142
Souter, J., dissenting
well as religious speakers," but there were, in fact, over 100 recognized student groups at the University, and an "absence of empirical evidence that religious groups [would] dominate [the University's] open forum." Id., at 274-275; see also id., at 274 ("The provision of benefits to so broad a spectrum of groups is an important index of secular effect"). And if all that had not been enough to show that the university-student use would probably create no impression of religious endorsement, we pointed out that the university in that case had issued a student handbook with the explicit disclaimer that "the University's name will not 'be identified in any way with the aims, policies, programs, products, or opinions of any organization or its members.' " Id., at 274, n. 14.
Lamb's Chapel involved an evening film series on child rearing open to the general public (and, given the subject matter, directed at an adult audience). See 508 U. S., at 387, 395. There, school property "had repeatedly been used by a wide variety of private organizations," and we could say with some assurance that "[u]nder these circumstances . . . there would have been no realistic danger that the community would think that the District was endorsing religion or any particular creed . . . ." Id., at 395.
What we know about this case looks very little like Widmar or Lamb's Chapel. The cohort addressed by Good News is not university students with relative maturity, or even high school pupils, but elementary school children as young as six.4 The Establishment Clause cases have
4 It is certainly correct that parents are required to give permission for their children to attend Good News's classes, see ante, at 115 (as parents are often required to do for a host of official school extracurricular activities), and correct that those parents would likely not be confused as to the sponsorship of Good News's classes. But the proper focus of concern in assessing effects includes the elementary school pupils who are invited to meetings, Lodging, Exh. X2, who see peers heading into classrooms for religious instruction as other classes end, and who are addressed by the "challenge" and "invitation."
The fact that there may be no evidence in the record that individual students were confused during the time the Good News Club met on school
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