Subsizing Dynamism

While we were gone on spring break last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could have significant ramifications for student life on campuses across the country. the Court will hear the case of Board of Regents v. Southworth, in in which a group of law students at the University of Wisconsin have claimed that their compulsory student activities fees--which finance a wide range of groups, including student political groups of all stripes--violate their free speech rights. Two lower courts ruled in the dissenters' favor, agreeing that they could not be forced to endorse, via their fees, views they didn't agree with.

here at Harvard we need not worry too much about the ruling--it will only apply to public universities, and besides, we already have the option to opt out entirely of our $20 annual student activities fee Still, the Court's decision could have long range implications for the viability of student fees at all universities, and the dispute offers occasion to examine our own views about these fees.

In Buckley v. Valeo, the Court ruled the campaign finance limits were constitutionally suspect because donations are a form of speech that under the First Amendment cannot be abridged. If the Court applies the same money-equals-speech logic to the Southworth case, the dissenters will probably win their grievance and be allowed to opt out of supporting particular student groups. They will view their win as not merely a victory for free speech, but also for market forces.

A free marketeer might argue that university student groups should receive no subsidies whatsoever and instead let students vote with their feet on which activities they believe most enrich their college experience. Those students who want to try Brazilian dance, for instance, ought to shell out $30 dollars each to support a program. If a student wants to read the Independent or Perspective, she should pay a quarter for a copy from a vending machine. If fewer people dance or read campus publication, market advocates say, that's just fine.

Many at Harvard would bristle at such a suggestion though, because we believe that universities are special places, where new, tentative, and outrageous ideas and activities should be given additional support and cultivation. As a matter of fact, it seems that small, startup projects are the greatest beneficiaries of the Undergraduate Council's grants process. Most students probably wouldn't want to eliminate their termbill activities fee and replace it with a market system because we believe that the dynamism of student life--even if it is some what artificial--significantly enriches our experience, and we seem to think that dynamism will not be able to flourish satisfactorily without subsidies.

Some on the council agree with this in the extreme and voted recently to hold a campus-wide referendum to be held later this month on a proposed $20 increase in the activities fee. Before we rush headlong into endorsing this increase, however, consider what exactly it gets us. Will our campus life become twice as vigorous if the council has twice the money to distribute? Or will balkanized student groups just get richer and more expansive? And if our extracurricular life becomes twice as dynamic, will our academic life correspondingly become half as significant a force in our undergraduate lives? The truth may be that Harvard's student life will be vibrant even without termbill subsidies; the strength of each entering class guarantees it. In other words, we ought not to have blind faith in the virtue of activities fees.

While Harvard's activities fee is currently assessed on an all-or-nothing basis, the Wisconsin students seek the opportunity to opt out of subsidizing only particular groups. Loyal readers of this page will recognize the quandary this poses as being similar to the debate launched by Daniel Choi'94 last fall over Harvard's policy of refunding the portion of student health fees that funds UHS-performed abortions.

It is not difficult to imagine the chaos if students were allowed an endless array of such opt-out privileges. Culturally offended by Chinese language instruction? Philosophically opposed to scientific research on animals? Concerned about Harvard's financial investments in oil companies? Demand a refund of whatever insignificant portion of your fees support these endeavors! At modern universities like Harvard with their hands in every educational pot--what former U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Clark Kerr referred to as the "multiversity"--opt-out schemes become terribly infeasible.

The Wisconsin dissidents, for example, want to opt out only of supporting particular "political" student groups. But this becomes difficult when the old lines have become increasing blurred however; last school year, for example, Ballet Folklorico de Aztlan, a dance group here at Harvard, joined the very-much-political anti-grape campaign. If the Court rules in their favor, the students at Wisconsin and elsewhere may soon be faced with a checklist student groups seeking support on their termbills. Is that what conservatives really want?

To the argument that fees violate students' free speech rights, I reply that an individual's funding of a diversified system of advocacy and activity can instead be interpreted as a mere endorsement of ideological heterogeneity--a notion that very few members of a university community would oppose. Taxpayers, for example, foot the bill for some public financing of eligible political campaigns, finance maintenance of parks where anyone can hold a political rally, and pay the salaries of legislators irrespective of those legislators' views. In cases where students fees are redistributed by students themselves--as it is by the council's well-run Finance Committee--all students have a voice, through their elected representatives, how money is distributed. Student fees, at Harvard anyway, are not a matter of taxation without representation.

So long as the money from activities fees in distributed fairly and without regard to the supposed ideological propriety of projects, it is clear that these fees add to the dynamism of campus life. It is uncertain whether the council's proposed fee increase would really be advantageous, but what is certain is that the sort of opt-out schemes that may result from the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling would bring chaos to termbills, all in the name of suspicious free-speech claims. I share the Wisconsin students' aversion to thought control, but the special character of university student life may demand a more sophisticated response than checkoff programs.