If I were in Student Government, I’d shake my head this week wondering why the Reitz referendum didn’t pass. But it wasn’t clear who the referendum represented.
In a democracy, people are usually around long enough to have their decisions affect them. For instance, unless you die in the next six years, your vote for president of the United States in 2012 will directly affect you. Sure, it affects others too, but when you vote, you’re representing yourself.
In contrast, college is a place where many of the decisions made outlast the students. I’m in the Study Abroad Peer Advisors club, which has almost entirely upperclassmen because it’s a club people join after they study abroad. So last year, it ended up that not one person voting for this year’s officers would actually be in the club now. When they voted, they were dispassionately removed from the situation because no matter what, it wouldn’t affect them. Their votes represented the club.
The Reitz referendum was a failure of democracy because no one knew whether they were representing themselves or UF. This is my last semester here, so I knew what I was representing: the history of UF. But a freshman friend asked whether the changes would benefit her. “Of course they would,” I said. “You still have three years!”
We decided to ask one of the official Reitz referendum representatives. “When will any of these benefits be seen?” I asked. She stammered and stalled and I realized she had no idea. The next week during SG elections I was ushered through the rain by a nice Unite party campaigner pushing the Reitz measure.
“Last week, I asked a girl about this,” I said, “and in her answer, she threw in ‘for your children.’ It’s not going to take twenty years to fix the Reitz, is it?”
“Well, the architects are actually just coming up with the plans now,” Mr. Unite said.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t need to know if it’ll open in seven months versus eight. I need to know if the renovations will be slowly rolled out or all come at one time, and how long that will take. Five years? Ten years? Fifteen years?”
I made it up to “Thirty years?” before he cut in, the polite veneer gone, and said, “I don’t know, man.”
And that’s the problem. SG should have at least told their own people whether we’re talking three years or 30, because it changes the way people vote. The US House of Representatives forces salary changes to take place after the next election so representatives have an incentive to be less self-serving. Voting for the Union is the same way.
I like UF, and I would be willing to start paying into something that I won’t see. But if the changes can happen in four years, next year’s class can pay for it if they want to, and I’ll stay out of it. The debate over this being a worthy sacrifice is moot.
SG should drop the misleading “Know your Reitz” puns, drop the assumption that students can’t think long-term and be honest about how much history is at stake here. Then actually let them decide.
Will Penman is an English senior. His column appears weekly.
