Christians, grangers, trade unionists, and Klansmen want the right to assemble, not the state to control their membership. Educational institutions have an interest in there being the opportunity for students to socialize, argue, explore ideas, activities, that are widely and fluidly defined (meaning a chess club may be inactive while a web design club can be founded) within the purview of the most basic right that members of the academic community aren’t denying others from participating freely (or choosing not to).

And that certainly does mean that some argumentative jackass can make it so no one wants to be a member a member of a duly formed student group, or that the game of who get to count the votes for president becomes juvenile, and another group forms, or no one wants to participate, or meetings are shouting matches.

That’s how public institutions work, and the right to assemble and associate means it’s a right, not that taxpayers have to subsidize it.

Your point’s well-taken.

But I think the amount of subsidy here is probably negligible (cost of elecriticity to light the meeting room, etc.). I once worked for a group called the Atlantic Legal Foundation that challenged student-fee subsidies for the on-campus “PIRG” (public interest research group, a liberal outfit). Conservative students understandably didn’t want their money going to support such a group. The (3rd Circuit?) decided to ban forced funding for off-campus lobbying activity, which went too far, but kept it for on-campus stuff since that advanced the “educational mission” of the college.

Anyway, I see all these points, but so long as the subsidy is minimal, I guess I’d err on the side of having as much activity is possible. Meaning, yes, I’d have to pay a small amount to support a group I didn’t like.

For instance: American Renaissance, a “race realist” or “white advocacy” magazine, holds bi-annual conferences. The most recent one was shut down because of terroristic threats, and the police and press did and said nothing about it. If they requested police protection at taxpayer expense for the next conference, I’d fully support paying that — and making everyone else pay that. That is, a slight affirmative duty on the part of the government to see that the First Amendment is exercised.

Only whites. No Mexicans. Men only. No Commies. Irish need not apply (I know apocryphal in the US). No blacks, no muslims, no fat chicks.

The noive of that place.

This is not as far-fetched as it may sound to you. I know many Jews who are very concerned about this opinion, because it means the Jewish student group will have to accept fundamentalist Christians into their fold, who would use the Jewish student group’s money to fund evangelism to the Jews. Of course, the Jewish college organization I was involved with was funded entirely by donations from parents and from the Jewish community at large, so this would not have been an issue for us, but I can definitely see it happening at, say, the University of Georgia, where (at least when I was there) the Jewish population was minimal and evangelism to the Jews was rampant.

I suspect there are Christian fundamentalist who are members of many gay student groups. And I suspect they are welcome as long as they advocate a Christian position on gay rights. More and more young Christians are coming to the conclusion that the mainstream conservative Christianist/political movement doesn’t represent Christianity and doesn’t represent their beliefs.

It is only illegal to discriminate based on certain fundamental rights. We don’t have any fundamental right to force people to associate with us.