With the release of its platform on Sunday, the Progress Party became the first party competing in the fall election to officially state its goals.
Sam Miorelli, general counsel for the Progress Party, said the party's platform focuses on common sense.
"There's not really much on our platform that we had to sit around brainstorming for a long time to come up with," Miorelli said.
He said some of the goals, such as making Student Government more transparent and responsive to students, have been featured on past political platforms.
Progress also wants to make some new changes, such as replacing UF's WebMail system with Google's Gmail.com interface, he said.
Past WebMail reforms by the Gator Party, such as adding a spam filter, have not been enough to correct UF's faulty e-mail system, he said.
"Let's not put lipstick on this pig that is WebMail," he said. "Let's just scrap it."
Miorelli said Google has successfully helped other universities make the switch at a relatively low cost. Replacing WebMail could be completed by the end of the spring semester and could actually lower UF's technology costs, he said.
Miorelli said another main Progress Party goal is to research the possible rerouting of Regional Transit System buses to make the system more efficient.
Placing GPS on the buses was a good start, he said, but it doesn't solve the problem of students missing class because their bus is full. While the Fraternity Row bus might be relatively empty most of the day, students west and south of campus face infrequent and crowded buses, he said.
The price tag of many of these "common sense" reforms would be low, Miorelli added, especially in the case of making SG more transparent.
For example, making phone numbers for all SG officials readily available would provide students with more access at a small cost, he said.
"Everybody knows money's tight right now," he said. "We're not going to need money to start raining out of the sky to do this."
Miorelli said the Progress Party's next step would be to organize volunteers and candidates in preparation for getting the party's message out. The party's Web site should be up later this week, he added.
Gator Party President Yooni Yi could not be reached for comment about the future release of her party's platform.
