Starting a conservative club on campus, a checklist from charter to speaker

Here is how the revolution begins. A freshman with a spiral notebook walks into the Office of Student Engagement, takes a number, waits twenty minutes, and is handed a nine-page recognition packet that begins with the phrase "Pursuant to the Student Organization Governance Framework." It is not a dramatic scene. There is no soundtrack. But it is how every conservative club in America starts, and the freshman who survives the packet is the one who ends up with a room, a budget and an audience.

The good news is that the law is on your side more than the packet admits. If you attend a public university, the First Amendment applies to the school, because the school is the government. You do not need a donor, a famous speaker or a national organization to begin. You need a handful of classmates, a constitution and the patience to follow the rules. Here is the checklist, grouped, with the reason for each step. Your own school's handbook controls the details, so read it first.

Group 1: Know whose rules you are under

• Find out if the school is public or private. Public universities, run by the state, are bound by the First Amendment. Private universities are not; they are bound by their own promises in the student handbook and by whatever your state's law adds. Reason: the rights you can claim depend on the answer. At a private school, the argument is "you promised," not "the Constitution says."
• Download the recognition policy and the student organization handbook. Reason: every deadline, form and fund rule lives there. If it is not written down, ask for it in writing.
• Read the nondiscrimination and membership rules. Reason: some schools require clubs to be open to every student as a member or even as a leader. This matters, and I come back to it below.

Group 2: Recognition and the constitution

The case that matters most is Healy v. James (1972). Central Connecticut State College refused to recognize a local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, in part because the administration disliked the group's views and its national affiliation. The Supreme Court held that the college could not deny recognition just because it disagreed with the group's philosophy, and that a student group has a First Amendment right of association. The college could still require a group to follow reasonable campus rules. That case came from a left-wing group, and it protects a conservative one equally. That is how First Amendment law works: it is only worth having if it covers the people you can't stand.

• Gather the minimum number of members. Your handbook states how many a club needs. Reason: the number is a threshold, and a club with five good members beats a club with fifty names.
• Write a constitution. Reason: the school will require one, and a good constitution prevents fights later. Use the template if the school provides it. It should cover: 1. Name and purpose. State the purpose plainly: "to promote discussion of limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty on campus." 2. Membership. Who can join, and how. 3. Officers and duties. President, vice president, treasurer, secretary at the least. 4. Elections and removal. How and when officers are chosen and replaced. 5. Meetings. How often, and how decisions are made. 6. Finances. Who holds the money, and who signs. 7. Amendments. How the constitution changes. 8. Dissolution. What happens to funds if the club ends.
• Pick a name that will last. Reason: if you affiliate with a national organization, check the terms. If you stay independent, you keep control, and you can always affiliate later.
• Submit the packet on time, in the form requested, and keep a copy of what you submitted with the date. Reason: if there is a dispute, proof of a complete, timely application is half your case.

Group 3: The advisor and the officers

• Find a faculty or staff advisor. Many schools require one. Reason: the advisor signs forms and gives the club an inside view of how the place works. An advisor does not have to agree with you about politics, just support a student group's right to exist. Professors who tell students they believe in open debate are often glad to be asked.
• Choose officers with different jobs. One person who recruits, one who runs meetings, one who watches the money, one who handles events. Reason: clubs die when one overworked president is the whole club.
• Write down the handover plan. Reason: students graduate. The club that has a binder with the constitution, the contacts, the calendar and the last budget survives the senior class.

Group 4: Money from the student activity fee

Most public universities charge every student an activity fee and divide the pot among student groups. Three Supreme Court cases govern how the pot may be divided.

1. Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995). The university funded the printing costs of many student publications but refused to pay the printer for a Christian student magazine because of its religious viewpoint. The Court held that this was viewpoint discrimination, forbidden by the First Amendment.
2. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth (2000). Students objected to paying a mandatory fee that supported groups they disagreed with. The Court held that a university may charge such a fee to fund a forum for a range of student speech, so long as the money is distributed on a viewpoint-neutral basis.
3. The practical consequence. Your club cannot be turned away from the funding pool because of its politics. Neither can any other club. You pay into the pot, and you may draw from it on the same terms as everyone else.

Now the checklist.

• Learn the funding process. There is usually an application, a hearing before the student government's finance committee, and a list of what can and can't be funded. Reason: missing a deadline costs the whole semester.
• Prepare a line-item budget. Here is a hypothetical one for a small club: printing and flyers $150; speaker honorarium $500; event security or facility fee $200; refreshments, if the rules allow them, $150; supplies $100. That's $150 + $500 + $200 + $150 + $100 = $1,100. Reason: a request that is itemized and justified is harder to cut. Many schools restrict spending for certain things, including food and travel, so check.
• Keep the books. Receipts for everything. Reason: the treasurer's honesty protects the club.
• Do not fundraise carelessly. If you collect money from outside the student fee, find out whether the school requires the money to go through its accounts. Reason: a clean audit trail is worth more than a quick check.
• If a request is denied, ask for the reason in writing and compare with how other groups were treated. Reason: the neutral-treatment rule is an argument, and an argument needs evidence.

