Macalester College students have voted to end their relationship with Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, the student advocacy organization active on six other Minnesota college campuses.

Student activities fees pay for the organizing staff MPIRG installs at each supporting campus. Students at Macalester can opt out of paying that fee, but many at the private St. Paul college said the emails about that process are easy to miss.

That revenue structure drove much of the opposition in the run-up to student voting Monday and Tuesday, when 59.2 percent of voters said the school should not renegotiate its MPIRG contract. Turnout was 63 percent.

MPIRG is nonpartisan but historically has taken politically liberal positions. It has worked to protect same-sex marriage, increase the minimum wage and make it easy to vote, and it consistently advocates for environmental protection.

But that didn’t stop the predominantly liberal student body at Macalester from effectively kicking them out.

“I basically agree with almost everything they did,” said Gabe Garbowit, a student who led the campaign against the MPIRG contract. “I just thought any political lobbying group shouldn’t be taking money by default.”

Macalester students give $6 to MPIRG each semester. If they opt out, that money instead goes to student government. MPIRG Executive Director Ryan Kennedy said roughly 10 percent of Macalester students do opt out.

MPIRG’s contract with Macalester historically has been fragile. It let students vote every three years on whether to continue supporting the organization. That’s not the case at other chapters, Kennedy said, and students at most MPIRG schools do not have the ability to opt out. MPIRG has been the only activities-fee-supported group at Macalester that students could decide not to give to.

“We feel if it’s unfair in any way, it’s unfair against us,” Kennedy said last week.

Incorporated in 1971, MPIRG has chapters at Augsburg College, Hamline University, St. Catherine University and the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Duluth and Morris campuses. Carleton College students quit supporting MPIRG in 2009.

Kennedy said that MPIRG can’t afford to be active on campuses that don’t contribute student fees and that the vote leaves Macalester without a group to rally student voices on public policy issues on campus and at City Hall and the state Capitol.

“We’re the only group that’s really providing students with those opportunities,” he said.

Garbowit said that his group outworked MPIRG supporters at Macalester and that the results of the referendum demonstrate that Macalester students don’t need a larger organization to make a political statement.

“You don’t necessarily need this organization with all this money it’s getting from a very unfair funding structure to organize,” he said.

Josh Verges can be reached at 651-228-2171. Follow him at twitter.com/ua14.