The UF Students for a Democratic Society’s battle for tuition equity for undocumented students continued Friday when the group pushed for space at the upcoming Board of Trustees meeting.
Nine members gathered outside Tigert Hall to hand over about 6,200 signatures from an online petition on Change.org, 200 handwritten letters, endorsements from almost every major student organization and 13 news articles to Jamal Sowell, the liaison to the Board of Trustees.
“This campaign is about tuition equity, but it’s also about free speech and democracy,” Conor Munro, a lead organizer for SDS, told the crowd.
Munro handed over a thick folder to Sowell, who then said a few words.
“As an administration, we never want to stop free speech,” Sowell said. “We want to pass what they’re saying along.”
The night before, students from the group appeared at the Faculty Senate meeting, where faculty voted 40-27, falling short of a two-thirds majority, to move the item to be discussed at the upcoming Board of Trustees meeting.
Now, that group is fighting for speaking time at the meeting on Dec. 6.
“The biggest emphasis to note is that this can be effective at a university level,” said Michela Martinazzi, a 21-year-old UF art history senior and a lead organizer for SDS.
Undocumented students currently do not qualify for in-state tuition and therefore must pay out-of-state tuition, which costs about four times as much.
At Nov. 13’s Student Senate meeting, representatives from Hispanic Student Association, Black Student Union and Asian American Student Union, among 15 other organizations, also spoke during public debate in support of a resolution.
The Senate approved the resolution with a majority vote. Florida International University has also passed a similar measure.
Munro, a 22-year-old UF history and economics senior, said he feels confident the initiative will appear as an item on the board’s agenda.
“I feel like the ball is in their court,” he said. “We’ve done everything we can.”
A version of this story ran on page 3 on 11/25/2013 under the headline "SDS rallies at Tigert for tuition equity"
