The Associated Students of Madison’s Conference Committee met Thursday night to discuss a letter sent by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley listing student organizations whose budgets need to be reviewed because they have a religious affiliation or use segregated fees to pay rent for facilities.
According to Committee Chair and UW-Madison junior Rachelle Stone, the Student Services Finance Committee sent the 2006-'07 budget to the chancellor for approval before spring break. Late last week, the chancellor released his statement, and the affected student organizations were encouraged to attend Thursday's meeting.
Stone would not release the statement to anyone besides student organization representatives at the meeting because not all of the organizations were informed their budgets were to be reviewed.
The committee focused on UW-Madison's religious organizations, and committee members asked how they were to determine which were too religious" versus providing "educational services."
"The chancellor is asking us to inherently define whether [religious organizations] are educational or whether they're doing religious services or religious activities that kind of cross the line into being potentially unconstitutional," Stone said.
Several of the organizations are under review because they use segregated fees to pay overhead costs, such as rent. The committee proposed asking for a year extension for those organizations to find alternative funding.
Committee members were concerned that even if they reviewed the organizations again, the chancellor would still reject their budgets. This was a major concern for the religious organizations, because committee members felt they had already justified the money given to those groups.
Representatives from Wisconsin Public Research Interest Group and the Tenant Resource Center spoke on behalf of their organizations. Both said using University funds to pay rent has never been an issue in the past.
UW-Madison sophomore Alex George, campus coordinator for the Tenant Resource Center, said he was glad the committee sounded resolved to stand behind the organizations.
George said he was not disappointed the committee decided the organizations would not present their cases at next Monday's follow-up meeting.
"All the groups have already presented their budgets to SSFC," he said. "It really would be redundant to have them present again."
Rick La Torra, campus organizer for WISPIRG said it was "shocking to hear about [the budget review], especially since we've been running like this for so many years."
He expressed disappointment that organizations would not have a final opportunity to appeal to the committee Monday."
