When Brandon Perlow found out in September that the Jewish Cultural Collective was denied funding by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was in disbelief.
“We were shocked,” said Perlow in a telephone interview from Madison. “This is the fifth year we’ve been in operation [and] we’ve never been told we were not eligible for funding,” he said of the student organization he chairs.
As it turns out, the JCC was just one of several organizations that rely on university funding whose applications were rejected for the first time this year. The Roman Catholic Foundation of UW and the Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) also saw their applications denied, much to their surprise.
All three organizations appealed the decisions to the Student Judiciary, and all three were denied again. RCF-UW sued the university as a result of the rejections.
The applications for funding are considered a year in advance, so this decision determined that the JCC will not receive funds for the 2008-09 school year.
The JCC is the “largest Jewish student group on campus both in terms of funding and in terms of activity,” Perlow said. It offers a plethora of Jewish cultural programming that is free to all students.
Among its programs are two annual film festivals (Jewish and Israeli); speaking engagements with prominent national figures; the JCC Coffeehouse (which events offer a venue for artists, musicians and spoken word poets to display their talent); the Theater Project (which stages a production each semester that has a Jewish author and/or Jewish themes).
The JCC’s major effort, however, is “The Voice,” a magazine of Jewish culture and thought that it prints each semester.
Given this robust schedule and the improvement of its offerings on a yearly basis, the JCC was bewildered by the university’s decision, Perlow said.
Students distribute funds
The organization that distributes funds to registered student organizations (RSOs) such as the JCC is the Student Services Financial Committee, which is the financial arm of Associated Students of Madison, the school’s student government. The SSFC is made up of 13 voting students whose task is to distribute monies collected by the university called segregated fees.
Each student at UW-Madison is required to pay nearly $400 each semester ($767 for the 2007-08 academic year) as part of their tuition.
Of the roughly $23 million that the SSFC is in charge of every year, 12 percent is considered “allocable funds.” The other 88 percent pays for services such as the University Health Service, the Union and bus passes for students.
Of the 719 RSOs currently at UW-Madison, about 25 qualify for segregated fee funding. This is the highest level of funds available to student groups and the application process is a rigorous one.
According to Perlow, RSOs that receive segregated fee funds are not supposed to have a religious or political influence. For this reason, the JCC has remained independent from Hillel Foundation University of Wisconsin, though the JCC does use the Hillel building for certain activities.
Perlow emphasized that none of the JCC’s activities involve prayer and if there is a political aspect of a program, no particular viewpoint is promoted by the group.
“We have been told [by the SSFC] that we do a great job of keeping religious and political aspects out of the group and focusing on Jewish culture,” Perlow said.
The reason for the denial, Perlow surmised, is the different makeup of the SSFC. It has been widely acknowledged that this year’s SSFC is interpreting the rules differently than past committees by specifically focusing on language in the General Student Services Fund’s Financial Manual.
That language states that contract RSOs must provide an “educational benefit,” which may include “leadership development opportunities, but must also have significant additional components.”
SSFC chairman Alex Gallagher is reportedly pleased with the new interpretation of the rules. “I think this is necessary to see a sustainable fund in future years,” he was quoted in an article in the Badger Herald.
At a March 6 meeting, the SSFC considered changes to some of its bylaws, including the addition of budget and eligibility evaluation forms that would be filled out by SSFC members explaining their decision to approve or reject applications.
Those forms may even be tied to a stipend that SSFC members receive in an effort to improve the transparency of the system, said SSFC secretary Kurt Gosselin.
What next?
After the funding applications were rejected, a public outcry ensued by the RSOs, students on Internet message boards, and in court (in the form of the lawsuit by the Roman Catholic Foundation).
The JCC has formed a committee that is preparing a presentation for a possible April meeting with Chancellor John D. Wiley, who receives the budget and submits it to UW System board of regents for final approval.
If that meeting proves unfruitful, the JCC will likely not exist in its current form through at least the next school year. This year, segregated fees accounted for 100 percent of its $158,219 budget.
Loading ...