Last week I filed a Union Judiciary case against the amendment to increase Brandeis Television's funding because it seemed like if I didn't take it on, no one would. Totally inexperienced, I discovered that the Union Judiciary doesn't make it easy for a typical student to have his voice heard in the student government. When people heard about my case-which I filed before BTV's amendment was resoundingly defeated in last week's elections-the first thing they generally asked me was, "Why is it Fried v. BTV?"

They wanted to know why I, a senator from the Village, was bringing this case, and not BEMCo, the Justice or any of the other major organizations that would have felt this amendment's financial squeeze. My answer is simple: No one else had filed a case. I felt someone needed to and I took up the cause myself. Had anyone else filed a case against the amendment before I filed mine on March 20, I would not have. But time was running out.

I was against this amendment from the beginning. BTV deserves our help to improve its programming, but not in a way that simply throws more money at the station without any yoke of responsibility. When I spoke to some of the people who had been asked to sign the petition, it became clear to me that there were numerous instances of false information being used to gather signatures. The amendment also would have cut funding to BEMCo and the Waltham Group, consequences the amendment's authors did not intend. I chose this as the basis of my case largely because I thought it would be the easiest to argue.

Going into the injunction hearing this past Monday night, I had no chance of having it granted. This was not because the injunction delaying the vote had no merit; had that been the case, I would not have requested it at all. Rather, this was because I had no experience with the Union Judiciary. I had never argued a case before. I am not a pre-law student. My only prior experience arguing before a judicial body comes from a mock trial team in high school, where the rules were vastly different.

I was going up against BTV, which was represented by people who already knew the ins and outs of the Union Judiciary, and knew how to tell the justices exactly what they were looking for.

The justices, for their part, make no special effort to make understanding their process easy for the uninitiated. There is no place to look up their rules of procedure. There are no court-designated counsels to assist in understanding their expectations and precedents. The little I knew about the Union Judiciary came from short, friendly conversations I had with some of the justices before the case, but nothing was conveyed to me in an official context.

If there is any doubt that this is the reason I was denied the injunction, just look at Archon's success; their complaints were similar to mine, but they had the distinction of being represented by someone who actually had experience.

Throughout the hearing, BTV pointed out that constitutional amendments were the only way for the entire student body to make their voice heard in the Union government. I suppose they were right in the end. And in the end, the results of the vote on the amendment certainly reflected the students' voice more loudly and clearly than anything I, or anyone else, could have done with the Union Judiciary. But it is unfortunate that the system could not be more fair to students without connections or experience.

David Fried is senator for the Village Quad.