The UF Supreme Court voted Friday that a referendum asking students if they want to rename the Reitz Union would go on the Student Government elections ballot next month.
On the third and final hearing for this referendum, the court approved it by striking the beginning sentences and only having the question on the ballot.
The referendum asks students whether or not they want to rename the student union after Virgil Hawkins, an African-American man who was denied entrance to the university due to his race in 1949.
The language, which was preliminarily passed by the court, informed students of Hawkins’ achievements as well as President J. Wayne Reitz’s delay in integrating UF and collaborating to purge gay students and professors from the university while he was president.
At a previous hearing, Ariana Alfonso, a former Supervisor of Elections and current law student asked the court to review the language of the referendum again. However, at Friday’s meeting, she was introduced as the solicitor general and was there on behalf of the executive branch of SG.
She said the language, as it stood, misleads the students and slanders Reitz. She said the court should amend and review the referendum so the language was not biased.
Sen. Ford Dwyer, who authored the referendum, said Reitz may have been president while expansion of the university occured, but his record is still scarred. He said all the information in his referendum was factual.
“This objection is the dissatisfaction of some regarding the court’s original decision and now they want a redo,” Dwyer said.
Associate Justice Alex Andrade, who was not present at the preliminary hearing, proposed denying the referendum as a whole and letting Dwyer come back next semester with a cleaned-up version to put on the ballot.
Andrade said the signatures collected were tainted because they were received under wording that he does not find appropriate.
But Associate Justice Timothy Mason disagreed. He said that Dwyer would have spoken using similar language when conveying his message to potential signers.
“I don’t think it would have made much of a difference,” Mason said.
But he agreed that the wording was biased and proposed removing the language that referred to Reitz.
Associate Justice Cole Sullivan proposed that only the question in the referendum remain on the ballot. He said it would be abusing the court’s power to strike the referendum down as a whole.
“I do feel as far as policy goes, we need to have a better system in place,” Sullivan said.
The court ruled on a five to two vote that it will inform the Supervisor of Elections to place the last sentence of the referendum on the ballot.
After the hearing, Chief Justice Matt Michel said the justices will provide concurring opinions because justices had different views on the matter. Michel wanted to keep the referendum wording as it was.
Dwyer said he was expecting this result because people at the university didn’t want students knowing this issue.
“I think they treated this specific referendum unfairly and treated it differently than others in the past,” Dwyer said after the hearing.
But Dwyer said he still believes he will get 51 percent of the students who vote to vote “yes” on the ballot.
“I believe that I can, and try my best to do so despite the obstacles the court presented to me today,” he said.
Contact Samantha Shavell at sshavell@alligator.org.
