Trouble is brewing in the bastion of liberalism to the north. According to AP press reports, a lawsuit filed by a conservative student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has worked its way up through the legal system and was scheduled to go before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The suit was filed in 1996 by a conservative law student who objected to his money supporting campus organizations he found objectionable. Among the 18 groups he listed in his complaint were the International Socialist Organization; the Campus Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Center; and an AIDS support network.

On the surface, the issue seems to be conservative prudes making life miserable, but depending on how the Supreme Court sees it, the case will affect every public university.

Every university has a group similar to the ones at Madison. And just like Madison, we pay a student fee that goes into a large pool. From that the Government of the Student Body disburses funds to pay for all the clubs on campus. That is the same situation as in Madison, and it is being challenged.

Although both lower court rulings have been in favor of the student, there is great hope that the Supreme Court will side with the school. In 1995, they ruled that colleges must fund student groups despite objectionable views, in that case forcing a school to fund a Christian newspaper.

One of the solutions offered has been to allow students to check what groups they would like their money to go to, effectively tying the hands of student governments.

While not a problem at Madison where liberals outnumber conservatives by a large margin, here in the Bible Belt, many liberal groups would find their funding dry up. No more LGBTAA. No more Atheists and Agnostics Club. Ditto the Unitarians. Hell, even the College Democrats would probably go the way of the dodo bird.

Even if you find those groups objectionable, they still promote a forum for public discussion that must be considered a part of our education.

Last weekend, I attended a lecture organized by the Atheist and Agnostic Club. Even though everyone knew the topic would be objectionable, many fundamentalist Christians attended. Without funding for such non-mainstream groups, debate and intellectual discussion would fall by the wayside.

Even if there were enough funding for the different groups, the division of funding would become a source of friction. Many people would be bitter over a perceived lack of funding, and that would only create an us-them atmosphere on campus. Protests and demonstrations would be the order of the day, with an occasional riot thrown in for good measure.

The truth is the current system is the best way, because it allows marginalized groups a way to express themselves. Sure, you might be in the smug majority right now, but times change. Someday you may find yourself in the minority and wanting funding. What then?

One issue that has not been addressed is how this will affect the funding of every service on a campus. It is easily within the realm of possibility that students could refuse to fund anything else they object to, given a possible victory over student groups. On-campus students could refuse to fund bussing services for people living off-campus or in Towers.

Soon nothing would work, and we would have a society of closed doors.

Of greater importance is how the issue relates to the concept of authority. As students we pay the university a sum of money and it is up to their discretion how to spend it. When we challenge that, we threaten to undermine the entire system because we refuse to pay for services used by others. Everything becomes a battle, and the minority will always lose.

In Illinois there are toll-roads around Chicago because the roads need repairs more frequently due to their higher usage. People in rural areas refuse to pay for the maintenance of roads they never use, so they set up toll booths to charge only the immediate users.

But consider all the rural roads that run for miles and connect only a few houses. By our previous reasoning the rural residents should pay for those roads, but I guarantee nobody has the capital to afford their own two-mile stretch of asphalt!

The system that works best is one where everybody pays in and we allow the institution, whether it be a public university or a state government, to dole it out fairly.

That some money goes toward people who use facilities more than others is a fact of life. I have never called 911 but that doesn’t mean the fire department should be abolished. Likewise, I do not belong to Campus Crusade for Christ, but I think they should receive funding equitable with other groups.

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Aaron Woell is a senior in political science from Bolingbrook, Ill.