Prop. 54 Drive Stirs Campus Flap
By MATTHEW ARTZ (09-26-03)
Caught in a blizzard of outdated and conflicting regulations, UC
Berkeley is trying to determine whether the student government violated
UC laws by funding a campaign against Proposition 54.
At issue
is the Graduate Assembly’s (GA) decision three weeks ago to allocate
$35,000, some from compulsory student fees, to the “No on 54” campaign
coordinated by members of both the Associated Students of the
University of California (ASUC) and the Graduate Assembly. The money
came from funds carried over from the last year’s GA budget.
The
campaign ordered signs, buttons and other materials to mount a fight
against the initiative that would bar the state from tracking
race-based data. But campus officials said the campaign has withheld
payment on all purchases until the top attorney at the UC Office of the
President weighs in on the case.
“The
university is looking into the question if university policies were
followed,” said UC Berkeley Dean of Students Karen Kenney, adding that
the university was determining if ballot measures fell under the
student’s right to lobby or the university’s prohibition against using
funds for partisan political purposes.
The
conflict led to a raucous scene at the ASUC Senate session Wednesday
night. Senator Paul LaFata from the right-of-center APPLE Party
demanded the resignation of ASUC External Vice President Anu Joshi and
Graduate Assembly President Jessica Quindel, and claimed someone at the
UCLA School of Law intended to file suit against the student
government.
Joshi, a
major force behind the “No on 54” campaign, insisted she had violated
no laws and that ASUC and UC bylaws were in violation of a recent
Supreme Court ruling.
School officials would not comment on any penalties the ASUC might face if it were found to have violated university bylaws.
When the
controversy first broke earlier this week, UC Berkeley quickly rebuked
the GA for violating rules against funding groups for “partisan
political purposes.”
But the
university tempered its response after a Wednesday meeting with student
government officials who provided legal precedents they said vindicated
the GA.
“We are
convinced that everything we did is completely legal,” said Graduate
Assembly Executive Vice President Cintya Molina, adding that the
assembly had received counsel before making the decision. While ASUC
bylaws explicitly prevent it from funding ballot initiatives, Molina
said the GA was not bound by those rules.
UC’s guidelines are a muddled collage that raises more questions than answers.
According
to university policy 83.10, compulsory student government fees cannot
be used to support political, ideological, or religious organizations
or activities. However, this policy was written in 1994, before a
California Supreme Court Case and U.S. Supreme Court case granted
student governments more say over their fees.
In 1999,
UC—responding to the court decisions—changed its policy to allow the
ASUC and the GA to fund political organizations so long as the funding
was based on merit, not politics, and providing for a proportional
refund to students who disagreed. Included among the types of
activities qualifying for the refund are support or sponsorship of
ballot initiatives.
Student
government officials said the policy paved the way for funding the
campaign, but representatives at the UC Office of the President
disagreed.
Hanan
Eisenman, UCOP spokesperson, said the 1999 policy applies only to
student organizations, not the student government. Because the “NO on
54” campaign had close ties to both the ASUC and the GA, school
officials said it remained to be determined if “NO on 54” could be
considered separate from the governments themselves.
If UC
officials determine the campaign was actually an extension of the
student government, it would then be illegal, Eisenman said, because
the ASUC is an official unit of the university and therefore prohibited
by UC bylaws and state law from funding ballot initiatives.
UC is
nearing the end of a two year process of rewriting its Policy on
Student Governments. Section 63.00 of the new draft guidelines state
that “Positions on issues taken by student governments shall not be
represented or deemed to be positions of any entity of the University,
other than the student government.”
A Feb. 10,
2003, letter from UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor Genaro M. Padilla offered
comments on various passages of the updated policies, but did not
recommend changing the language of Section 63.00. In his letter,
Padilla said that “unless otherwise noted, our comments...should be
read to adopt the suggestions previously presented in the policy
outline distributed to the campuses for comment.”
April
Labbe, university affairs director for the Student Association of the
University of California—which advocates for UC student
governments—said other UC campuses have already begun using the revised
policies. “As far as I’m concerned, this is university policy,” she
said. “If we had thought that what the student government was doing was
illegal, we would have steered them away from it.”
Eisenman replied that because the language had not yet been adopted, it didn’t apply to the Prop. 54 campaign.
The
student government insists that whatever the current UC bylaws, their
right to fund ballot initiative campaigns is protected by the United
States Supreme Court.
In 2000
the court ruled 9-0 that the University of Wisconsin Regents could
allow compulsory student fees to be spent on student lobbying as long
as the allocations were based solely on merit. In that case, student
Scott Southworth argued that using compulsory student fees to fund
political speech violated his right not to associate with groups he did
not support.
Student
government officials said that the decision effectively freed them to
use mandatory fees to fund lobbying as long as it was viewpoint
neutral.
But Boalt
Hall School of Law Professor Jesse Choper said the Southworth case
doesn’t apply in this scenario. “Southworth is a narrow opinion that
tries to decide as few things as possible,” he said. “Southworth said a
university may [permit compulsory fees to be used for lobbying].
Nothing in Southworth supports the view that the university must [do
that]. This is a case in which the university of California says it
won’t let funds be used for any political purposes.”
Aside from
the legal wrangling, students remained divided whether their government
should be in the business of taking sides on ballot measures—regardless
of legality.
“The ASUC
ought not fund off-campus political campaigns unless it represents the
common interests of students,” wrote ASUC Senator Paul LaFata in an
e-mail to the Daily Planet. “With Prop. 54 there is a substantial
number of students who are on both sides of the issue; it is requiring
those students [who don’t agree] to give tax-like money to the other
side.”
Molina
countered that collecting race-based data was essential for graduate
student research and that the GA was defending their constituent’s
interests in funding the “No on 54” campaign.
“Graduate
students voted on this because they knew it was essential to the
research mission of the university,” she said. “If you can’t do the
research here people will go to New York to do research on race.”
The
biggest losers appear to be the students active in the campaign. Most
of the supplies purchased were bought by students who expected to be
reimbursed by the money allocated from the GA.
“I’m one of the ones waiting to be reimbursed,” Molina said.