If you ever are unfortunate enough to be my friend on Facebook, you will often see me livestreaming Senate meetings Tuesday nights. It’s been a responsibility I’ve kept up with for the past couple months. It led up to last Tuesday night, when I went up in public debate and, via limerick, presented Student Government with an iPhone, so they can’t say they don’t have equipment for future livestreaming endeavors.
Livestreaming SG meetings isn’t revolutionary. It’s an established practice, and I believe it’s great for transparency and accessibility. Livestreaming SG meetings isn’t particularly difficult either, but SG has a special talent for making easy things difficult (and not always due to incompetence).
The Senate passed a bill to mandate livestreaming back in January, but to make it palatable to the powers that be, we included a provision that stated the bill would only take effect once a majority of the Senate’s Information and Communication Committee voted to make it a reality. Dreams do come true.
Our Senate doesn’t have any equipment for livestreaming, and the equipment used needs to be SG owned. I’ve heard a lot of talk from secondhand sources about the committee not having any money to buy things with, which is pretty sad since one of the few things SG is actually good at is buying things and calling them accomplishments.
While we waited with the half-hearted hope that our prestigious servant-leaders on the committee would straighten things out, a group of Senators including myself started livestreaming meetings ourselves. Responsibility for livestreaming meetings eventually fell to me since I had prior experience, equipment and a lot of Facebook friends. I was initially terrified that my constant Facebook postings would diminish my social clout, but I would do anything for transparency, so I selflessly took the burden upon my swole shoulders.
But as the weeks passed by, I grew impatient. Is it really that hard to get equipment? Probably not, but I had a feeling no one really wanted to put forth the money toward our initiative, which is why it felt like it was stuck in the mud.
So, I did what any reasonable person would do and ordered a tripod and phone mount from Amazon with my own money. I presented it in front of the Senate and let them know they could have it whenever they wanted.
Of course that didn’t really help since SG didn’t have anything to livestream with, but at least it was a start. We joked around about donating an old iPad or even buying SG an iPhone to go with the set up. It was a joke of an idea until the day I saw a good deal for an iPhone zip into my inbox. It was a sexy refurbished iPhone SE (a 2016 model) and it was only 20 bucks. Normally, that’s the kind of “deal” that lands you with an iPhone box filled with rocks since it’s actually a scam, but the vendor was Walmart, where shopping is more or less a pleasure, so I just had to indulge myself.
When the iPhone arrived, I was faced with the question of what I would do at Senate. Do I just go up there, say “Hey, my dudes, I got y’all an iPhone?” Nah, that’s boring. Now I’m sure none of you would have guessed, but I really slayed the high school literary fair back in the day. Thus, I decided to write a limerick:
“Livestreaming meetings, I’ve been doing alone/Apparently equipment, Student Government doesn’t own/Months ago, for livestreaming, we passed the legislation/But it’s clearly apparent that we need a donation/Dear Student Government, I bought you an iPhone.”
This isn’t actually the first time I’ve opened my wallet for a SG project since apparently we’re pretty broke (not really). But hey, at least SG will always have this old man (me) out here willing to buy it nice things like an iPhone.
Zachariah Chou is a UF political science junior and Murphree Area Senator. His column focuses on Student Government.
