2011 UCF Presidential Election Results or The Battle of Who Could Care Less

March 30^th, 2011 – After the three days of campaigning, the winners of the food fight emerge.  Your new president is Mathew McCann, who will be sworn in with vice president elect Adam Brock.  In total 10,237 students voted in this election, with 6,105 votes going to the victors, 3,875 votes going to Nicholas Gurney and Fernando Gonzalez, and additional 257 votes going to write-in candidates.  After years of runoff elections and down to the wire votes this is the most lopsided vote in the last five years with a tally of 59.6% to 37.9% to 2.5%.

Figure 1: Ass-Whooping Redefined

 The total number of votes cast represents about 18.2% of the total student population.  This kind of voter turnout pales in comparison to even Afghanistan (http://bit.ly/gnwGie), a place where historically votes are more likely to be inscribed on bullets than ballots.  Granted this is probably in part due to the UCF student instinctively realizing that neither presidential candidate will have much power to do anything nor, more importantly, would try to mount a resistance anyway.  More on that, but let us look at the more important votes of the evening after the break.

Figure 2: Approximate Vote Counts Over the Last Six Presidential Elections

Figure 3: OMG, you just made Lady Liberty Cry.  At worst you're dodging douchebags around the Student Union, not daisy cutters in the desert!

At 7,866 votes, representing 89.19% of respondents, UCF students overwhelmingly voted for a constitutional amendment which would require the UCF president to respond within 15 weeks to any legislation that has been vetoed by the Senior Student Affairs Officer.  What is important about this is that it is an attempt by SGA to actually stand up to the administration, albeit very weakly.  The student senate debated for quite some time about how long they should wait for an opinion from the $500,000+ man.  A proposal of 8 weeks was rejected as being to bold, because President Hitt has more important things to do then read a bill voted on by student representatives. We obviously do not pay him enough to read pieces of legislation which are on average an entire one page long and then make a decision on what he read.  Dealing with students at a forum once or twice a year is work enough.  What do we expect from a man whose salary is on par with an entire department?

The problem with this amendment though is simple.  After the Senior Student Affairs Officer (currently Vice President Maribeth Ehasz) unilaterally vetoes a bill, the senate has to override the veto before it goes to the UCF president.  Regardless of how long Hitt takes to respond, he can still confirm the veto and students have absolutely no recourse.  This is the big untold secret of student government, as it really makes it simply a means of the administration appearing to appease student concerns.  At least now Hitt can’t simply ignore the issue and wait for students to graduate, hoping to duck any controversy entirely.

The second constitutional amendment to pass was one which requires the president and vice president to give a report to senate each semester detailing which committees they’re on and what they’re doing.  This passed with 8,253 votes, representing 93.04% of the respondents.  Essentially this appears to have gestated from senate’s rivalry with (now) former president Kilbride, mostly over his decision to keep the Knightmare fiscal database within the hands of the comptroller and a few financial committee chairs.  For the most part this amendment does little except provide slightly more transparency (mostly to senate representatives anyway).  This decision is probably a good thing in the long run, but nothing to get excited over.

However the third question on the ballot was probably the only reason to vote (considering the senate’s inability to pass the racial profiling referendum).  This question had to do with student concerns over protecting about 7.85 acres of arboretum land that the UCF administration is currently reviewing the status of with the St. John’s Water Management District.  This move most likely indicates that they are intending to use the land for construction of some kind.  Several environmental groups have already been working on the issue and reaped the rewards of 7,854 students, of which 87.81% respondents voted to support the continued preservation of the nearly eight acres of arboretum land.

Unlike the first constitutional amendment, students have made a clear stand in support of the continued conservation of the arboretum despite the possible designs to the contrary.  The student groups working to protect that land can now claim the support of an overwhelming majority of involved UCF students.  This makes it more difficult for university officials to simply build on that land without facing a potential PR nightmare.  This is definitely a victory for the UCF environmental groups who are working to protect the arboretum.

