Folks, if youre in Tennessee and care about student funding for outside speakers, please send a message to your legislator to register your opposition to SB 1608 and SB 2493, both of which dictate major changes to UTs funding of outside speakers. Heres my personal message to my legislators (which I altered slightly for Senator Campfield, since he sponsored both bills). Feel free to use anything useful from this to construct your own message, should you desire to do that. John Hanks, Tamma Rader, Scott Heminway, Kathryn St.Clair Ellis, and others may be among those who want to oppose these bills. It would be especially great to have UT parents and folks from outside UT who oppose the bills weigh in. +++++ I stand in strong opposition to both SB 1608 (capitol.tn.gov/Bills/108/Bill/SB1608.pdf) and SB 2493 (capitol.tn.gov/Bills/108/Bill/SB2493.pdf). Fourteen years ago, I moved my family to Knoxville so I could take a teaching position at The University of Tennessee College of Law. My goal was to educate and mentor law students—our next generation of lawyers. I have done and enjoyed that since our arrival here in 2000. I am a faculty advisor to three law student organizations. Each brings speakers to campus to help educate fellow students on topics important to the organizations mission. Sometimes, a speaker charges a fee for his or her appearance; more often, he or she may require a reimbursement of funds expended for travel and accommodations. I also have taught a freshman seminar in our undergraduate program, am a mentor to undergraduates (especially those considering law as a career), and am a faculty advisor to an undergraduate student organization that brings outside speakers to our campus. Co-curricular activities and extra-curricular activities involving speakers from outside our campus are an integral part of the higher education experience. The speakers attracted bring new and diverse ideas to our campus. These ideas are part of the concept of a university—a place in which there is a free exchange and discussion of ideas. However, tuition does not fund the costs of these outside speakers since they do not engage in curricular activities. That is why the university requests funding through student activity fees for this aspect of university life. Funding from these fees for undergraduate outside speakers is provided through a campus committee that is designed (through its composition and its processes) to ensure both student engagement and viewpoint neutrality. I have not heard any student complaints about the refusal of duly requested funding. SB 1608s allocation of student activity fees based on the size of an organizations membership fails to take into account the fact that student organizations serve to educate a population of students (and others in the campus community) that far exceeds the number of students in the organization. The College of Law has a population of over 420 students. All of these students are invited to presentations made by most outside speakers; many presentations attract 50-100 students (or more), although the organization may have ten (or so) active members. Undergraduate student organizations also may be quite small, yet they often serve a far larger population. In short, the educational mission and audience served is unrelated to the size of the organization. It simply does not make sense to allocate fees on the basis of organization membership size. Moreover, opportunistic student organizations will attempt to game this type of rule by engaging in extraordinary efforts to recruit new student members to their folds in order to garner more institutional support for their desired speakers. Funding for speakers will then reflect the organizations recruiting prowess. This is not a rational way to distribute funding for outside speakers that reflect novel and varied perspectives in support of the universitys broad educational mission. SB 2493 has a significantly more draconian impact on outside speakers. It would wipe out entirely this part of our program of higher education by withdrawing funding for it. This is extremely troubling to me. The unique range of views brought to campus by outside speakers is simply not replaceable by campus educators and local folks who would speak without a fee or expense reimbursement. In all candor, I have trouble identifying a possible benefit to either bill. Each appears to be a veiled attempt on the part of the legislative proponents to narrow the range of ideas presented to students (and to faculty, staff, and the greater community, for that matter, since all are welcomed to university events sponsored by student activity fees). As I see it, these bills represent, in effect, political censorship. I learned (in connection with my recent work on our campuss effort to reaffirm its accreditation with the Southern Associations of Colleges and Schools—SACS) that one of the The University of Tennessee-Knoxvilles accreditation standards requires that [t]he governing board is free from undue influence from political, religious, or other external bodies and protects the institution from such influence. Based on news reports on the genesis of these two bills, they appear to represent an attempt to exert undue political influence on the universitys board of trustees to force campuses and students to only bring certain types of speakers to our campus—speakers that pass a legislatively determined litmus test unrelated to the universitys educational function or purpose. When I moved my family here to Tennessee fourteen years ago, I understood that Tennessee was a state that valued individual liberties—a state that believed government should not intrude in the decisions of its citizens. Students who choose to attend The University of Tennessee-Knoxville and pay its tuition and fees are your constituents. I am the parent of one of them—a recent alumnus who lives and works here in Knoxville. These students and their parents pay for the broad-based education provided at a world-class public institution—including that offered through outside speakers supported by the student activity fee. Students should continue to have a significant role in determining how their activity fees are spent. I ask that you stay true to Tennessees educational and political values and vote against both SB 1608 and SB 2493. Thank you for your consideration of this request.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 07:07:36 +0000
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