Opting-out of student fees


Misappropriation of funds offensive

Snooki went to Rutgers University. The MTV "Jersey Shore" icon Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi did not receive a diploma, but she did get $32,000 for two hour-long question-and-answer sessions using money that came from the mandatory student activity fees (MSAF) paid by Rutgers' undergraduates.

Many students and the parents who finance their college experience find this use of MSAFs offensive. They say it violates the First Amendment of the Constitution to require them to support groups or activities that they oppose. Short of abolishing government-funded colleges and universities outright, the only solution is to allow students and parents to opt-out of student-managed entertainment fees. New Jersey Republican State Senator Joe Kyrillos intends to do just that with his NJ Senate Bill No. 2843 “Providing Transparency and Choice in Student Activity Fees.”

On March 31, 2011 over 1,000 Rutgers students filled the Livingston Student Center to see MTV's Snooki. The Jersey Shore reality star sold out two separate shows, yet admission was free on a first- come, first-serve basis. Students queued up as early as 1 p.m. for an 8 p.m. start. She told tales of her morally corrupt reality show, offered dance lessons and demonstrated the styling of her famous "pouf" hairdo. Her inspiration in life is being tan. “When you're tan, you feel better about yourself," she said. Moreover, “study hard, but party harder,” was one of Snooki’s most poignant bits of wisdom of the evening. The Rutgers University Programming Association paid $32,000 for Snooki's appearance with funds from the MSAF.

Certainly, this abominable student activity at a publicly-funded Rutgers campus comes as no surprise to Wasyl Schumylowych, the parent of a college-age New Jersey woman. “In fact, on 9/2/08 one of my daughters, a high school valedictorian and college honors student, was left with no choice but to withdraw from attending [The College of New Jersey (TCNJ)] one of New Jersey’s top-rated public colleges,” Mr. Schumylowych wrote. Being an Orthodox Christian, she was being forced to financially support campus activities that go against the family’s religious beliefs. “My daughter had requested to be exempt from paying the student activity fee as a reasonable accommodation of her sincerely held religious belief, intending to privately fund the campus activities that she was planning to participate in. Her request was denied... she received notification that if she did not make full payment, her student account would be frozen and this would deny her access to her transcripts and spring semester registration,” Mr. Schumylowych continued. In effect, she was denied equal access to the higher educational opportunities on religious grounds.

However, student fees have not always been controversial. In 1875, the student fee at the University of Wisconsin paid for heating and lighting the university hall and public rooms, music, diplomas and a matriculation fee. In 1949, the fund covered athletic contests, concerts, class dues, and cap and gown fees.
Contention over MSAFs arose in the early 1970’s when “Ralph Nader started Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) in separate states. Mr. Nader’s PIRGs lobbied legislatures on tendentious environmental and consumer issues.

Subsequently, PIRG activists successfully convinced many colleges and universities to use referenda as a means to decide the PIRG’s claims upon student fees. They argued that a majority of students could vote to impose an assessment that each student was then required to pay,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). “During the Vietnam War era, the decision to fund the local PIRG soon spread to include the funding by mandatory fees of other ideological and political groups on campus, especially those that advocated liberal views on feminism, the environment, gay rights, and abortion,” FIRE continues. 


Many objected to these required fees. In reaction, some student officers and universities denied funding to groups they deemed controversial. For instance, the University of Arkansas did not fund a campus gay group. This led to a decision in 1988 by the Eight Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the University could not deny funding to a club based on their specific view point. PIRGs therefore drew the battle lines over MSAFs: The desires of the majority versus the protection of individual opinion.


Finally, in March 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision in “Southworth v. University of Wisconsin” ruled if a university chooses to impose mandatory fees to “facilitate a wide range of speech it may do so,” according to the opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. He said the Court found that “all speech is germane to a university’s mission to foster dynamic discussions of philosophical, religious, scientific, social, and political subjects[...while the university must remain] viewpoint neutral.”
“The Court says you must put up with it provided that the university retains a veneer of neutrality in its subsidy decisions. The Court says in effect: You may legitimately be forced to pay for the propagation of ideas you abhor because there is some chance that money will also be given to organizations you like,” points out Dr. George C. Leef Adjunct Scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. But “the harm you feel is not alleviated” because “two wrongs don’t make a right whether we are talking about kids on a playground or the Constitution,” he says. “Tax-supported universities should abandon mandatory student fees as a means of subsidizing selected campus groups,” concludes Dr. Leef.


New Jersey State Senator Joe Kyrillos arrived at a similar conclusion to Dr. Leef after the “Snooki takes Rutgers” fiasco and introduced his Bill No. S2843 on May 12, 2011 to the New Jersey State Legislature. The bill “requires tuition bills of public institutions of higher education to include details on student fees and opt-out provision for student-managed entertainment fees, and requires certain institutions' Websites to include student fee information.” This would provide some safeguards for students objecting to activities dealing with sex, politics and religion on public campuses.
“That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1779 in a draft for a Bill to Establish Religious Freedom in Virginia. Mandatory Student Activity Fees are tyrannical and it is time this obligatory violation of individual freedom stops.

New Jersey must pass S2843 and other states should follow suit for all publicly-funded institutions of higher education.

-Kelly Kathryn Llobet is a writer living in Baltimore, a veteran Navy spouse and a proud mother of five.