Unfortunately, the presidential elections don’t appear to have really been worth all the pizza shed for the cause.  Neither ticket had student leaders who had any history or even stated intent of challenging the lack of student representation on this campus.  Both tickets are very much connected to fraternal organizations with two of the candidates serving in leadership roles within the Interfraternity Council, of which Adam Brock has served as president.  Unfortunately, this will probably only exasperate the fraternal hold over the student government which has done more to represent the UCF administration rather than the 90% of non-fraternal students.   

All four candidates had experience in various positions within SGA, and not much to show for it.  The winning candidate hails from the most useless branch of student government, the judicial branch.  The only time the judicial branch is let out of the closet is to investigate the possibility of excusing parking tickets.  In his resignation speech, Mr. McCann attempted to defend the branch he lead with the mock trials they held, using an example of a trial involving the theft of a chocolate quiddich egg from Hogwarts, effectively arguing against the importance of the judiciary in its current form.  The vice-president’s major achievement was negotiating knight-lynx.  A somewhat successful initiative to partner with lynx to expand public transport.  Unfortunately, this initiative is mostly to local bars at late hours earning the knight-lynx buses the dubious nickname of “drunk busses”.

More disturbingly neither candidate made any mention of the upcoming budget cuts.  The $3.3 billion budget cuts being proposed in the Florida legislature to set to devastate statewide K-20 education.  Such budget cuts will greatly threaten everything the university does, not to mention forcing a dramatic increase in tuition.  Such an increase would only be able to be fought off by dedicated student leaders, willing to stand up to both the state government and the UCF administration.  It’s unfortunate for us that it looks like we don’t have such leaders.

Introduction to the SGA Nomenklatura: The Senate Leadership Council

For those with any experience with the Student Government Association at our university, one of the most salient points that one comes away with is the extremely insular nature of the institution. Despite being elected by the student body, the student senate is no exception to this malady. For all the talk of wanting to “reach out to” students to “engage” them, there are mechanisms in place to defeat any attempt at opening the institution outside the SGA family. One of the most odious of these is the Senate Leadership Council, senate’s own means of creating its own poor man’s attempt at emulating the soviet nomeklatura.

On paper the SLC is a mentorship program, meant to initiate people into senate with mentors and via assigning the mentored students with duties to teach them how senate is to work. The SLC program is outlined in Senate Rule IX, which can be viewed here http://bit.ly/gw9TQ2. The SLC is a selective membership organization overseen by the legislative assistant, and limits its membership according to the decision of the aforementioned assistant and the ad-hoc committee that oversees it. If you think that this sounds an awful lot like a fraternity, you wouldn’t be the only one with that perception. Members of senate (largely fraternal in background) have a hard time discerning between the two. There are constant jokes relating SLC members to pledges, and even an incident in which the speaker of the senate almost referred to these members as “littles” on the senate floor (a fraternal term for a mentored person who is referred to as a little brother or sister).

Beyond the attempt to instill a fraternity within a legislature meant to represent 90% of the student body that isn’t involved in “Greek life”, is the more dubious purpose of SLC. The Senate Leadership Council acts as means to stifle opposition to the senate majority by replacing retiring senators with yes-men handpicked by senate leaders. More than five members appointed to the 43^rd senate alone hail from the SLC, representing the majority of the replacements confirmed by senate. Despite their lack of experience, understanding of governance, goals, and actual approval by the student body, these students are consistently rubber stamped into senate seats.

In contrast, when former student senator, chair, and presidential candidate Austin Smith was up for appointment he was rejected by the senate. Despite the fact that Mr. Smith had ran for one of the then 5 empty graduate senate seats unfilled at the end of the election (now six empty graduate college seats). By all rights Mr. Smith and the other graduate candidates should have been placed in one of those many empty seats when there were no other contenders for them at the end of the fall ‘10 election session. However, he was rejected in a noxious display of hypocrisy when notoriously corrupt senator Jeremy Pozin argued that Mr. Smith’s political campaigns with the Students for a Democratic Society were too radical for him to be considered a viable appointment. This was in blatant violation of statute IX, 1101.13 which requires that senate pick appointments on qualification rather than political ideology (see: http://bit.ly/i4KaeO). Not to mention this was in addition to Pozin’s own drunken escapades while in an official SGA capacity. Mr. Smith was unable to break the two-thirds threshold for appointments, displaying the priority of a senate more concerned with fraternal allegiance and personal politics than in representing the students.

