Things couldn't have gone much worse for the Associated Students of Madison lately.

After its initial proposed election failed because of computer troubles last week, ASM announced late Wednesday that its second round of balloting encountered similar difficulties.

If University of Wisconsin senior Steve Schwerbel has his way, these latest snafus may be recorded in history as the proverbial straws that broke ASM's back.

He is chief among a group of students who have formed what they call "Student Government," and they are not shy about their lofty ambition: to revolutionize UW and topple ASM.

"ASM has done nothing but shoot itself in the foot for the last two weeks and whether they'll be able to keep hobbling along — I don't know how many feet they'll have left," Schwerbel said. "It's just a disgusting display by ASM."

The goal may seem lofty and even unreasonable to some, but take a look back just 13 years and Schwerbel's vision may seem a little more plausible.

In 1993 no students on the UW campus knew of ASM, because it had yet to come into existence. That year, students witnessed the self-imposed collapse of its longstanding student government, the Wisconsin Student Association.

"A group of students ran an election campaign on the purpose that if students would elect them, that they would end WSA," said Roger Howard, who was Associate Dean of Students at the time. "They were elected, and … within the course of the year terminated WSA. They did not hold elections for any future student senate and so WSA was finished."

For a little bit less than a year, UW operated without an organized student government body, despite the fact that Wisconsin law requires UW students to participate in some form of shared governance on each campus.

"That was very unfortunate, because I really believe in strong student government," said Mary Rouse, UW Dean of Students from 1987-2000. "[Those were] very dark days when we had no legal student government."

In the year following the student government's disbandment, Howard said several groups of students interested in forming a new system stepped up, and so the university arranged an election in which students voted between several options, one of them being no government.

ASM won the student's support, Howard said, based on a model designed to be much weaker in structure, and to develop a more transparent financial accounting system.

"It has done much better in terms of the way it's handling its money," Howard said. "They have consistently involved more students in their various projects than WSA was."

Howard, who worked part-time at UW before retiring this past October, declined to comment on whether he would endorse the new Student Government over ASM, although he said he has followed the controversy.

"I wouldn't actually vote one way or the other," he said. "I would encourage students to get involved, and think hard about what they want done."

What went wrong?

While UW's Division of Information Technology accepted responsibility for the March 29, 2006 voting malfunction, as of press time it is too early to determine what went wrong Wednesday.

The earlier problem arose when students entered multiple write-in candidates for various ASM seats. DoIT technology allowed only one write-in candidate to be counted, when up to 7 should have been allowed.

Both DoIT and ASM testing of the system failed to pick up that particular system flaw.

"The failure to catch the error is our fault," DoIT spokesperson Brian Rust said Monday. "And then I suppose ASM should have caught it also because they do testing of the system as well."

Schwerbel maintains that if Student Government, and not ASM, were running the show, these problems would not be happening. He said warning signs of DoIT's inability to handle an election extend beyond last week's controversy.

In October 2003, in fact, DoIT manager Elizabeth Conklin told The Badger Herald upon the postponement of a Fall ASM election, "DoIT accepts full and complete responsibility for this unfortunate incident. … We've taken steps to ensure that this will not happen again."

While ASM decided in favor of paper ballots at Wednesday night's impromptu meeting, Schwerbel said ASM's Student Election Commission should have either assumed more responsibility in overseeing DoIT, or left them in favor of more traditional paper balloting long ago.

Asked how he would handle the current situation if he were a top ASM official, Schwerbel said he would guarantee students that ASM will go to the door of every student, hand him or her a ballot, and then collect that ballot and process it in an efficient manner.

ASM Chair Eric Varney, contacted minutes before Wednesday night's meeting, said he is confident ASM will survive the current ordeal, and did not appear concerned with the Student Government initiative.

"It's kind of nice to see somebody else trying something new but we've been established for 13 years now; we've got a pretty strong student government," Varney said. "Their ability to try to collect segregated fees or get rid of our segregated fees — I think it's going to be really difficult to do."

Interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam was sympathetic to ASM's predicament, as she said they did the best they could in working with DoIT.

"Sometimes there are unforeseen potholes in the road. It's dark, and you're just going to hit them," Berquam said. "You have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and that's what you do."

The Student Government platform

Although the election controversy has provided ample opportunities for Student Government to attack ASM, Schwerbel readily acknowledges the most salient problems with ASM trace back much further.

Specifically, Schwerbel — a member of UW College Republicans — feels the current student segregated-fee system is "bloated" and contributes to an increasingly expensive UW education.

"The segregated-fee system, we believe, is a really bloated system that's out of control right now, and that needs to be drastically reformed," Schwerbel said at Tueday's meeting. "Probably 99 percent of what student government should be doing right now is controlling segregated fees and making sure that — frankly — they're as low as possible."

Howard, however, said a change in policy might not be that easy. While Schwerbel said Student Government will consider adopting an opt-in or opt-out system for students to determine their own participation in the segregated-fee process, Howard said such a policy may be illegal after a 1996 lawsuit against UW that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Southworth v. Board of Regents, the court upheld UW's right to collect mandatory segregated fees, provided they honor "viewpoint neutrality."

That decision, he said, has made it difficult in recent years for ASM to reduce budget requests from student organizations.

Segregated fees are student-controlled money added to UW students' tuition, and amounted to more than $600 this year.

"It's difficult for students under this system to say no," Howard said. "The structure that [ASM] is operating in responds directly to those federal court rules. I don't think simply changing the folks who are running the system is going to solve all those problems."

Although Schwerbel said he is familiar with the 1996 Southworth decision, he confessed ignorance when asked how he plans to avoid those restrictions.

"We are considering a number of things right now," Schwerbel said in an interview Wednesday. "We're going to have to look at that as we go forward crafting this Constitution."

Other alternatives Schwerbel referred to at Tuesday's meeting include a "tighter philosophy" across the board for segregated fees, or a cap that could only be raised through a student referendum.

"We saw it this year in the UW Roman Catholic Foundation budget battles," Schwerbel, a former Badger Herald columnist, said. "These things get dragged on to the point where it just gets impossible to turn down anybody for money."

How can they take over?

While elected WSA representatives took the initiative themselves to self-destruct 13 years ago, ASM isn't likely to do the same anytime soon, and Schwerbel said at this point that isn't the strategy.

"I don't know if enough candidates would be willing to come over to this side," Schwerbel said, noting only six ASM representatives or candidates signed a student contract Tuesday. "This election didn't start as a referendum on ASM, so I don't know if we can turn it into one now."

When pressed by observers at Tuesday's meeting regarding how exactly Student Government can take over — short of ASM stepping down — Schwerbel referenced the absence of any legal language specifically recognizing ASM.

"There is no agreement between the city, the university, the state, or ASM, there's no agreement on any of their parts to recognize ASM as the student government on the university campus," he said. "My brothers tend to go away when I ignore them. I think we can do the same thing with ASM."

Berquam, however, said she spoke with Student Government officials and encouraged them to use the provided structure to disband ASM, rather than just ignoring them. The ASM Constitution states that if two-thirds of the student body votes for disbandment, ASM will cease to exist, provided 10 percent of the students cast votes.

"ASM at this point is the governance body that we are recognizing," Berquam said. "If there's some sort of another entity that wants to be recognized, I think it would be most effective for them to follow that process."