFC ruled in a fair manner.
“They know we went through the process very thoroughly and we were in the right,” Neibart said.
MCSC said the criteria SSFC uses to determine what qualifies as a “direct service” to students has been used to deny many groups that represent minority students funding eligibility in previous years. The group said the trend is indicative of “institutional racism.”
“Given the absence of both student fee training and multicultural competency training, the predominantly white and cross-culturally ignorant student body of the SSFC and their ASM professional support staff were unable to agree on an intelligent, neutral, and collective way to determine which of the groups’ activities count as ‘direct services’,” the appeal said.
Student Judiciary Chief Justice Kate Fifield said other student groups, such as the Collegiate for a Constructive Tomorrow, have also been denied funding regularly.
Fifield said she does not believe any of the justices took into account that MCSC represents multicultural students when ruling.
“I’ve promoted really high standards of impartiality and ethical behavior on the student judiciary and if I honestly believed that any of the justices were making decisions on a racially-motivated basis, they would be gone immediately,” Fifield said.
