UC Santa Cruz defeats conservatives in court

[LeighAnn]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

A federal appeals court has rejected a conservative group's attempt to take away federal funding from UC Santa Cruz on the grounds the school allowed protesters to interfere with military recruiters.

The Young America's Foundation said some of its Santa Cruz members were unable to meet with Defense Department recruiters on campus from 2005 to 2007 because of student protests, including an April 2006 demonstration that caused Army and National Guard personnel to leave a university job fair.

A 1994 law known as the Solomon Amendment requires colleges to grant military recruiters the same access as other employers or forfeit most of their federal funds. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in 2006, rejecting school officials' arguments that they had a right to exclude employers who discriminate against gays and lesbians.

UC Santa Cruz has a policy of equal access for armed forces recruiters. But the Young America's Foundation, which describes itself as the "principal outreach arm of the conservative movement," said the university had tacitly approved the protests and effectively denied equal access.

The foundation sued the government in 2007 after the Defense Department, under President George W. Bush, did not respond to its request to deny tens of millions of dollars in annual funding to UC Santa Cruz.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/27/BAJL18VT3D.DTL&tsp=1

[leveymg]

1. UCSC is the last place the military would want to recruit soldiers, and the last place Young GOPer

would want to spend four years of college. I can't imagine there are more three or four people who have graduated from Santa Cruz since the 1960s who would seriously consider the military as a career.

What a goof.