Isn’t it like other campus buildings that are paid for by the taxpayers? It is both a matter of law and tradition in the State of Wisconsin. UW System Policy specifies that buildings like student unions, recreation facilities, and residence halls cannot be paid for with taxpayer funding. The acceptable sources of funding for this kind of facilities are user fees (think what you pay when you buy a cheeseburger or go bowling in our Recreation Center) or student segregated fees. As you can imagine, we don’t sell enough cheeseburgers nor do enough people bowl for us to pay for such a large project. More importantly, students have always been the drivers across the state in the funding of student union facilities. From the student fundraising and student fees that paid to build the original Memorial Union at Madison to the student union building boom across the UW System in the 1950s/60s through the recent projects at our sister institutions in the System, all have been funded by students through segregated fees.