For all the talk about the Associated Students of Madison, the one thing that almost never materializes is outreach and communication to normal students.

No ASM members, no campus elite and no members of the press. Just regular students — history majors, medical students, undecideds and the rest of the individuals making up the student body who just focus on getting through the semester with decent grades.

So for once, I’m going to put my ASM pretensions aside and try to cut through the jargon for all the students who just don’t know what this all means.

Bottom line: For the majority of you, this constitution could pass or not and it would have almost no effect on you in the immediate future.

A new ASM and a new president isn’t going to change much about how you deal with this university. If you weren’t involved in student government before, there’s only a slight chance that all the hoopla — if you indeed have seen a significant increase in chatter about the constitution — will make you that much more interested in the day-to-day management of our student government.

But whether or not you actually are active, you have ASM there to use in case you want to effect change at a university (or city or even state) level.

The problem is if this constitution doesn’t pass, you may not have that opportunity for a while. Because there are enough people who have followed ASM from day one and understand the current system of student government and representation must be scrapped.

Let’s give some background: ASM was created after the old, long-standing student government, the Wisconsin Student Association, was disbanded because of rampant corruption including, but not limited to, misappropriation of funds and stuffing ballot boxes during elections. After WSA was disbanded, a vacuum appeared. There was no student government body, no official outlet for representation and no students to decide how to dole out your segregated fees — dollars that come directly out of your tuition and go to services you use such as the Memorial Union and recreational sports.

So they decided to rebuild the student government, this time with a sort of parliamentary system instead of a presidential structure, since that’s what corrupted things last time.

The problem is that, over 15 years, that structure had almost the exact opposite problem — nothing got done.

Sure, ASM got us bus passes. Sure, they got us an extra study day. But when you look at those two “victories” and constantly harp on them as all you’ve accomplished in nearly two decades, can you really say you’re a successful representative body? Especially when the vast majority of the student body has either not heard of them or have no idea what they do?

Not really. And that became more apparent last semester with the “State of the ASM” address. It was meant to be a media meeting to represent all ASM has done in the last year. Instead, its poor organization, extremely low turnout and lack of any clear goals, victories or real direction sent a shockwave through the organization.

The resulting conclusion? This government doesn’t just have a few missing floorboards — the whole foundation was cracked from the beginning.

So after months of discussions, planning, meetings with the different groups of students and an updated blog, they came up with a document to return the government to its presidential system (which had worked for decades before corruption eventually took it down) and implement some safeguards to give more power to the Student Senate — as long as those elected actually show up.

Unfortunately, a few student groups believe this system is an affront to democracy. Especially one with such a stretched voice already. They think this constitution will take away their funding, their activism and, most importantly, their voice.

Here’s the problem: If this doesn’t pass, you’re most likely not going to have a voice.

Sure, we could all go back to the table, twiddle our fingers again and say, “All right, how do we make a constitution that appeals to everyone?” Not only would that fail, but the drive of senior members of ASM who have to atone for the sins of their resume-padding predecessors, who did largely nothing for the student body, would dissolve.

I know Jeff Wright, the constitutional committee chair who’s been leading most of these efforts. He can say he came back to get another degree, but in my mind, he made up an excuse to come back to school, fix this student government and leave it in better shape than he found it. If this measure fails, you won’t have many Jeff Wrights ready to go back and work out a solution. You’ll just have people throwing up their hands and in pure frustration, giving in to people like me who just look at our student government and say, “Just let it die.”

I don’t need to tell you what’s wrong with the opponents of the constitution because the editorial board laid it out perfectly. But what I do need to say is without passing this constitution, the political activism we saw on a national level regarding the presidential election will be dealt a severe blow on a local level. Demands of the student body for different ticketing systems for sports events, more study days before finals and more amenities from segregated fees will fall on deaf ears for a while — until the next student government is crafted out of the ashes of the old one. But that may not be for a year. Maybe years.

So to those regular students who look at this controversy and say, “I don’t care,” know this: Apathy is regrettable, but it’s still a choice you can choose to make. If ASM goes down, when it comes to political involvement in your university, that choice will likely not exist. Apathy will be the default.

And believe me, we’re only a week and a couple of votes away from that sad reality.

Jason Smathers ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history and journalism.