Students might have to decide next month whether the Illinois Student Government, an organization seen by some as ineffective and corrupt, should be drastically reformed or abolished altogether.

Two parallel movements — by the registered student organization "Reform ISG" and ISG itself — are currently working to submit proposals for a November referendum. ISG officials will hold the second of two constitutional conventions on Sunday to create a reform proposal. Reform ISG, a group founded last semester by former ISG officials — including two former student body presidents — is gathering signatures to abolish ISG.

In order to place a proposal on a referendum, ISG must approve the placement or petitions from 10 percent of the student body (currently about 3,800 students) must be submitted.

Reform ISG members and ISG officials are in basic agreement as to what's wrong with ISG : they say the group is ineffective and not accountable to students. However, Reform ISG members, as well as Student Body President Marcia Fuentes, tend to blame the structure of ISG, while some ISG assembly members blame individuals within the organization.

Vilas Dhar, former vice president of Student Senate Caucus, said the way Student Government elections are held make the body ineffective.

Currently candidates run on "slates" — similar to political parties, Dhar said. Most slates consist of a group of people with a common bond — such as Greeks or political science majors, he said. When one slate is elected, it takes over ISG, he said.

"The electoral process for ISG is skewed," Dhar said. "It doesn't create a representative body."

During the past election, the Reform NOW slate won many executive positions, while Students First candidates won most ISG assembly seats, leading to political infighting.

ISG Committee on Effectiveness chair Andrew Erskine said public anger over existing ISG members results in candidates with little student government experience being elected.

"People came in whose intent might have been great, but had no experience running this organization," he said.

ISG assembly member Dave Fried said there is also a perception that there is no accountability in the way ISG spends student funds.

For example, Fried said, in the past ISG used student fees to buy dinner for University guests "that we probably shouldn't have paid for."

"Students don't know what ISG's doing with their money," Dhar said. "It has too much power and not enough checks."

Thursday, assembly members narrowly defeated a motion to overturn an appropriation of about $2,800 for three ISG members to lobby in Washington, D.C. later this month.

While many ISG members criticized the size of the appropriation, made last spring, Governmental Affairs chair Andrew Erskine, who organized the trip, said the budget was 60 percent less than previous trips, and could allow them to lobby for a bill that would rescue millions of dollars in student financial aid.

Last spring, students voted to abolish the $1 fee used to support Student Government. Currently, ISG has a $30,000 budget, composed of funds from an Illini Union account and money left over from last year, said ISG treasurer Josh Thornton.

The Reform ISG proposal would strip ISG of its powers after this semester, and abolish the whole organization by the end of the year.

This would not mean that Illinois would have no student government, Dhar said — ISG's advisory power would be transferred to the student senate caucus, a group of about 50 students elected by college who serve in the University Senate.

This would merge the advisory powers of ISG with the policy-making powers of the senate caucus, increasing efficiency, Dhar said.

"(Currently) there's a division between people who speak for the students and people who make policy," he said. "It makes it hard for anything to get done."

Senate members would also elect the student body president under the proposal, rather than the student body at large.

Erskine said while there was "nothing wrong" with having two groups work on solving ISG's problems, he felt the experience of ISG members needed to be utilized as well.

In the Reform ISG group "No one has actually seen from an inside view how (ISG) works," he said.

Dhar said after his group gathered 2,500 signatures they would present the petitions to ISG.

Senate caucus president Chris Mullens said he hoped to merge the proposals of both groups into one solid plan.

"This is not meant to be a coup," he said. "This is meant to combine the good things of both groups."

Demands for reform or abolition of student government at the University are almost as old as the institution itself.

The University's first student government formed in 1870, but dissolved eight years later. The student body's confidence in the organization was so low that they voted to get rid of student government altogether in 1883. A faculty board addressed student issues for the next 16 years.

Echoing many of the complaints with the current ISG, presidential candidate Jim Kornibe's 1968 campaign platform stated that "Student Government at the University of Illinois has proven itself to be irresponsible and irrelevant to the needs of students. It has quibbled, debated, played parliamentary games and lost the interest of the majority of students on this campus."

Student concerns climaxed in 2000, when two Daily Illini cartoon characters were elected student body president and student trustee on the platform of disbanding ISG. Although the election results were later overturned, Mike Bullerman was elected ISG president last spring on a similar platform — even dressing like one of the characters during a debate.