Religion and the UW-Madison

Once again, I have to say that I am very impressed with the UW-Madison campus newspapers. This time it is a story in The Daily Cardinal about Rep. Mark Green sending a letter to Chancellor John Wiley asking him to stop 'discriminating' against a Catholic group on campus that is seeking student fees for part of its funding. The story in The Daily Cardinal gives a much more complete view of the controversy than the one in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Rep. Mark Green seems to think that a Supreme Court case that stated segregated student fees must be awarded in a viewpoint-neutral manner means that the UW-Madison should give all the funding the Roman Catholic Foundation requested from the UW-Madison. Never mind that some of the things the group requested funding for was printing Lenten booklets and running an evangelical ministry. In other words, promoting religion. And never mind that the words "religion" and "viewpoint" are hardly synonymous.

The Daily Cardinal brings up a couple of points that the Wisconsin State Journal missed. One is that the Green himself is a Catholic. This makes you wonder if Green would be working this hard to fight for a group that wanted to hand out pamphlets recruiting students to Islam, Buddhism or Kabala. Somehow, I think not.

The other more important point The Daily Cardinal brings up goes to the fact that there is another problem with the request from the Roman Catholic Foundation that has nothing to do with what the group promotes. The university does not give out funding for maintenance, improvements or overhead for buildings not owned, leased or otherwise controlled by the university. The Roman Catholic Foundation's funding request asked for $35,462 for electricity, gas and water.

Green doesn't seem to care that the funding request for utilities would have been denied for any group. All he wanted was a press story to show the religious right during his bid for governor.