The process by which we fund our student services on campus is a rusted-out Dodge Caravan minivan circa 1994. Every year, our elected representatives pour resources into keeping the old thing alive, never questioning whether we should bother keeping it running.

Every year there is a systemic failure to allocate General Student Services Fund money sensibly. This is not to say the committee members aren’t doing their jobs. Rather, some registered student organization worms its way into the pool of groups eligible for student money, or another group valuable to campus loses its funding over a procedural or clerical error every year. The Student Services Finance Committee is defenseless to stop them. Trembling in the face of being accused of violating viewpoint neutrality, SSFC awarded Badger Catholic nearly $101,000 of students’ money for 2013-14, while the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics cashed in for $61,000 and the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group received more than $165,000.

Last year, the infamous Medieval Warrior League, a group helmed by a former SSFC chair, stepped up for its piece of the more than $1 million pie. Because they were able to navigate the complicated process of applying for GSSF eligibility with ease – and SSFC members are bound to evaluate a group’s services in a viewpoint neutral manner – MWL secured $97,000 in student money. It caused such a PR problem for the group that members opted to change its name.

What’s worse: We all paid for people to buy long swords and armor that were never purchased, with $86,000 being returned to ASM’s general coffers.

In 2011, the budget for the Multicultural Student Center, a critical central hub for underserved communities on campus, was gutted because of a basic procedural misunderstanding.

ASM continues to ignore the broken down system’s death rattles, instead approving new patches to close loopholes at the end of nearly every session. This year was no different: Aiming to protect against another MWL scandal, SSFC recently approved changes to its eligibility criteria. These criteria allow the committee to evaluate groups on the likelihood that they will be able to deliver their service (for instance, whether they can actually secure permission to swing sharp weapons in UW facilities) in an attempt to prevent groups from using ASM as a Kickstarter. Two years ago, the patch was the Campus Services Process (formerly the Campus Service Fund), which has now essentially become a vestigial organ that no one uses because they don’t know how.

The upshot: This newest set of standards, crafted for over a year by an ad hoc committee of students, ASM officials and members of student organizations, is just fine. Unmooring groups from the strict, largely arbitrary math committee members used to help make eligibility decisions makes good sense: It provides the groups with more flexibility to work on campaigns with the university and other groups.

SSFC Chair David Vines told this board he’s as confident as he can be that these new criteria are just as stringent as the old criteria — a telling commentary on the state of the GSSF. Instead of continuing to repair a broken system, it’s time to have critical conversations about whether a single allocable pool of student money intended for groups that a 15-member committee deems eligible that session – with the rest of UW’s more than 750 RSOs left fighting for the scraps through Finance Committee grants – is the best way to be funding student activities.

It’s no secret that ASM finance isn’t a terribly sexy issue to get out in front of the general student population. But until students mobilize against the status quo, ASM will remain shackled to a fundamentally flawed funding framework, and the misuse of student funds will continue. The GSSF’s greatest shortcoming is emphasizing supply over demand. Rather than making groups jump through hoops to prove no one else on campus provides a duplicate service, the committee should question whether a demand exists that ASM should help meet. This funding structure is so devoid of redeeming qualities that more drastic measures may be in order — like rethinking why the GSSF exists at all.

It’s this problem that leads to groups like Badger Catholic and MWL receiving absurd amounts of students’ money, even though it’s difficult to document how many students are actually reaping the rewards through participation in these groups.

Students must realize that they aren’t chained to this funding structure — the only thing perpetuating it is their apathy. If the campus community can rally behind ASM candidates who are committed to reworking this funding structure in a way that actually serves students’ best interest, we will begin to see student dollars spent more responsibly.