There have been suggestions in the past emanating from the progressive wing of Senate that SLC should be opened up to all students by eliminating the arbitrary cut off and selective membership procedures. These very reasonable calls to modify SLC have been answered by the inane concern that without the limit SLC would be unable to pay for all the polo’s and informational folders which were (laughably) considered critical for the functioning of the organization. The calls for such reform were dropped as many progressive senators left in disgust with the current senate and were replaced with SLC “littles”.

The current Senate Leadership Council is an abomination, and should be immediately reformed or discontinued. In its current form it serves as a blatant means of maintaining a political pH that is in line with the senate leadership’s views and its fraternal nature, rather than the actual views of the student body. There is no logical reason why a senate so supposedly hungry for student involvement would go to such lengths to restrict membership in an organization meant to model future student leaders. It’s time to call for the end of the SGA’s petty nomenklatura.

Breaking News: Mothers Lock up Your Doritos

March 24, 2010 – Revolution, recession, tsunamis, nuclear fallout, were just the beginning.  Now they are after our vending machines.  Campus police have issued the following All Points Bulletin on the frito bandito: http://bit.ly/hBav2c.

Marshall the Menace - He's a Hungry, Hungry Hippo 

Apparently this notorious Fiend is suspected of stalking members of the vending automaton community within the main campus.  UCF PD believe that under cover of darkness Mr. Marshall preys upon lone automatons in sketchy parts of the campus, and then descends upon them in a crowbar frenzy that can only be born of a madman induced by a diet of ding-a-lings and broken dreams.                

Authorities urge members of the University to panic, panic, fucking PANIC.  He is to be considered highly dangerous when not on the couch, and will be known by the trail of Cheeto dust in his wake.  If encountered on campus do not feed, and immediately contact UCF police at 407-823-5555.  If found outside the campus call your local law enforcement agency (or FBI!) or contact Crimeline at 407-423-TIPS( 8477).  Remember, only you can prevent fresca-cide.

Where Our Senate Stands on Student Participation

The records disclosed to this publication reveal the standing of senators on last week's controversial (to SGA) proposal to allow a question regarding racial profiling legislation onto the ballot.  Here is the breakdown of that vote both on second and the subsequent third readings of that legislation.

Second Reading		Third Reading
For	Against	For	Against
*LJR Chair Gilson	PT. Miller	*LJR Chair Gilson	PT. Miller
CRT Chair Gonzalez	DPT. Hardman	CRT Chair Gonzalez	DPT. Hardman
*CFC Chair Bryant	DPT. Friefeld	FAO Chair DeSanti	DPT. Friefeld
GAC Chair Hellinger	SPR Chair Evangelista	GAC Chair Hellinger	SPR Chair Evangelista
FAO Chair DeSanti	SLC Chair Bormel	*CFC Chair Bryant	E&A Chair Land
Sen. Ossa	E&A Chair Land	Sen. Warrick	SLC Chair Bormel
↓Sen. Goodson-Orr	Sen. Sonntag	Sen. Lane	Sen. Kaplan
Sen. Simons	Sen. Evans	Sen. Simons	↓Sen. Centenaro
Sen. King	Sen. Kaplan	Sen. King	Sen. Sonntag
Sen. López	Sen. Shapiro	Sen. López	↓Sen. Goodson-Orr
↓Sen. Centenaro	Sen. Katz	↑Sen. Andriotis	Sen. Evans
Sen. Lane	Sen. Rits	Sen. Atlfield	Sen. Shapiro
Sen. Atlfield	Sen. Jones	Sen. Besley	Sen. Katz
Sen. Besley	*Sen. Bardzell	Sen. Ossa	Sen. Rits
Sen. Warrick	↑Sen. Andriotis	↑Sen. Moesch	Sen. Jones
↓Sen. Arbos	*Sen. Muniz		*Sen. Bardzell
	↑Sen. Moesch		*Sen. Muniz
			↓Sen. Arbos
Key * - Appears to have voted same way on both readings. ↑ - Went from voting against on second reading, to voting for in third reading. ↓ - Went from voting for on second reading, to voting against in third reading. LJR – Legislative, Judicial, and Rules Committee. CRT – Conference, Registration and Travel Committee. FAO – Financial Allocations for Organizations Committee GAC – Governmental Affairs Committee. SPR – Services and Public Relations Committee. E&A – Elections and Appointments Committee. CFC – College Facilitation Committee. SLC – Senate Leadership Committee. PT. – Pro-Tempore. DPT – Deputy Pro-Tempore.

