Universities are the breeding grounds of tomorrow. Here, students, faculty and staff alike immerse themselves in a culture that obsesses about our well-being. Universities are consequently a microcosmic nation in themselves, filled with pockets of people and thickets of thinkers, that so directly emulate the world around them. Said plainly: Like apples falling from trees, students don’t fall far from their countries.
Let me be honest, not unlike a racist who prefaces statements with proclamations such as, “Some of my best friends are — ”, I say some of my best friends are involved in Student Government here at UF. Some of my best friends are members of Impact Party and some of my best friends are members of Access Party. I am impressed with both parties for so shamelessly and effectively replicating all that is fundamentally wrong with American politics so well.
Who’s to blame? UF has awarded degrees to politicians of all sorts, left- and right-winged. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, is undoubtedly guilty of attempting to rig votes in favor of Hillary Clinton. She’s unjustly restricted Bernie Sanders’ campaign to voting statistics and has ignored the complaints of her fellow Democrats on illegal voting practices.
Marco Rubio just ended an embarrassing presidential campaign. His PolitiFact rating reflects how his words are “Mostly False.” Rubio overtly lied about facets of the Affordable Care Act, the activities of Planned Parenthood and the ability of a president to nominate a Supreme Court justice in the final year of the presidency. Mind you, in the history of our nation, one-third of Supreme Court justices have been nominated and confirmed by the Senate during election years.
Here at UF, the cycle continues.
Just recently, our Access-affiliated Student Body president urged the Impact-heavy senate to reconsider the freshly rejected SG Supreme Court nominees. One student does pro bono work and is interning with the Department of Justice this summer. The other student is a local business owner and an openly gay veteran. Both of these students are unbelievably qualified, and the senate’s rejection of them is nothing more than party politics. Impact, a generation raised by television, is simply replicating the behaviors so unjustly, yet successfully, seen in practice at national and state levels.
Earlier on the campaign trail, Access was accused of dirty, negative campaigning with the notorious and cringe-inducing “Not My System” video. It took somewhat accurate claims about our political landscape and exaggerated them to the point of unfamiliarity bordering on the realm of conspiracy.
While I don’t disagree there’s a larger notion of historical rebranding associated with Impact, the video is irresponsible in its Watergate-esque and journalistically bombastic approach.
To make matters worse, on platform the parties do not actually disagree on anything. Both agree on many issues, like sustainability initiatives and on-campus mental health access. It seems, then, both parties are equally guilty of perpetuating shameless nepotistic practices and ideologies for the sake of nothing more than resume-building.
Most importantly, shame on you, fellow students. We are the ones solely capable of not only holding our officials accountable, but also voting against their practices. Each year, we have the ability via voting to change this outdated and hopelessly broken political landscape in the U.S. and UF alike. But, our voter turnout is far too low. Both in national elections and on campus, voter turnout is disgracefully low, and without change in that realm, we cannot have change elsewhere.
Our university is a microcosm of the real world, the whole lot of us rotting apples falling not far from the tree. But as we graduate and apples die, new minds enter and seeds of life take root, giving us hope for a new tree, which will hopefully breed new apples.
Let us learn from our mistakes, vote in unison and hope for a better tomorrow, a better country and a better UF.
Zachary Lee is a UF philosophy junior.
