Fortunately, at Davis we have an ASUCD Business Manager who is a career employee of the university who has the authority to deny any ASUCD expenditures he deems to be inappropriate. Fortunately this business manager happens to be a good person who does his job well (I fear what'll happen when he retires and we get someone new), who for example shot down one ASUCD president's attempts to use student fees to pay for personal parking tickets and a limo to the "presidents ball" he put on, among other things.


Berkeley has had worse problems though since they lack that failsafe. Recently an ASUC B president was disqualified in an election, and then tried to sue their student government court over it before the case was even finalized. The "real" court threw out their case on the grounds that they hadn't yet exhausted the student government legal process, and eventually they were allowed to take office on a technicality ... and then the shadiness began! -- they started trying to get the student government to pay the $22,000 they had incurred in their spurious lawsuit! You can read my coverage of that here (remember to read the entries in order from bottem to top).

Basically, as I said, the secret seems to be getting a lot of people to write letters to the editor to the school paper and especially having as many people as you can show up to the student government meetings in protest.

See also Beetlebeat, a UC Berkeley student government dissident.