The University of Wisconsin-Madison will not recognize and fund the oldest and largest religious group on campus, for now, in a move that is sparking a debate over the separation of church and state.
A UW-Madison official told the UW Roman Catholic Foundation in an e-mail Friday that it had rejected its application to be a registered student organization because only three of its 12 board members are students.
The e-mail came just as a staff member of the Catholic group filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice alleging UW-Madison had discriminated against the religious group in a number of ways. The timing of the rejection and the complaint was called coincidental.