Despite the flood of fliers, stickers and screen-printed, UF-colored T-shirts, the Alligator Editorial Board has respectfully declined its option to endorse any Student Government party for the fall election.
The Editorial Board cannot, in the face of recent events and allegations, definitively say we prefer the Gator Party or the Orange and Blue Party. There have been accusations of so much shady extracurricular business surrounding this election that we are disgusted with and ashamed of the political climate.
We're still going to vote. With how much we've tried to cram it down students' throats for the past several weeks, we would be hypocrites not to.
Simply, though, we just cannot endorse either party.
All of these underhanded tactics and dirty dealings have tainted SG's already less-than-sterling reputation.
First, there were the e-mails from within the Indian Student Association and the Black Student Union encouraging their members to interview with the Gator Party. Encouraging political participation is just dandy, but doing so for a single party because they would give your organization more SG funding is bribery.
Supposedly SG is modeled around some form of democracy, which usually entails two or more competing political factions. If one party consistently wins and it turns out it has been holding its position through bribery, then we're pretty sure you've turned tail on democracy to trot down Despotism Drive.
Fortunately, that black eye on the face of our student politics was cleared up with a dash of QWERTY and a hint of what-was-I-thinking baked into a delectable retraction casserole - apparently to complement the main dish of crow.
After that tasty morsel, SG treated us to an infantile game of out-on-the-town, he-said-she-said finger pointing. A few Gator Party members were nabbed for underage drinking, and the blame automatically fell on their opponents. Police said that anonymous tips led to the arrests, but we'd like to think that UF students are above this kind of trivial nonsense.
Really guys? Is that what it's coming down to? Nobody liked tattletales when we were 11-year-olds playing manhunt in the woods, and we really didn't like them when we did pretty much anything we did in middle school and high school. Why would that change? It didn't all of a sudden become cool to rat people out for doing the same crap almost all of us do.
Finally, we have encountered the most repugnant accusation of all. Over the weekend, an anonymous package that arrived at the Alligator purported that several high-ranking members of the Gator Party colluded to fix Student Senate interviews in May and pre-determine which candidates were chosen for what seats in the Senate for the summer.
The only possibility as reprehensible as proof of these allegations is that of them being completely falsified. If these accusations were to be comprehensively discounted and declared void, that would mean someone was malicious enough to threaten the careers of several of our fellow Gators.
Through years of apathy opposed by "strongly encouraged" participation, we've molded for ourselves a perfect model of a political scandal. Whether the allegations hold true, we all need to take a long, hard look at SG. There's no reason that any of these examples should come to pass. They are petty, sickening and irresponsible.
