As an outgoing senior, I have been involved with Student Government for four years. While I have always appreciated a hard-fought campaign where things could get heated, the Student Senate was the place of open discourse and reason after campaigning ended. When I returned to serve as a summer replacement senator in my final semester, this is what I expected to see.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Tonight at 7 p.m., the Unite Party intends to ram through legislation with their 90-percent majority that would strip the independent party of all its rights in the Senate. Open debate, the ability to submit legislation and representation on key committees are all being either severely restricted or just outright removed.
This is combined with a new level of arrogance and hypocrisy from the Unite Party. It is calling this bill the "Student Senate Fairness and Efficiency Act." This bill does nothing to increase fairness in the Student Government process, though it certainly does add a lot of "efficiency" when only one party is capable of existing in the government.
Specifically, this legislation does the following:
1. It essentially removes all minority representation on the committee that determines what legislation the Senate will vote on, reviews executive appointments and appoints replacement senators.
2. It sets unreachable standards for basic things like having a senator's name attached to the way he or she votes (called a roll-call vote).
3. It puts unilateral control over "directing the legislative processes of the Senate" in the hands of the Senate President (who is, gasp, the Unite Party's leader in the Senate).
4. It limits debate to four minutes for many votes, a mind-blowingly "efficient" 2.4 seconds per senator.
5. It gives the Senate President the ability to kick anyone out of a meeting of the Senate.
6. It removes a provision placing Senate voting records online.
7. It gives a committee the ability to fail all minority party legislation without so much as a debate.
Put all of these changes together, and a pretty clear picture appears: The Unite Party is essentially allowing itself to kick dissenters out of its meetings, deny the opposition party the ability to object in any way and do all of this without any accountability by keeping votes a secret.
The Unite Party has always used a system of patronage, where seats and other SG positions are traded for organizations' votes, to maintain single-party rule in Student Government. Now it's actually putting it into law.
The most malicious aspect of these changes is that they are being done in the summer session, when most students will not be here to object. The passage of this bill is almost guaranteed, and when students come back for elections in the fall, they will have no idea what happened.
This isn't the first time the Unite Party has declared war on student interests and open discussion. It actively prevents Student Government from following Florida public records and meeting laws. It voted to pass a new Reitz Union fee without a student vote (opposition senators were able to get it on the ballot with other legislation, an ability the party is now effectively taking away). And it blocks all attempts to increase transparency.
Why does the Unite Party do this? To keep apathy high and keep the average student in the dark about what is happening. The Unite Party was formed on the idea of restricting free and open debate. It is a farce and a smokescreen, a reincarnation of the same party that has controlled Student Government since I enrolled at UF.
Students must stand up and tell Unite that enough is enough. I urge everyone reading this column who values fair representation and free speech to come out to Senate tonight at 7 p.m. Give the Unite Party a piece of your mind! Let them know that their actions are unacceptable! As of now, every student has the right to speak for one minute in public debate, and I urge you to do so before that right is taken away as well.
Kevin Kleponis is the former Senate minority leader.