Here is the breakdown by college, on the vital third reading:

Click to ENLARGE

Click to ENL:ARGE

For those who would like to speak to their senator about their inability to allow a question to be voted on by the student body, here are the SGA e-mail addresses of those who voted against the referendum, broken down by college.  If you want to let your elected representatives what you think:

College of Arts and Humanities

• Pro-Tempore Miller - sga_pro@ucf.edu
• Senator Arbos - sga_cah3@ucf.edu

College of Business Administration

• Deputy Pro Tempore Hardman - sga_ba7@ucf.edu
• Deputy Pro Tempore Friefeld - sga_ba2@ucf.edu 
• Senator Sonntag - sga_ba5@ucf.edu
• Senator Centenaro - sga_ba4@ucf.edu

College of Education

• Senator Shapiro - sga_ed2@ucf.edu
• Senator Jones - sga_ed3@ucf.edu
• Senator Katz - sga_ed4@ucf.edu

College of Sciences

• E&A Chair Land - sga_ea@ucf.edu
• SPR Chair Evangelista - sga_spr@ucf.edu
• SLC Chair Bormel - sga_slc@ucf.edu
• Senator Kaplan - sga_sci3@ucf.edu
• Senator Bardzell - sga_sci4@ucf.edu
• Senator Goodson - Orr - sga_sci5@ucf.edu
• Senator Evans - sga_sci8@ucf.edu
• Senator Rits - sga_sci9@ucf.edu

College of Hospitality / Rosen

• Senator Muniz - sga_hm1@ucf.edu

Former Student Senator Starts Campaign to Keep Pizza Off of Election Tables

March 21, 2011 – As the campaign for student government president approaches a familiar commodity at election tables is once again coming under scrutiny, namely pizza.  Every year students are patronized with the Italian foodstuff in an effort to get them to vote for the pizza procuring presidential hopeful.  However this year former student senator and governmental affairs committee chair Tyler Smith is doing something to stop the savory scourge and the candidates who hope to prey upon the apathetic student who consumes it.  His plan according to his account to a reporter with the Vanguard Voice is, “If we can't beat the system, we will eat the system”.  According to election policy it is required that any food products being offered at election stations must be available to all students regardless of whether and how they vote.  It is this weakness in the system that Mr. Smith seeks to exploit.

This is most certainly not the first time that such open bribery has been attempted to be thwarted.  From the earliest historical record available to the Voice of a student attempting to stop the practice, is that of former senator Webster Cook of the 40^th student senate.  Mr. Cook attempted to pass reform intended to require candidates to disclose campaign spending.  However, since virtually all campaign spending comes out of the pockets of the candidates, it seems unlikely that such reform would be enforceable.  It appears that similar concerns were raised at the time and the elections and appropriations committee failed the bill when it was referred to them.

This was not the end of the matter as there were still unattended to unease.  Many students are still worried about the ability of more prosperous students to buy the election with gifts of food to those who would otherwise fail to vote.  Among them was then chair of the Golden Rule Review committee, Stephen Mortellaro.  Last year he submitted a proposal to make it a violation of the code of conduct for a student to attempt to offer any items other than strictly informational materials with the intent to influence the student’s decision to vote in any manner.  In an interview with the Vanguard Voice Mr. Mortellaro described his decision to promote the proposal within the Golden Rule committee, “the reason I was pursuing that through Golden Rule, not Senate, was because Senate has NO enforcement power over third parties.  Senate cannot "impeach" non-SGA members who give bribes”.  However, in part due to the intervention of current presidential candidate Nicholas Gurney and notoriously corrupt senator Jeremy Pozin, the measure failed.

