A strange set of events unfolded last week. In just hours, all 1,700 tickets were taken. The next day, an eager audience packed the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts to listen to the words of a frail 84-year-old speaker. Who was this old geezer?
The New Yorker calls him the “devil’s accountant.”
A global phenom, Noam Chomsky is the world’s most cited living author and a renowned champion of human rights.
But, unknown to most of the public, there was much drama in bringing Chomsky.
Before I continue, here’s a disclosure: I’m a member of Islam on Campus (IOC), a Muslim student group.
Initially, Accent Speaker’s Bureau — the student speaker’s bureau at UF — seemed interested in sponsoring Chomsky, but this Fall, they backed out of the event, giving a litany of excuses. IOC quickly seized the opportunity and offered to sponsor Chomsky.
Soon it became clear that IOC’s enthusiasm was not shared.
In a weird turn of events, the Student Activities and Involvement staff called IOC members to a meeting — I was present there — where the head of Accent explained why bringing Chomsky was ill-advised.
After days of haggling, IOC gave up on the sponsorship attempt.
Accent is no joke — its nearly half-million-dollar budget comes entirely from our student fees. On a campus with more women than men, only once in its 46-year history has a female led Accent. Since 1990, the chairmanship of the bureau has always been given to men of the same fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, with rare exceptions.
I wish the reports of our Student Government having a fetish for the medieval tradition of “legacy positions” were just conspiracy theories.
Apparently, this is old news. The 1992-93 chairman of Accent, an alumnus of AEPi, confessed to The Gainesville Sun in 2010: “There is nepotism, but it’s nepotism with qualified candidates.”
Once again, a member of AEPi was chosen this year to lead Accent.
You begin to realize why so many absurd excuses were given for not bringing Chomsky: After all, what can we expect of a university that doesn’t care to reflect our Student Body’s vast diversity?
Don’t expect the Center for Student Activities and Involvement to lose any sleep over the cronyism.
The center’s director, Nancy Chrystal-Green, told The Gainesville Sun in 2010 that the administration didn’t want to meddle in such student affairs.
To ensure I would not be dissuaded from writing on this, I avoided talking to IOC members about this problem.
Minority organizations at UF are in no position to voice grievances — the risk of retribution from SG can be enough to silence most groups.
With no end in sight to the nepotism, the Gator Nation has lost much confidence in UF’s extracurricular scene.
Every year, some concerned students try to fix the system through the ballot box. And every year, they fail.
This much is clear: For the thousands of UF students who don’t belong to exclusive cliques, the situation has become unbearable.
Perhaps the university needs to appoint a task force to tackle the corruption before lawsuits and national headlines are made.
I honestly don’t know the solution, but if you do, please speak up.
Zulkar Khan is a UF microbiology senior. His column runs on Wednesdays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 10/23/2013 under the headline "UF’s Accent is rife with corruption"
