Jeff Millman: Funding through the back door

The University is staying away from the Israel-Palestine debate, to the chagrin of passionate voices of both sides. In her guest column last Friday, President Judith Rodin said she opposes divestment from Israel because of an "overarching institutional responsibility as an educational and research institution to remain unbiased and non-partisan in the pursuit of knowledge."

It seems reasonable that Penn would avoid controversial issues. When the campus is divided on something, any public stance by the University would alienate some segment of the population.

When we pay tuition and student fees, we don't expect the University to turn around and spend our money advocating something we may not support. We don't expect Penn to use that money to advocate an agenda beyond objective teaching and research. If the University used its resources to advance political positions, it would discredit its contributions to knowledge. If Penn advanced political positions, it would taint us. We would look like the students of Bob Jones University.

While it's reassuring that Rodin understands this, it's puzzling that she does not apply this standard to the abortion debate. Being a hypocrite is far worse than being controversial.

Penn for Choice cannot get its funds the way most student groups get their money. The University does not allow the Student Activities Council, which is responsible for funding student groups, to give money to groups "designed to support or oppose a particular party or candidate or to influence legislation."

Penn for Choice supports like-minded candidates and has worked with the College Democrats to register voters. Yet, the group still receives University funding. According to College senior and co-chairwoman Leah Tulin, the group gets about $500 from the Penn Women's Center.

The Penn Women's Center is by all accounts an excellent resource for women on campus. Its director, Elena DiLapi, says the pro-choice position "allows each woman to maximize her individual rights."

That's why the Center advocates the pro-choice position, under the University banner, with University dollars, which were once your dollars.

Liz Salasko, associate general counsel, says that does not violate University policy or its tax exempt status. According to the federal tax code, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporations, like the University, must "not participate at all in campaign activity for or against political candidates."

When you enter the Penn Women's Center on Locust Walk, you immediately see a floral campaign poster proclaiming "Women for Rendell: Rendell for Governor." Go inside, look around. Pick up a Rendell sticker. Take the "I vote pro-choice" bumper sticker. They've got plenty of them.

Laid out on tables is literature provided by National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League which claims that voting for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher would jeopardize Roe v. Wade. Maybe the University did not pay for these, but urging people to vote for a certain candidate or prominently displaying only one candidate's poster shows a hint of "campaign activity."

In 1981, the trustees issued the following statement on the University's political role: "A university is given a privileged status by society and government in recognition of its unbiased and non-partisan pursuit of knowledge. Society does not expect and should not tolerate the privileged position it has granted universities to be used to advocate positions on issues unrelated to their academic mission." It is unclear exactly how the abortion issue, while important, relates to Penn's primary mission to pursue knowledge.

Perhaps the University leverages its "privileged status" for the pro-choice position to encourage the government to support embryonic stem-cell research. Stem-cells give scientists the material to potentially develop cures to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, juvenile diabetes and other diseases. Penn would like to research these cells and cure sick people.

But last August, President Bush reaffirmed his pro-life posture and banned the government from providing critical funding for new research because embryos must be destroyed to harvest the stem cells. If Penn is advancing a pro-choice agenda to protect its medical research interests, it should look to a more relevant subsidiary than the Penn Women's Center to promote its views (although the Penn Women's Center has been advocating the pro-choice position long before stem-cells were an issue).

Otherwise, the University is talking out of both sides of its mouth. One side denies funding to Penn Pro-Life and Penn for Choice in accordance with the trustees statement, "universities are not organized to formulate moral distinctions and urge them on others, and to do so may imperil their fundamental mission of learning, teaching and encouraging debate and research on issues of moral, philosophical, national and international interests."

Penn's other side provides back-channel, unorthodox funding and ideological agreement with an inherently political group that advances an agenda which alienates a significant portion of the campus and the country.

The abortion issue is just as explosive and just as divisive as the tragic quarrel in the Middle East. In the interest of consistency, Penn should explain why it chooses sides in one controversy and not the other. And in the interest of full disclosure, Penn should show how taking a stance on abortion advances its unique educational goals and steers clear of elections.

Jeff Millman is a senior Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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