It is difficult to convey the atmosphere and emotion of a Madison rally through the written word, but I will take my best shot. Imagine you are at a high-school basketball game, and the cheerleading squad has just started its latest inspirational cheer, the result of hours of brainstorming and countless edits.

“One … we are the students, two … a little bit louder, three … I still can’t here you, we want more money! One …”

Give the captain a megaphone, replace the uniforms with winter coats and mittens and drop the gymnasium temperature to single digits, and you should get a feeling for what was going on outside the Memorial Union last Thursday night.

The heart of the usual suspects’ cheer, “we want more money,” simply doesn’t have the moral authority or clever rhyme and rhythm of ’60s anti-war protests. Of course we all want more money, especially students. But since when is panhandling a cause worth freezing for?

The drive for more money usually motivates a person to work longer hours, work more efficiently or perhaps exploit additional sweatshop labor. Rarely does it drive a person to hurl insults at his or her sugar daddy. But the usual suspects are indeed a rare breed, and their relationship with sugar daddy ASM has been on the rocks this semester.

The conflict has its roots in Wisconsin statutes, which give students the right to participate in their own governance. The university has interpreted the statutes to mean that students can vote for their buddies, over a three-day period, over the Internet and elect them to ASM.

The students who can get the most of their buddies to vote (anywhere from five to a few hundred) get to raise the tuition bill for all students and determine where the proceeds will go, presuming they didn’t cheat too severely during the election.

For those lucky few who receive a portion of the proceeds from tuition hikes, the system has worked remarkably well. Getting a piece of the pie requires three easy steps:

1. Organize your friends into a club called a student organization.

2. Call your club’s activities a student service.

3. Demand that the buddies you just elected raise tuition to help support the club’s activities.

These demands were always granted by ASM without too much resistance, and as student organizations became increasingly clever, they began to use their resources to further stack ASM with more buddies and sympathizers, who then approved even greater resources.

Things couldn’t have looked much brighter for students and staff on the seg-fee dole. While Wall Street investors were throwing venture capital at dot-com startups in the late ’90s, ASM was throwing cash at seg-fee startups. Meanwhile, the established blue chips got double- and triple-digit percentage increases for their coffers.

A segregated-fee industrial complex soon grew as clubs grew larger and hired legions of staffers, purchased stockpiles of equipment and planned for acres of office space. But then something changed. For some unexplained reason, a group of students with nothing at stake and no self-interest in the seg-fee industrial complex told these clubs that they weren’t going to get everything they ask for.

Which brings us to last week’s rally and fight for the most noble of causes: “more money.” The seg-fee industrial complex turned out in droves. Emotional pleas, angry outbursts and hours of testimony ensued from “the student voice.”

Despite speech after speech attacking these representatives for ignoring their constituency, the fiscally responsible members of ASM stood their ground and refused to let the budgets through until somebody finds some additional efficiencies.

Amazed that these students with no personal interest in the seg-fee industrial complex could ignore the passionate voices of students and staff on the dole, the usual suspects reacted in typical fashion. The temper tantrum began.

If only they had a true democracy to save them, the kind of democracy where the megaphone majority rules. A democracy where the side with the most protestors triumphs and personal politics get brushed aside to reward those generating the most decibels. Hardly anybody showed up at the meeting advocating fiscal restraint, so why should restraint win the day in a true democracy?

However, there is an alternative vision for democracy on campus. A more direct approach to democracy would let individual students decide if they wanted to help pay for a club’s activities. This alternative democracy is still a vision, just like the usual suspects’ democracy is yet unrealized.

In the meantime, we have ASM. Until ASM goes away, both democratic alternatives will remain fantasies in the minds of dreamers.

So, if the usual suspects have not yet learned their lesson, let me state it now. You are not entitled to anything. You receive your stipends and free office supplies at the pleasure of a group of student representatives who, in spite of bylaws and oaths to the contrary, have diverse viewpoints. If you dress funny, or smell funny or for whatever reason alienate these representatives, they can take away your play fund.

I have admittedly been a pessimist when it comes to ASM’s ability to be fiscally responsible. I am not yet convinced it is possible, but I am none the less amazed that this year’s crop has held firm in the face of attacks from the seg-fee industrial complex.

My pessimism, however, will always linger for as long as ASM exists. The days of a less responsible council still haunt me.

Such days were so frustrating; I grew unable to bear an entire ASM meeting without the comfort of a Rathskeller High Life or a flask of rum. The seg-fee industrial complex banned these comforts, perhaps to force the fiscally responsible to endure ASM’s rubber stamping in a state of sobriety for the sake of schadenfreude.

How quickly things change in this world. I now observe meetings with a newfound sobriety, a new lease on life. While I take no pleasure from observing the usual suspects’ recent distress, I suspect that one day they may try to bring back the comforting cordials to numb their pain. A few pints might at least inspire the creativity to dream the clever rhymes and rhythms that seemed to come to their ’60s peers so effortlessly.

Until then, I offer a slogan of my own: “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.