If any of you went to the Health Care Forum on Monday night hosted by Student Government's Chomp the Vote, you would have noticed that the student organizations participating in the discussion included only the College Democrats and the College Republicans.
I assumed there would be more groups present, as promised by Chomp the Vote. As the vice president of Students for the Preservation of Freedom (also known informally as the College Libertarians or SPF), I am deeply saddened by the complete lack of effort the host of this debate put forth to include other political student organizations in this important discussion. I feel that the nonpartisan Chomp the Vote would welcome a variety of opinions in the debates it hosts, but apparently I am mistaken. I don't know what they were thinking, but last time I checked, describing an event as having "various student organizations" participating does not constitute including only Republicans and Democrats.
I shouldn't be surprised, though. Much like our current two-party political system, my organization, having differing views with both the Democrats and Republicans, has historically been excluded from political debates on UF's campus. You would think the message of smaller government and increased personal liberties would resonate with students here at UF, and it does. But the political establishment tries its hardest to suppress any reasonable debate that is outside the "mainstream." In such an important issue as health-care reform, it would be careless to ignore the concerns of any legitimate opinion and just assume the Republicans and Democrats have all aspects of the debate covered. I find it detrimental, especially on a university campus, to restrict the views of any organization or person even though I may disagree with their positions. This is truly an issue of freedom of speech, and Chomp the Vote should feel ashamed for its actions.
To give you better context on what exactly happened, the College Republicans and the College Democrats decided privately that they would have a forum on health care and then asked SG's Chomp the Vote to host the event. At this point, what Chomp the Vote should have done was to go ahead and invite other political student organizations to participate in the forum as is required by UF's Non-Discrimination Policy.
SPF only received notice of the debate through the grapevine three days before the forum took place. My organization immediately sent formal requests to the College Democrats and the College Republicans asking to be included in the discussion, but we have yet to receive responses. We then contacted Chomp the Vote and asked that our group be allowed to participate, but they denied our participation explaining to us that the debate was "set in stone."
We attended the forum from the audience and were given the opportunity to submit written questions. The funny thing was, when our questions were finally read by Chomp the Vote, they edited most of the content out, totally distorting the context of the questions.
I don't know if this is standard practice, but I don't think it's appropriate for an organization that prides itself on hosting fair political discussions to manipulate reasonable questions from the audience in order to dilute the intensity of the debate.
Hopefully in the future, SPF and other student organizations are given the opportunity to participate in discussions on important issues like health care, but I'm not holding my breath.
Daniel Rood is the vice president of Students for the Preservation of Freedom.
