The Student Senate will vote on a bill today that could limit when students can campaign for Student Government.
Proposed revisions would add “campaign activity” as intentional action supporting or opposing a candidate or party.
Campaign activity would be allowed to start four weeks before the election and end when the polls close. However, the activity could not refer to a specific election.
This would be a change from the UF Supreme Court’s spring ruling that campaign-like activity could occur any time.
The revisions would also redefine “campaigning” to encompass election-specific materials such as encouraging students to vote on a certain issue.
Campaigning would begin one week before the first day of elections and end when the polls close.
But the revisions say a website with general information about the party and party members would not be campaigning. The revisions also propose adding Internet posts as campaign material.
The Judiciary Committee approved the proposal to go before the Senate.
Committee member Sen. Cory Yeffet was in favor of the revisions.
“What I see from this piece of code revision is pretty much fair on all grounds,” he said.
However, another member of the committee, Sen. Umair Asghar, said limiting campaign activity to a few weeks out of the year violates state law.
“I think there should be a lot more time put into this other than the one week,“ he said.
Contact Samantha Shavell at sshavell@alligator.org.
