Two friends have spent the past year taking pictures of more than 3,000 pages of UF Student Government resolutions in an effort to create a database.
When completed, former student senator Max Klein and his friend, Keith Saint, will have catalogued 50 years’ worth of SG resolutions as a way to inform others about SG’s history.
“It’s a really important resource for us to use,” Klein, 20, said. “I feel like no one knows the history (of SG) at all.”
The resolutions, proposed by senators to share sentiments without mandating action, are a way of tracking past Student Senate opinions, the UF political science junior said. The goal is to eventually upload the documents to SG’s website by the end of Spring.
Along with Saint, Klein said he’s spent about 70 hours in Smathers Library photographing documents from archives with his Canon Rebel camera.
In September 2015, he posted examples of documents to his Facebook page, called UF Student Govtrack Project. In April 2016, he posted a spreadsheet listing about 900 titles of the resolutions he’s collected.
Klein served as a District D senator during Summer 2015. In Fall 2015, he switched from
Access Party to then-newly formed Impact Party, representing District A as a way “to see student government from both sides,” he said.
While in Senate, regardless of his party, Klein said he was discouraged by the Judiciary Committee when he wanted to draft a resolution about issues beyond the university.
The committee, which approves proposed regulations and bills before they can be voted on in Senate, was reluctant to support controversial topics, he said.
Klein once proposed a resolution condemning states with holidays honoring the Confederacy, he said. He said he was told his resolution had to focus on only Florida for it to pass.
After he left Senate, Klein began looking through documents and found that past Senates approved contentious legislation on topics like the USSR and LGBTQ+ rights, he said.
“It’s a legacy that we should live up to,” Klein said. “It’s not something that should be
forgotten.”
Klein said he hopes the database will encourage students to vote in SG elections. Precious Ichite, a UF health education and behavior junior, said she believes SG is transparent, but a database of documents would make information readily available to students who either don’t know they exist or won’t spend time looking them up.
“We have fast-paced schedules, so we may not have time to slow down and look at all of the resources,” the 20-year-old said.
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