As I watched the election results roll in live on Twitter Wednesday night, I found myself more and more frustrated, wondering if giving up and embracing cynicism wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. It certainly would do a great deal of good for my mental health.
It was frustrating because the whole time I remembered the sheer joy of last Spring, when the Student Body overthrew the yoke of one-party dictatorship we had worn long before I had ever set foot on this campus as a student. Just a few months before, any sort of change seemed impossible; in the previous year, the ruling party won 99 of 100 Student Senate seats in both elections, and its executive ticket ran unopposed.
Access Party changed all of that.
It took a heroic effort on its part plus some serious work and courage. Judging on how politics work in this state, these people were putting their careers on the line by going against the majority coalition.
But the party won! It didn’t just run an effective campaign — it defeated the system for the first time in living memory (as students).
And I think, for some people, winning that one election was good enough.
Why did Impact Party win this time?
I wish I could credit Impact’s victory to a mistake on Access’ part — that Access underestimated the enemy’s capacity for vengeance fueled by wounded ego and shattered entitlement.
I do think that’s partly true. This was, of course, a counter revolution. Not a particularly brave one at that — usually, real-life counterrevolutionaries possess the cojones to be honest about what they’re doing. But what the people who run Impact lack in ethics they make up for in intelligence. This is true. They know if they had kept wearing Swamp T-shirts they would have lost this election. So it goes.
Access, for its part, could have run a stronger campaign. It lacked the vitality and urgency of Spring 2015, but that still doesn’t explain the whopping loss.
That leaves one culprit: us. We, the Student Body, are ultimately responsible for this. We had one job: vote the last representatives of a corrupt, cynical and power-hungry machine out of office. Instead, we filled Senate with its replacements. Impact’s tactics weren’t particularly clever — all party members did was change the color scheme from orange to blue and sell us the virtues of one-party rule by fiat, wrapped in vaguely fascist yearnings for "unity." But then again, we’re the ones who fell for it.
I don’t know why this is. Are we bored or apathetic? Do we not have other uses for the roughly $19 we pay them per credit hour? When we hear about the mafia tactics, the threatening behavior, the corruption so nasty it’d make Mayor Daley blush, do we seriously just not give a shit?
The fact is we just put power directly back into the hands of people who use Student Government as their own personal resume-fluffer. Despite what you may have read from Impact, this isn’t a conspiracy theory formed by "chains of Alligator articles." Although the Alligator has great coverage on the subject, you can also find these facts written in a variety of established, adult-run publications throughout the state. Or, you can ask UF alumni about what their SG was like. I don’t care. It takes an Internet connection and five minutes of your time to find this stuff out on your own. By the way, Impact, I’m flattered you mentioned my work — I’ve never been subtweeted on BuzzFeed before — but next time, I hope you have the decency to use my name when you do it.
Anyway, congratulations to all of the candidates. Your hard work and/or supplication to an ancient and faceless political machine has paid off. Well done.
On the bright side, there’s only one more election cycle until Impact can stop half-pretending to be the shiny new party, free of a humiliating loss, growing out of the husk of Swamp. Because, apparently, our political memory only stretches back two weeks anyhow.
Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.
