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.