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Three years ago then-Interim Chancellor David Ward made his customary request to student government for funding for recreational sports and the Wisconsin Union, which are supported by student fees. The Associated Students of Madison turned him down.

Ward ignored the vote, so ASM filed a notice of claim against him, the Board of Regents and the UW System itself for “raising student fees without proper student input.”

At the core of the students’ legal argument was the concept of shared governance — the cherished protection enshrined in Wisconsin State Statute 36.09 that, according to ASM’s interpretation, guarantees student involvement in university policy and gives students the right to oversee the disposition of student fees.

“For over 40 years, students at UW-Madison and across the state have been robbed of their statutory right to oversee their student fees,” ASM chair Andrew Bulovsky said in a statement announcing the potential lawsuit.

But UW officials disagreed, saying that student fees fall into two categories: allocable and non-allocable . Students only have the authority to oversee the allocable dollars, which are used to fund student organizations. Non-allocable fees, which are used to fund things like building projects and University Health Services, are not distributed by students.

The distinction, however, originates in UW System Board of Regents policy — not in state statute.

“It’s troublesome,” says Mark Hazelbaker, a lawyer and UW-Madison alumnus who was prepared to take ASM’s case. “Over the years, [the university] has taken the position that the rights of students are whatever the university says they are.”

The United Council of UW Students set aside $100,000 from its legal defense fund to pursue the lawsuit, but no charges were ever filed — an outcome Hazelbaker attributes to the inevitable lack of continuity in student government that comes when key leaders graduate.

With the threat of the lawsuit unfulfilled, controversy over student fee allocation waned. But the issue lurks in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, which proposes removing shared governance, along with tenure, from state statute. Critics have assailed the proposed changes to tenure, arguing it will have a chilling effect on academic freedom, stifle research and lead to a brain drain from Wisconsin. But students stand to lose as well.

In addition to the allocation of some segregated fees, shared governance guarantees student representation on a variety of university committees. There are about 70 at UW-Madison, ranging from the Arboretum committee to search and screen committees.

“There’s so much uncertainty,” says Morgan Rae, outgoing chair of ASM’s shared governance committee. “That’s our biggest concern. We want to make sure student voices are still heard.”

Walker’s biennial budget proposed sweeping changes to higher education — an unprecedented $300 million funding cut, a plan to spin the UW System off into a quasi-public authority, as well as removal of tenure and shared governance from state statute.

The shared governance language in the UW System omnibus motion approved last month by the Legislature’s budget writing committee reflects a significant shift in power, diminishing the role of faculty, academic staff and students to essentially an advisory role, “subject to the powers of the Board, President, and Chancellor.”

“[W]ith regard to the responsibilities of the faculty, academic staff, and students of each institution, ‘subject to’ means ‘subordinate to,’” the motion reads.

The regents have already responded to Walker’s proposal to strip tenure and shared governance from state law by forming task forces to develop a plan to protect them both and promising to add them to board policy.

But critics have pointed out that regent policies do not carry the same weight as state statutes. Plus, the regents are unelected officials appointed by the governor. Giving them ultimate power over the UW System could be seen as an avenue for an executive power grab.

“People have made an investment of many, many billions of dollars in this institution,” Hazelbaker says. “Why in the world should we give it away to unelected people who are not accountable to anyone?”

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank and UW System President Ray Cross have vowed to preserve both tenure and shared governance in regent policy. Students, however, are demanding that the statute remain unchanged. ASM released a statement this week urging Blank to back them on this.

“With the changes in the omnibus motion, all decisions made by ‘shared governance’ bodies will be subordinate to you, our chancellor, and thus non-allocable units across campus could have more power to spend our money frivolously and use that money in areas students do not feel benefit the greater UW-Madison community.”

If the changes are approved by the full Legislature in the coming weeks, the legal question Associated Students of Madison asked three years ago about the scope of student rights under shared governance would be decisively answered.

“If the budget goes through and they repeal [the statute], the last thing students have to protect these rights will be gone,” says Milwaukee lawyer Gary Grass. “If the law is gone, there will be nothing left.”

Grass is representing Mohammad Samir Siddique, a UW-Milwaukee student politician who clashed with administrators over his role in an unrecognized student government established after university officials threw out the results of a student election in 2013.

Administrators contended that the 2013 election process did not adhere to the UWM Student Association’s bylaws, so they voided the results and instituted a new “board of trustees” student government. Siddique says it’s a “puppet regime” created to retaliate against students who asserted their statutory right to allocate roughly $26 million in segregated fees.

Grass says that Wisconsin Statute 36.09 not only guarantees students and faculty the right to be involved in shared governance, but that it gives them a primary role.

It also allows violations of shared governance to be addressed in court. But if the language is stricken from state statute and transferred into regent policy, the avenue for legal recourse from an outside authority would disappear.

“If the regents are not held [accountable] by some outside authority...and they get to decide what the policy is, what do you have?” Grass asks. “You appeal to the regents, they decide they were right?”

Members of the statewide student advocacy group United Council of UW Students have been fighting to restore the integrity of shared governance in the UW System, says Lamonte Moore, the group’s senior legislative liaison.

“There is a long history that has been tainted,” he says of previous shared governance violations.

But that work has been more difficult since the Joint Finance Committee voted to alter the group’s funding mechanism in 2013. Prior to the change, UW System students automatically paid $3 to support United Council with the option to “opt out” of the fee. Now, students must opt in to provide funding.

As the biennial budget makes its way through the Assembly and Senate, Moore says the best hope for preserving the shared governance statute is to put pressure on Walker to use his veto power. In the last biennium, Walker used a partial veto to block a proposal to freeze the allocable portion of student segregated fees — a move that may indicate Walker supports students’ rights, Moore says.

“That veto gives some hope,” Moore says. “If he’s trying to run for president, [protecting shared governance] would show that he stands with students.”