[media-credit name=’JEFF SCHORFHEIDE/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Last week, University of Wisconsin student voters passed the Student Union Initiative into legislation, but now several Associated Students of Madison representatives are challenging the validity of the initiative.

Six members of ASM have filed a lawsuit against the Student Election Commission for allowing the Student Union Initiative to pass. According to the plaintiffs, the information provided to UW students about the initiative was "misleading" and violated ASM bylaws.

"The Student Judiciary and the Student Election Commission originally certified this initiative as fitting all the requirements … but it did not follow the ASM Constitution," said ASM member Patrick Elliot, one of the petitioners in the case. "We want it totally stricken."

Elliot said the case is not meant to express opposition to the content of the initiative, but rather how the renovations to Memorial Union and reconstruction of Union South would be funded.

Similar to questions raised about the Living Wage initiative, Elliot said the advertising for the Student Union Initiative was misleading because students do not actually have the authority to distribute non-allocable student-segregated fees — as students may have been led to believe — because the ultimate decision lies with the chancellor and the Board of Regents.

ASM member David Lapidus, another of the six petitioners in the case against SEC, said the UW chancellor ultimately has veto power over every budget ASM approves. But according to Lapidus, students have even less control over non-allocable segregated fees — which is where funding for the Student Union Initiative mostly would come from.

Therefore, according to Lapidus, who also sits on ASM's Student Services Finance Committee and Student Council, the Student Union Initiative that passed last week is more of a suggestion than a binding initiative, contrary to what student voters may have thought.

Lapidus also said there is an ASM bylaw requiring "free and fair" elections, and added the lack of campaign-finance regulations in ASM elections prevented that from happening, since there was no competition for the Student Union Initiative.

"They were able to totally dominate the campaign atmosphere because nobody was opposing them," Lapidus said. "There was really nobody who had the time or the staff or the money or the will to oppose the initiative, so I'm not sure the election process was fair."

However, UW senior and Wisconsin Union President Shayna Hetzel said the complaint the six petitioners filed was too vague to warrant any action. Hetzel added she thinks the SEC's ruling will stand as is and that funding will proceed as planned for the Student Union Initiative.

"It's really hard for us to respond when they don't give any examples of what they consider misleading," Hetzel said. "Just because they don't like the plan that was approved does not give them grounds to overturn it."

Lapidus said regardless of the outcome of the case, ASM should adopt a campaign-finance regulation because the Student Union Initiative "bombarded campus with paid-for ads … and totally dominated the discourse in the election."

In the complaint to the Student Judiciary, the six petitioners say because of the amount of money at stake and the 30 years it would take students to pay back the loan through segregated fees, the Student Union Initiative breaches the right of future UW students to self-governance.

"We voted on a very significant seg-fee raise that's mostly going to be paid for by future generations of students who will never be able to vote in it," Lapidus added.

Josh Tyack, chief justice of ASM's Student Judiciary, said the SEC monitors referendums to ensure their validity as defined by the ASM Constitution. However, Tyack said, SEC does not usually examine the content of referendums for constitutionality unless a complaint is filed.

According to Tyack, the case is scheduled to be heard at tomorrow night's Student Judiciary meeting. If nobody appeals their decision, the case will be over within a week of the decision being published, Tyack said. But he cautioned that if the petitioners or SEC appeal the decision, the case could drag on for several weeks.

While the petitioners are calling for the SEC to completely nix the Student Union Initiative, Tyack said that is just one of many courses of action the Student Judiciary could take.

While many Student Union Initiative members are planning on attending the hearing, Hetzel said, they cannot contribute anything to the case since the petitioners are only suing SEC. All the members of the Student Union Initiative and the Wisconsin Union can do is wait for the results that will determine the future of their initiative.

"The Union does not have a plan B yet," Hetzel said. "We would have to go back to the table and reevaluate what our next steps would be."