Utah Valley State College donors - who vote with their pocketbook and are upset the Bush-bashing filmmaker is coming to the Orem campus - are saying yes.

Hal Wing, a businessman and former Springville mayor, has yanked a $1.4 million art collection and nearly that much in cash promised for the school. Others are threatening to withhold millions more due to the Michael Moore invitation. One resident refuses to attend his grandson's spring graduation from UVSC, a school spokesman says, and parents are threatening to send their kids elsewhere.

"They've kicked over a beehive," said Wing, who is now sending his art and endowment to Brigham Young University instead. "You don't spit into the wind. It just doesn't make sense."

But the brouhaha over the liberal lightning rod's Oct. 20 appearance in conservative Utah County has reverberated over the mountain into Park City, where a woman with no ties to the school is coming to its defense.

"I'm only sending $100, but to me, it's the principle of it," said Wendy Steinle, a Park City resident who cut a check to UVSC this week. "My donation is a show of support for the courage of the student government to stand up for the enduring principles of democracy."

Controversy over the "Fahrenheit 9/11" moviemaker seems to have shifted arenas - from the political to the financial.

"I've received numerous e-mails, many anonymous, saying, 'I will never donate to campus again,' " UVSC spokesman Derek Hall said Wednesday. RSVPs for an upcoming $125 black-tie dinner and golf tournament fund-raiser, he acknowledged, have been sluggish.

If enough private money dries up, it could spell disaster for the public school, which receives the lowest percentage of state tax funding out of Utah's nine public colleges and universities, according to Mark Spencer, associate commissioner for finance with the state Board of Regents.

"They grew at a time when state funding wasn't keeping up as well," Spencer said.

And state legislators, steamed about the Moore appearance, may take a whack at UVSC's funding in January. Some already have threatened the school's plan to build a $32.5 million Digital Learning Center, seen as a vital cog at Utah's fastest-growing college with 24,000 students and counting.

Either way, private donations are "extremely important to us," explained Tom Heal, director of the UVSC Foundation. "I'm hoping this was a first reaction that will pass."

Dan Garcia, a senior who hopes to teach at the college one day, doubts it. He worries the Moore invitation will wreak far-flung financial harm among the college's "staunchly conservative" donors.

"I highly doubt that this is something that will just die tomorrow or next month or next year," he said. "They tend to have strong memories."

Garcia fears UVSC's fund-raising capability could be set back 10 years, "closer to community-college status."

That's a shame, Steinle says.

"It's very alarming to me that people think that because they are conservative, everyone in their community is conservative," she said. "Any publicly funded institution has a duty to reflect well-rounded views on issues."

But Wing refuses to spend his fortune on a school he accuses of hosting an "ultra-radical" even though it scheduled conservative commentator Sean Hannity to appear Oct. 11 to balance the speaker slate.

The student government "made a statement and it backlashed in this state," he said. "I voted the only way I know how to vote."

djensen@sltrib.com