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The lawsuit brought by UW-Milwaukee student leaders is now a federal case.

The students argue that the administration of then-Chancellor Michael Lovell violated the University of Wisconsin System’s core value of shared governance, which is enshrined in state statutes and guarantees student participation in campus affairs, specifically over how student segregated fees are used.

Annually, UWM students pay more than $25 million in segregated fees in addition to their tuition. This semester, a full-time student will pay $649 in segregated fees, which are supposed to be allocated by the democratically elected student government for student activities.

Last semester, that $649 covered $141 for student union operations, $138 for athletics, $113 for health and medical care and smaller disbursements for other activities.

In the lawsuit, originally filed in circuit court, the students allege that the administration disregarded validly elected student government leaders who didn’t support the administration’s agenda, then appointed a sympathetic board of trustees that took control of the budget and drafted a new constitution, which passed with less than 500 votes cast of a possible 28,000.

The students claim that as a result of those actions, the administration has more say in student affairs and has too much sway over the allocation of students’ segregated fees.

Gary Grass, the attorney representing the students, said that all UWM students, not just those involved in student government, are impacted by the administration’s meddling.

“The students are being deprived of that money and it adds up to millions of dollars,” Grass said.

The administration also specifically targeted student leaders who opposed it. As the Shepherd reported in September, M. Samir Siddique was elected president of a student government that rivaled the administration’s hand-picked representatives. When Siddique failed to renounce his position, the administration tried to prevent him from registering for classes last fall. Ultimately, Siddique obtained a restraining order and was able to attend UWM while appealing his case.

Siddique, along with nearly four dozen other students, has signed on to the federal case pending before Judge Charles Clevert Jr.

Follow the Money

The UWM case joins two others that take aim at how students’ segregated fees are used on UW campuses.

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Attorney Grass said the tuition freeze imposed on UW campuses by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature, along with heavy competition from other universities for students and resources, have turned segregated fees into a pot of money that’s attractive to university administrators.

“It’s all about the money and the ego of top administrators,” Grass said. “They want to oversee big projects and if their campus spends more money than another campus they’ll be able to draw more people to their campus. They have these plans to spend this money and the only way they can get the money with the tuition freeze is to take it from the students.”

UWM has been on a massive building spree. Next up is the construction of a new student union, which students approved in a referendum in 2012. Its $160 million capital costs will be covered by gradually increasing students’ segregated fees beginning in 2015 through at least 2034, according to a report by UWM spokesman Tom Luljak.

Michael Laliberte, UWM’s vice chancellor for student affairs, told the Shepherd that the Board of Regents hasn’t yet approved any fee increases for the new union.

Laliberte, one of the defendants in the suit, emailed that “we believe that students play an extremely important role in just about every aspect of the daily operations of the university.”

The critical student leaders had questioned the student union’s construction.

“The students’ position on the union has been, it’s a student union, you’re going to pay for it with our money, we want a seat at the table and want to be included in major decisions,” Grass said.

He said that was the breaking point between the student government and Lovell’s administration, leading the administration to disregard certain elected student leaders and install its own representatives on the unelected board of trustees.

Over at UW-Madison, the cost of operating the student union is at the heart of a segregated fee dispute. According to a June report by The Isthmus, UW-Madison’s student government zeroed out the $10 million operating budget for the student union since the administration offered few details about how the money would be used. The students argued that shared governance gave it the ultimate say over the use of segregated fees, while the UW Regents and the chancellor argued that the chancellor had the final word, The Isthmus reported.

Grass also represents Jeffrey Decker, who has been calling attention to the way segregated fees have been used at UW-Stevens Point. The UW Board of Regents obtained a restraining order against Decker so that he couldn’t set foot on UW property and speak out about segregated fee use. That case went up to the state Supreme Court, which decided last summer that the injunction against Decker was too broad and sent it back to Dane County circuit court. On Jan. 2, Judge Richard Niess decided not to issue a new injunction against Decker.

Grass said he was encouraged by the students’ willingness to assert control over their segregated fees and their role in the shared governance of UW System schools. He said that when he was in UWM student government 25 years ago, members were well aware of their legal right to participate in university decisions. That awareness has diminished over the years, he said.

“Now you’ve got a recognized student government that has no clue about these things and you have a lot of students who are in the dark about it because no one has tried to expose them to these issues,” Grass said. “So you really need the students who are the plaintiffs in this case who are fighting the good fight.”