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A UW-Madison official told the UW Roman Catholic Foundation in an e-mail Friday that it had rejected its application to be a registered student organization because only three of its 12 board members were students.
School rules require that groups “be controlled and directed by UW-Madison students,” wrote Yvonne Fangmeyer, director of the student organization office.
The e-mail came just as a staff member of the Catholic group filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice alleging UW-Madison had discriminated against the religious group in a number of ways. The timing of the rejection and the complaint was a coincidence.
Casey Nagy, top aide to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, said Saturday the group could be recognized if it restructures its board. It could later receive funding if its programming is open to all students and does not violate the separation of church and state, he said.
“We don’t have any hostility towards religious or other viewpoints. All we’re asking for is student control and compliance with the law,” he said. “We remain open to conversations on how to accomplish both of those ends with any organization on campus.”
For now, the university’s decision means the Catholic group cannot receive student fees, reserve space on campus, recruit students at school events or use UW in its title.
In recent months, UW-Madison administrators have become more vigilant enforcing requirements that student organizations do not discriminate in membership policies and are controlled by students.
The school last month refused to recognize the Knights of Columbus, the service organization which limits its membership to Catholic men, in a decision that sparked criticism from Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green and other conservatives.
UWRCF, which runs St. Paul’s Catholic Center and serves the school’s estimated 12,000 Catholic students, traces its history on campus to 1883. St. Paul’s, which opened in 1909, was the first Catholic chapel at a secular university in the U.S. The group claims 30,000 alumni.
Tim Kruse, spokesman for the foundation, said 90 percent of those using the Catholic center’s services are students. He said the board includes community leaders such as Madison Bishop Robert Morlino to manage its budget wisely.
“We need the advice of outside people but our center is controlled and operated by students,” he said. “To us, this is just the latest in a series of disingenuous attempts by the university to hide under policy and procedures that were only intended so that they could discriminate against a religious viewpoint.”
In his complaint with the Department of Justice, Kruse alleges UW-Madison used a number of policies to illegally cut or limit its funding. He alleges the school has repeatedly violated court rulings requiring mandatory student fees to be awarded without regard to the viewpoint of the group.
He said he hopes the agency will put pressure on UW-Madison to end the discrimination and assist in a federal lawsuit the group plans to file. Nagy said he had not seen the complaint.
After a year-long dispute, Chancellor Wiley in May approved $145,000 in student fees for the group even though he complained that much of the money may violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits public money from being used to support religion.
Some of the money went for running an evangelical ministry, holding prayer groups and printing Lenten booklets and drew the threat of a lawsuit from the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for the separation of church and state.
At the same time, Wiley warned only registered student organizations would be eligible for funding in the future and UWRCF would receive money only if it could demonstrate the uses were constitutional. The group had received funding for three years.
The tougher policy prompted UW-Madison this summer to refuse to recognize a Knights of Columbus group that had been on campus for 30 years.
Knights of Columbus is also considering a lawsuit against the university to protect members’ constitutional rights, an adviser said Saturday. “We remain hopeful that justice will be done,” Mark Etzel said.
