Chronicle of Higher Education
11-30-07
Campuses That Play Host to Politicians Can Take Steps to Avoid Tax Trouble
By JJ HERMES
As the first balloting of the 2008 presidential campaign nears, colleges in earlyvoting states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have become
hotbeds of political activity. College campuses are favored venues for nationally
televised debates and candidates' policy announcements.
College officials say election activities can bolster their institutions' reputations
when their campuses show up in the national media, and can provide students
and professors a chance to study the electoral process up close.
But being in the national spotlight also has potential pitfalls. Nonprofit institutions
must be careful during political campaigns to avoid running afoul of Internal
Revenue Service requirements that colleges remain apolitical if they want to
maintain their tax-exempt status.
The most common mistake that a nonprofit institution can make is exclusion,
says Marcus S. Owens, a lawyer in Washington who is a former director of the
IRS's Exempt Organizations Division. Colleges risk getting in trouble, he says, if
they give some candidates preferential access to campus events or facilities, or
exclude others.
"As long as it's an open-door policy," however, "the IRS tends to avoid raising
questions about political campaigns," he says.
The American Council on Education issued legal guidance last year to help
colleges avoid federal scrutiny when they hold campaign-related events, and
officials say they may update their recommendations in 2008.
Blanket Invitation
Iowa State University, which is frequently visited by presidential contenders, is
among the institutions that have crafted specific policies to help ensure that
federal guidelines are followed.
Because so many presidential wannabes make stops on the campus — given its
location in the state that will hold the nation's first presidential caucus, in early
January — Iowa State makes one blanket invitation to all candidates through its
Presidential Caucus Series, which has been in place since 1987.
The university invites each candidate to deliver a lecture or hold a talk, although
it does not allow campaigns to plan political rallies on the campus. Many of the
2008 candidates have accepted the offer, including Barack Obama, a Democratic
senator from Illinois, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican and a former mayor
of New York City.
"We invite everybody," says Patricia A. Miller, director of the lectures
program at Iowa State. "We have procedures in place, and we follow them fairly
rigidly, with a commitment to trying to bring folks here."
How to Handle Partisanship
Colleges can invite and pay speakers who have partisan views on political
issues, as long as they are not given preferential access to campus events over
people with different positions. In 2006 the Federal Election Commission ruled
that nonprofit colleges could have such speakers without violating a ban on
corporate donations to campaigns or jeopardizing the colleges' tax-exempt
status.
The commission had been asked by David T. Hardy, an Arizona lawyer and one
of the authors of Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, to provide
guidance on the matter after Mr. Moore, the liberal-minded filmmaker, received
tens of thousands of dollars in speaker fees from colleges during the 2004
presidential campaign. Mr. Moore supported the election of John Kerry, the
Democratic nominee that year.
When it comes to actual involvement in political campaigns, however, colleges
are forbidden to use public resources or to direct students to work on specific
campaigns.
The issue came up last month in connection with a local election in Tulsa, Okla.,
when three professors at Oral Roberts University alleged in a lawsuit, filed in a
state court, that the president, Richard L. Roberts, had directed a government
professor and his students to help the campaign of a Republican candidate for
mayor in 2006. (The candidate, Randi Miller, lost.)
The students' involvement in the campaign had prompted the IRS to investigate,
and Mr. Roberts is on leave as the agency continues to look into the matter.
Politics for Credit
In general, the law allows political-science professors to grant their students
class time and credit for working in political campaigns or at political
organizations of the students' choice. Faculty members themselves can request
time off to work with an election campaign, "as long as one campaign isn't paying
for the assistance to be coordinated and arranged," says Mr. Owens, the
Washington lawyer.
At Drake University, in Iowa, one political-science professor requires the 20
students in a course he is teaching for the first time this semester to take
advantage of the college's proximity to the electoral process by working this fall
as political interns at organizations of their choice.
"They find them interesting and useful," Arthur B. Sanders, the professor, says of
the students' political experiences, "although I think they're also surprised at how
mundane the work you end up doing is when you're working in a campaign."