For the edification of our Dearest readers the following is the proposal as presented by Mr. Mortellaro:

“Proposal to Amend Regulation UCF-5.012 “Organizational Rules of Conduct”

Proposal to create a new Subsection (e) under Section 3 “Disruptive Conduct” and renumber all other subsections accordingly.  The new (e) is to state the following:

The act of gifting money, food, t-shirts, or any other item of value, except informational literature printed on paper or paperboard, to another student to influence or induce that student to vote, not vote, or vote for or against any candidate, group of candidates, or ballot referendum in any election conducted by a student organization or the Student Government Association.”

This is particularly relevant in light of Regulation UCF-5.008 Rules of Conduct, Section 3(c), which reads as follows, "An act which tampers with the election(s) of any University student organization or group including major violations of the SGA Election Statutes”.  Had then chair Mortellaro’s proposal been accepted it would have been possible for the Office of Student Conduct to bring punitive measures against students found guilty of violating the aforementioned rule 5.008.

The current campaign is being coordinated by Mr. Smith, Ms. Fitzpatrick, and former Interfraternity Council and homecoming king Kyle Schumacher.  Mr. Smith points out that the current campaign is “loosely coordinated”, but appears to have quickly found strong support from students.  At this point the Facebook page from which the campaign is being run (see the following: http://on.fb.me/eKQQdP), has 150 supporters in less than a day of being posted.  In addition to eating any pizza being offered, Mr. Smith notes that the plan is to also encourage students to vote for pizza as a write-in candidate as well.  Representatives of the movement have notified the Voice that this plan will be enacted during election week (beginning March 28^th and ending March 30^th), if either ticket offers pizza as an incentive to vote.  Mr. Smith ensured the Voice that both tickets will be notified of this plan.                            

Senate Narrowly Strangles Students’ Ability to Vote on Potential Racial Profiling Legislation

March 17^th, 2011 – After a contentious reading during the last senate meeting before spring break, the SGA senate finally heard the amendments to controversial Resolution 43-22 Calling for a Referendum Election Regarding Racial Profiling (see our previous article for more information on the earlier meeting and the events leading up to the events outlined in this article: http://vanguardvoice.blogspot.com/2011/03/senate-profiles-in-prolonging-racial.html).  Apparently it took several highly dedicated progressive caucus Democrats, fourteen registered student organizations, and an entire fiscal committee running out of money to come to this.  With no fickle fiscal entanglements senate would have to deal with “governmentally” type issues, the SGA’s least favorite part of their own acronym.  <Yuck />.  It was certainly an entertaining show that our dear student senate put on for the viewing pleasure of the large contingent of students in support of the resolution as well as the meager teabag-load of four or so College Republicans who came out to watch the proceedings on the resolution.  The long awaited showdown began during the open forum when the College Republicans fired the first volley against the resolution.

The argument offered by the two representatives of the College Republicans came down to two points.  The first was highlighted in the copies of HB 237 handed out to senators as part of their presentation.  They argued that the following clause within the bill would protect against abuses to civil liberties via racial profiling: “A law enforcement officer of this state or a political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color, or national origin when implementing the requirements of this subsection, except to the extent permitted by the United States Constitution or the State Constitution”.  (It should be noted by this observer that it is not entirely clear how a person’s skin color can be considered in cases “permitted by the United States Constitution or the State Constitution”, unless one refers to the clause that some people are legally three fifths of a person, perhaps making this two-fifths OK to racially profile within certain circumstances?  Or that our dumb state’s constitution allows for something typical of a state that looks like a wang and builds a capitol building to match http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/03/florida_capital.html.  Who knows what the bill’s authors were thinking on this one?)  Furthermore, the College Republican representatives claimed that the question as worded in the original legislation remanded to the Governmental Affairs Committee last senate meeting provided a “straw man” argument in adding “where the methods raise concerns of racial profiling”.  In so doing they argued the question would cause students to vote against anything from Pell grants to several other examples of obviously non-racial profiling related issues, if such a clause were added to a referendum question on those potentially infinite issues.  The Republican political activists also denounced the “political activists” in the form of the College Democrats and the other thirteen allied groups, and their attempt to provide students a forum on this issue by claiming it would in some way turn UCF into a production center for “political propaganda”.  A point which makes sense to this observer if the question is considered to be misleading (although the political activists using the term political activists derisively to describe others and representing a party who is at least partially subsidized by FOX News is not).        

