It should come as no surprise that as the range of student fee funded activities has expanded in recent decades – moving from basics like health insurance and athletics to a truly broad range of activities including advocating positions on important social and political matters – student fees and the activities they support have sometimes become controversial. 

Like any large, heterogeneous community, students have widely divergent views on political, social, economic, and religious issues.  Debates over these matters become, at times, contentious.  While colleges and universities see these activities as integral to an educational environment, others object to the promotion of views different from their own, and especially object to the use of student fees.  These opponents of student fee funded activities have taken the position that they would rather sacrifice the whole forum that student fees fund than tolerate a forum that contains views other than their own.
Religious conservatives have been among the most vigorous objectors to the broad range of student fee funded activities, though there are other groups in that camp as well.

Alliance Defense Fund (www.centerforacademicfreedom.org) is the prime example here.  The organization has  played a role in challenges to student fee systems at the University of Wisconsin, Georgia Institute of Technology, Miami University (Ohio), the University of Oklahoma and the University of Virginia.  The organization’s now out of use “Defunding the Campus Left Action Pack” stated that “This effort can literally eliminate millions of dollars from those who oppose biblical values, religious freedom, and the spread of the gospel."

Another example of an organization that has been especially active is the Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) , a free market law firm funded by the oil and gas industry.  It has represented objecting students in many cases trying to eliminate student fees. 

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