Group 5: Speakers, rooms and invitations

• Learn the room reservation process. Public universities that open their facilities to student groups generally cannot exclude a group because of what it says; in Widmar v. Vincent (1981) the Court held that a state university that opened its facilities to student groups could not exclude a religious group because of the content of its meetings. Reason: once the school has created a forum, it must be fair about who uses it.
• Read the speaker policy. Many schools have a process for outside speakers: advance notice, an event registration, and sometimes a sponsor from the faculty. Reason: rules about notice are normal, and complying leaves less to dispute. A rule that gives an administrator a free hand to say no is not normal, and you should say so in writing.
• Ask about security fees. In Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992), the Court struck down a local ordinance that let an official set a permit fee based on how much hostility the speech might provoke, because it made the amount depend on the content. Reason: a university cannot price a speaker out of the room because the audience might object. A neutral fee schedule is another matter, and you should expect to pay what any group pays for comparable events.
• Plan for protest. Peaceful counter-protest is also protected speech. Disrupting the event so nobody can hear the speaker is not, and a good policy says so. Reason: you want the school to enforce its own rules fairly, whichever side the protesters are on. A Conservative Student's Playbook for Standing Up for Speech on Campus is the longer guide.
• Invite the other side. A debate with a professor or a student from a progressive club makes your event harder to cancel and more interesting to attend. Reason: it is the Chicago approach, that a university is a place for argument. Campus Free Speech From Berkeley in 1964 to the Chicago Principles tells that story.

Group 6: The events calendar

A club does not need a hundred events. It needs a calendar that people can plan around. Here is a plain semester calendar of fifteen weeks.

• Weeks 1 to 2: activities fair table, first interest meeting, sign-up sheet.
• Week 3: first regular meeting, officers confirmed, dues or no dues decided.
• Weeks 4 to 6: a book discussion or a film screening (cheap and easy), and the first request for a speaker.
• Weeks 7 to 8: a service project or a voter-registration table, if the club is nonpartisan for that purpose.
• Weeks 9 to 12: the speaker event or the debate, with reserved room and posters two weeks ahead.
• Weeks 13 to 14: an end-of-term social, recognition of new officers.
• Week 15: budget report, and the request for next semester's funds.

Reason: a club with a recurring calendar is a club members remember. A club that meets "when something comes up" doesn't meet.

Group 7: When recognition is denied

• Ask for the denial in writing, with the reason and the policy section cited. Reason: a stated reason can be tested. A vague one is a problem the school has to fix.
• Compare with others. Were similar clubs approved on similar paperwork? Reason: treating you differently is the heart of a viewpoint-discrimination claim.
• Fix real defects at once. If the paperwork is wrong, correct it. Reason: you do not want to win the principle and lose the application.
• Use the internal appeal. Most schools have a dean of students or a student affairs office with a review process. Reason: it is usually a required step.
• Raise it in public. The student newspaper, the student government and the board of trustees' public comment period are fair places. open meetings and public records, a citizen's toolkit for any local government explains how to see a public university's records. Reason: a school often acts quicker when its decision looks unreasonable in daylight.
• Seek legal help. Several organizations that defend free speech and religious liberty advise student groups and take cases. Reason: a lawyer's letter citing Healy often resolves a dispute.

The hard case: "all-comers" rules

I said I would return to membership rules, and I want to give the other side its due. In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), the Court upheld, five to four, a public law school's policy that required every recognized student group to accept any student as a member or leader. A Christian student group had wanted to require its officers and voting members to share its faith, and the school refused to recognize it on those terms. The majority said an accept-all-comers policy was a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition of access to a school-run forum. The dissenters said it was a way to pressure groups into abandoning their identity.

I think the dissenters had the better of it, and a conservative club has a stake in the question: a group that cannot choose leaders who believe in its mission eventually stops being that group. But the decision stands as the law for schools that adopt such a policy, and you should know whether yours does. If yours has an all-comers rule, you can still comply and protect the club through the constitution, the officer-election process and a strong core of active members. If your state has passed a statute on the subject, it may change the answer. Ask a lawyer, and read the handbook.

The bottom line

• Start with five serious classmates and a written constitution. You do not need a national chapter, a donor or a famous name.
• At a public university the First Amendment binds the school. Healy v. James protects your right to be recognized, and Rosenberger and Southworth protect your claim to equal treatment in student fee funding.
• Read the recognition, funding and speaker policies before you submit anything, keep a dated copy of every filing, and ask for every denial in writing.
• Plan one event a month on a fifteen-week calendar, and invite a critic. A club that can win an argument in public does not need to worry about the permit.
• Know whether your school has an all-comers rule, and decide in advance how the club will protect its mission inside it.