However, things really got rolling over an hour later when Senator Lane moved for the senate to consider the resolution, in the midst of the period of time allotted to report backs from Senate committees, in light of the high volume of students waiting to hear that issue be discussed.  After an initial balking by Deputy Pro Tempore Friefeld, the senate voted to hear the resolution at that time.  At which point, College Democrats Director of Internal Communications Ida Eskamani gave a brief, but quite detailed presentation on the changes that the fourteen RSO’s wished to see enacted and the importance of the legislation to UCF students.  Among other points the presentation explained the legal definitions of the terms “racial profiling” and “reasonable suspicion” and how the changes impacted the potential for misuse of the legislation towards individuals of color and the non-wealthy.  She started by explaining how the bill which sparked this debate, Florida House Bill 237, was related to an Arizona law which the Department of Homeland Security Report found to increase claims of racial profiling (see: http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/OIG_10-63_Mar10.pdf).  Amongst the most prominent issues brought up in the presentation was the request by the organizations in support of the referendum was the rewording the question to drop the term “racial profiling” and add the term “”reasonable suspicion”.  The new question read:

“Do you support or not support immigration legislation which requires law enforcement to use “reasonable suspicion” to determine the immigration status of lawfully detained individuals?” 

      

After a series of pointed questions from Deputy Pro Tempores Hardman and Friefeld, came the debate portion of the hearing and the avalanche of amendments which highlighted issues both proposed by the students and their allies in the legislature and the SGA senatorial opposition.  There was simply too much action to fully disclose in this report, but this reporter shall attempt to capture the more relevant reasoning employed and the actions taken as a result.  If one wishes to hear a complete accounting of the meeting it may be public records requested from ccoffey@ucf.edu, in accordance with Florida’s only sane law …errr, pardon….Florida’s Sunshine Law.  To provide some background on the actions to come, let us review some of the arguments for and against the resolution.

As in the last time this issue was heard, a major argument against the resolution was that it was not the place of the Student Government Association to get involved in these matters.  According to these senators, led by Pro-Tempore’s Office and Senator Kaplan, it was their opinion that within this legislative branch of the Student Government Association this issue was too political and thus was not germane to the focus of the constitutionally mandated forum for the representation of student interests in a democratic manner.  They expressed their concern that if issues like this were allowed to be debated in senate concern over allowing these issues to be debate in senate would stall the ability of senate to debate issues of cultural food and deciding the very complex and difficult decision of whether they should send condolences to recently deceased knights.  Some potentially imaginary and extra-dimensional sources, close to senate explain that in particular the question of whether to sending a grieving family a condolence letter is not as simple as one may believe.  It is also possible that senate could potentially send the relatives of the deceased Knight contents of their lint traps or a box containing a dead cat.

 

In news more relevant to this dimension, there was an attempt to explain that former Governmental Affairs Chair Stephen Mortellaro specifically wrote and managed to help pass the very type of referendum election for the reasons debated on today by the students proposing it.  Furthermore, that issues such as the one presented here constitute the very purpose of the Governmental Affairs Committee as outlined in SGA statutes.  Also, that this was particularly relevant to UCF as there are documented cases of this already affecting the university prior to the passage of HB 237 (see UCF professor claims racial profiling, says police called her 'drug user, crack head and liar’ http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-08-31/news/os-ucf-racial-profiling-alleged-20100831_1_ucf-police-mixed-race-assistant-professor).  This elicited blank stares and the chirping of crickets.

