There's not a lot of debate going on in UF's Student Senate these days.
That's probably because there are not a whole lot of people to argue with.
Senate is currently dominated by one party -the Unite Party - which is enjoying the largest majority since early 2009.
Due to replacement senators being named, it's tough to determine the official number of Unite senators versus the number of independent senators, Senate President Micah Lewis said. However, he said this is the largest majority he has seen during his time in Reitz Union Room 282.
It is also the most peaceful.
Senators joked that a passed resolution praising student organization Islam On Campus created the most heated debate they have seen in a long time.
The senate's minority is in dire straits.
Not only did the party get shellacked in the spring 2011 elections; it was also found to have committed election violations and was banned from using the Progress Party name for the fall 2011 election.
Senate Minority Leader Gillian Leytham's title is a misnomer. With so few independent senators around, she said she often asks herself, "Who am I leading?"
Leytham didn't hesitate to say what is obvious when you walk through the doors of the Student Senate.
"[SG] is effectively a single-party system," she said.
Unite doesn't try to hide it. Instead of denying the monopoly the party has on the Senate, party members argued the majority was a good thing.
"This allows Student Government to be as efficient as possible," Senator Andy Schein said.
Unite leadership is firm in its belief that the party is standing by the needs of students. As Student Body President Ben Meyers put it, this is a student-elected majority.
"The things that we're doing in Senate - the projects that we're working on - are really going to speak for themselves," Lewis said. "They will show that we have not wasted any time with this wonderful mandate that was given to us in the spring 2011 elections."
Sure enough, Meyers has already established a task force to bring more locations for free printing, and Lewis authored a bill allowing for electronic voting in SG elections to prevent voter fraud.
Nevertheless, the staggering majority the party holds in senate still lends itself to the question: How does such a small minority achieve anything?
Former Senator Mike Morales, an independent, has been involved in student government since fall 2009.Morales recalled a time when Senate debates used to run well into the night, starting at 7 p.m. and lasting until 2 or 3 a.m. This was because the strategy of minority senators like Jonathan Ossip and Alan Yanuck was to pummel the opposition into hearing them out.
"These guys knew parliamentary procedure like the back of their hand," he said.
Dave Schneider, a former senator and SG presidential candidate, said past minority party leadership liked watching their bills get struck down because it would look better when elections rolled around.
Schneider subscribes to a different philosophy.
He said he thinks the best thing to do is to try to work across the aisle and warm Unite senators up to the idea he's going to propose.
"If you don't reach across the other side of the table, if you don't build coalitions, if you don't build a broad base and you don't bring students in to speak on the bill's behalf," he said, "your legislation will be gone in an instant."
