After only receiving $5,000 from the Student Services Finance Committee when it requested $385,921, the student group Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow plans to sue SSFC in the Student Judiciary for the second year in a row.
Five thousand dollars is the lowest amount of funding SSFC can grant an eligible student group.
SSFC agreed to minimum-fund the group after reviewing CFACT's budget and questioning the group Thursday evening. But, according to CFACT Intern program director and UW-Madison senior Lindsey Ourada, SSFC spent an insufficient amount of time reviewing the budget and exercised a lack of viewpoint neutrality in its decision.
'The debate on whether or not to minimum-fund us lasted about three minutes,' Ourada said. 'The person who moved to minimum-fund us wasn't even at our presentation.'
SSFC proposed to grant the lowest possible funding amount after first proposing two cuts to the CFACT budget, a process Ourada said only totaled 15 minutes.
Nevertheless, the problem is not with the entire SSFC, according to former CFACT executive director and UW-Madison senior Peter McCabe, who continues to volunteer with the group.
'There were definitely a few people who were acting fiscally responsible and fair to the system,' McCabe said. 'They were trying to act as they had with every other organization on this campus. We respect that. Unfortunately, there was a group of individuals where that was not true.'
Accordingly, within the next week, CFACT plans on suing only specific members of SSFC for breaching viewpoint neutrality.
This is not the first time CFACT has alleged a lack of viewpoint neutrality from SSFC. According to Nicholas Fox, chief justice of the Student Judiciary and UW-Madison senior, last year CFACT sued some SSFC members on those grounds. As a result of the lawsuit process, Barbara Kiernoziak was found guilty of a violation of viewpoint neutrality.
This time, it is going to take more than one member's breach of viewpoint neutrality to change the budget decision, according to Fox.
'Usually in the past, we have not been inclined to throw out a whole budget just because one or two members [breached viewpoint neutrality],' he said.
SSFC-elected member and UW-Madison senior Tim Schulz said given the poor quality of the budget proposal CFACT submitted, the current amount allocated to the group is appropriate. Schulz said CFACT requested thousands of dollars for events it claimed more than 1,300 students would attend, while to date the group has only seen 80 to 100 members attend its events.
'The budget was so poorly done,' Schulz said. 'Their events weren't justified. Their staff was not justified.'
Both CFACT and SSFC representatives said the issue is far from over.
'It's going to be a big issue,' Schulz added. 'There's going to be a lot of lawsuits.'
