SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
Universities have a long tradition of being centers for vigorous discourse as part of their role in preparing the leaders of tomorrow, and the tradition has never been limited to the classroom. The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System has determined that an essential function of its educational mission is to encourage students to engage in the expression of ideas of interest to them, by providing a modest subsidy to facilitate expressive activity. The Board of Regents has also determined that it is essential to provide certain services to a diverse student population, which at times also involve the expression of diverse viewpoints. Accordingly, the University funds these services and expressive resources through mandatory student fees.

In providing financial resources to student organizations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to facilitate their expressive activities, the University is creating a limited public forum, as this Court found the University of Virginia had created in Rosenberger. In this case, respondents, several current or former undergraduate and law students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, do not dispute that the challenged student fees fund student services or that they result in a Rosenberger forum. However, respondents contend that payment of the mandatory student fees violates their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association insofar as any funding goes to organizations whose views they oppose. Respondents claim a constitutional right to opt out of funding student services and the creation of a forum.

The case places before the Court the question reserved in Rosenberger, of whether the First Amendment requires that an objecting student be permitted to opt out of funding a limited public forum in a university setting.

The University's funding of services and its creation of a limited public forum through the distribution of mandatory student fees does not compel speech by respondents or by any other students. There can be no contention that each of the funded registered student organizations (over 100) speak on behalf of all students. There is no single organization that all students must join or that represents all students. The parties stipulated that the student groups are funded on a viewpoint-neutral basis. With respect to student services, the parties stipulated that the funded services were for the benefit of significant numbers of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Respondents do not, as a matter of constitutional mandate, enjoy the right to avoid paying for the provision of student services and the creation of a forum for robust campus debate and dialogue, any more than they enjoy the right not to pay tuition that results in courses being taught with whose content they disapprove. The funding of student services and a forum for the expression of diverse views does not offend the First Amendment. It instead furthers First Amendment values by promoting vigorous debate in an educational setting entirely suited to that discussion. The court of appeals erred when it failed to apprehend the distinction between being forced to fund a podium for all speech and being forced to fund an individual group speaking at that podium. There is no constitutional right to opt out of funding a spatial forum, and there is no reason constitutional principles should apply differently to a non-spatial forum. Respondents can obtain funding for the expressive activities of student groups they choose to form or join. Particularly where speech is taking place at a large, public university, the First Amendment's answer to respondents' objections to the speech with which they disagree is more, not less, speech.

The outcome of this case is not dictated by the holdings in Abood, Keller and Lehnert. The differences between the agency-shop unions and the mandatory state bar association that were the sole voices of those objecting (thereby compelling speech), make the principles for which they stand inapposite to this University setting. In Abood, Keller and Lehnert, the funded speech was that of the compulsory membership organization itself-the union's own lobbying activities at the Legislature; the bar association's efforts to promote a nuclear free zone. By contrast, in the instant case, the challenged funding facilitates the speech of many groups, through a system that respondents stipulated distributes monies on a viewpoint-neutral basis.