We’ve all heard stories of politicians breaking laws they originally passed.
Well, these incidents are not foreign to members of UF’s Student Government.
In May 2012, members of the Unite Party in the Student Senate revised the election codes, stipulating that “campaigning” could not occur until one week prior to the first day of elections.
According to the SG Election Code (aka the 700 codes), campaigning “means any intentional action in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate or political party for an elective student body office, including, but not limited to the distribution of literature and posting of election specific materials.”
Election-specific campaigning includes things that say “vote for” or include the date of the election in tandem with a particular candidate or party.
Although this revision does not prevent people from wearing party paraphernalia such as T-shirts or buttons prior to this window of time, it does prevent the wearing of campaign material if “accompanied by the dissemination of campaign literature or the delivery of a campaign speech to solicit support for a candidate or political party.”
On Friday, four weeks before the first day of elections, Christina Bonarrigo publicly announced her candidacy for Student Body president for the Swamp Party. Bonarrigo was a member of the Unite Party when it passed these election code revisions.
In pictures from the event on the Swamp Party’s own website, Bonarrigo can be seen wearing a Swamp Party button, which is clearly campaign paraphernalia, accompanied by a speech to solicit support for herself. She also used election-specific language, implicitly asking attendees to vote for her in the upcoming election.
Not only did Bonarrigo violate the very codes her party supported last Summer, but her overall record in Student Senate has not been squeaky clean.
When Jason Tiemeier was initially accused of throwing away copies of the Alligator during the Spring election (to which he later confessed in a front-page letter to this newspaper), Unite Party officials, including Bonarrigo, denied his involvement and accused the Alligator of making up the story.
When Tiemeier’s confession letter confirmed that Katie Waldman was with him during the incident, Bonarrigo defended Waldman, saying she did not think Waldman’s failure to come forward after the incident was unethical, even while Unite Party members were accusing the Alligator of fabricating the story.
As the election season begins, do not forget Bonarrigo’s ethical failures and overall lack of class displayed during her time as a student senator. Bonarrigo has supported election code revisions hurting student free speech, while also defending those who engage in unethical activities.