A more rational concern was raised by Governmental Affairs Vice-Chair Arbos.  Vice Chair Arbos noted that only approximately 5% of students voted in the last senate elections in the fall of 2010, and that as such it was not appropriate for the current senators to represent the entire university student body of more than 56,000.  Some senators pointed out that the students had the ability to vote and that the roughly 95% had essentially consented to the current representation by choosing to not vote.  Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Hellinger mentioned that this was the best possible way to gain an accurate cross section of student opinion on this issue as the turnout numbers would be available along with the decision ultimately made by the students who chose to vote.  He proceeded to point out that the referendum was the most efficient and convenient way of reaching out to the greatest number of students. 

Some other arguments include Deputy Pro Tempore Friefeld’s claim that the student body could not be counted on to be properly educated on this issue by themselves.  To which Services and Public Relations Vice-Chair Warrick responded that changes to the question were available on the power point presentation which was at that point displayed for Senate, and that responsible senators should be keeping track of amendments anyway.  However, what should have been the end of the hour plus long verbal brawl was Senator Lane’s rude injection of reality by noting that by state law the student government would have to place any referendum question on the ballot that was called for by the petition signatures of roughly 900 students.  In light of the approximately fifty students from the fourteen RSO coalition were able to maintain themselves through what was then about three hours of the even more inane than usual senate meeting, this appears to be a certain reality.  In addition, SGA would be responsible for spending additional money on the pay for elections officials to hold another election specifically for the referendum, instead of simply allowing it to be placed on the ballot during presidential elections.  Unmentioned was the near certainty that even less students would turn out for an election that did not involve a major candidate race.

Over the course of the heated debate to come the question was eventually put in its final form, the following was eventually voted on by the student senate:

“Do you support or not support the State passing legislation that requires local law enforcement to use the practice of “reasonable suspicion” to decide whether or not to check the immigration status of lawfully detained individuals?”

It is truly difficult to chronicle the transfinite nature of all too many a senator’s ability to contort oneself in the most asinine way possible.  Suffice to say that the only way to truly do so is to public records request the meeting and play it back while seal-spankingly high.  Somehow the resolution managed to make its way passed second reading, but faltered after that.  Unfortunately, due to the late introduction of the resolution it was necessary to pass the bill through second and third readings in one sitting.  There was however, a great deal of confusion that ensued on how to actually place the resolution on third reading.  Members of the opposition attempted at several points to attempt to kill the possibility of passing the resolution through the strict and potentially spurious application of Robert’s Rules of Order.  Several senators attempted to “reconsider their votes” in an attempt to bring about a vote to place the resolution on third reading.  At one point College Facilitation Committee Chair Bryant “forgot” how he voted in a previous attempt to bring the resolution to a third reading, to bypass the meddlesome anal blockade of reasonable student service.  After a narrowly won vote to bring the resolution onto third reading, Senator Kaplan explained to Speaker Pope that senate rules require a two-thirds vote to bring up a bill on third reading during the same meeting in which it passed second reading.  At which point Speaker Pope profusely apologized for “wasting the time” of senate and that of the assembled students.    

  Eventually, an opponent of the bill, Senator Moesch, called for a reconsideration of his vote in which he explained was due to his unwillingness to allow such maneuvers to deny the resolution a right to a vote.  Swayed members of the opposition changed their votes and voted in favor of passing the resolution onto third reading.  Despite another round of debate on the legislation, and Senator Lane’s reiteration that the student group would be able to collect the 900 signatures after the presidential election (and what it would result in), the resolution failed to obtain the two-thirds vote required to pass a resolution for a student referendum.  The coalition members refused to be seated and instead attempted to show their displeasure at the inability for the senate to do something as simple as place a timely and well written referendum question on the ballot.  This tactic assumed that the senators who fought so hard against bringing up a simple referendum question for a presidential election were capable of shame or the ability to understand why they should possibly be ashamed.  Following this exchange coalition members have stated to the Voce that they will collect the requisite number of petitions, and hold a referendum question on this issue, regardless of whether SGA’s senate likes it or not.  We here at the Vanguard Voice will continue to keep you updated on this story as it develops, as well as other important issues concerning the student body.