The Associated Students of Madison Student Judiciary ruled in favor of the Student Services Finance Committee Friday in two separate cases of alleged viewpoint neutrality violations during funding decisions made this fall.
According to the ASM bylaws, all funding decisions must be made in a viewpoint-neutral manner, meaning student representatives may not take the mission of the group under consideration for funding into account when voting on budgets or grants.
In one case, the Multicultural Student Coalition challenged SSFC’s December decision to minimally fund the group at $10,600 instead of approving the group’s $1.4 million budget request.
MCSC representatives argued SSFC members used personal biases and value judgments in the decision, violating ASM bylaws of viewpoint neutrality.
In a unanimous decision released Friday, the SJ ruled in favor of SSFC saying the nature of the funding process for student organizations necessitates “subjective judgements and variant interpretations” of the criteria by each SSFC member.
The decision said individual SSFC members could be held in violation if they did not remain consistent with their judgements and interpretations throughout the 2013-’14 funding period. However, there was no evidence this had occurred during the MCSC decision, according to the SJ ruling.
The judiciary did find SSFC Chair Ellie Bruecker committed a procedural error by failing to set the minimally funding level a week prior to the beginning of the budgeting period as stipulated in the ASM bylaws. According to the SJ rulling, Bruecker will send an apology to all student groups affected by the violation.
In the second case Collegians For a Constructive Tomorrow appealed SSFC’s October decision to deny the group funding eligibility. The SJ ruled in favor of SSFC in what was CFACT’s second challenge of the decision.
CFACT representatives argued SSFC committed a viewpoint neutrality violation by granting similar student organizations funding eligibility but denying CFACT eligibility.
In the unanimous ruling released Friday, the SJ stated CFACT representatives did not provide sufficient evidence that it was “drastically similar” to a group that did receive funding eligibility.
