Dave Schneider is no stranger to struggle. He’s marched with students in opposition to administrative takeovers and injustices. The fight is where he feels most comfortable. So when he faces the incumbent party in the polls he knows he can’t waiver in what he considers a good fight.
He thinks there are too many career politicians and not enough political organizers. He believes any change that happens come from the bottom up. So why is he running for the top position of Student Government?
“I want to be president not because I want to go up to the third floor of the Reitz Union,” he said. “It’s because I want to bring the third floor of the Reitz Union down.”
His work with Students for a Democratic Society, a student and youth activist organization, furthered his belief that activism needs to be an integral part of SG. His rail-thin physique and sod of hair on his chin betray the polished boom his voice carries. Maybe it’s his belief that someone has to speak for those who can’t. Or maybe it’s the swagger of some of his favorite artists like Lil Wayne and Kanye West that he raps to in his free time with friends at karaoke.
He wasn’t always first to jump in the middle of a crowd, megaphone in hand, and bring people together to fight for a cause.
In his seventh grade English class, he remembers having to do projects on books. The three options to complete the projects were to write a paper, create an art project or do a speech. He stuck to writing papers. He was terrified to speak in public.
“I stayed away from public speaking,” he said. “And now I can’t stop.”
It began when he won the Rawlings Hall Senate seat in fall 2008 of his freshman year.
Jose Soto, a close friend and the graduate student senator for family housing, said Schneider will bring order into SG as president.
“He sees SG as disorganized,” he said. “And he’ll organize it.”
What may seem like a broken record at debates and public forums is Schneider’s activism with the Kofi Adu-Brempong incident. The shooting that happened last March involved a graduate student who had a standoff with University Police.
Schneider calls his failed re-election bid a blessing because he would not have been able to have such an impact on the activist front.
“I’ve been an activist since I’ve gotten here, but something about the whole situation I really connected with on a level deeper than some of the stuff done,” he said.
He met with leaders at UF to talk about the Adu-Brempong shooting. Bernie Machen called him by his first name when the two met last spring.
He sat across from the UF president and told him that the student protests would not stop until justice was brought to Adu-Brempong.
If Schneider becomes president, he wants to work with administration so the students’ voices are heard on such issues as block tuition, online voting and transparency in SG.
“Activism works both in a student government type of setting and outside of one,” he said.
If he’s not able to speak for the students as president, he’ll go to Plan B. Megaphone in hand, he’ll keep marching.
Read about Schneider's opponent, Ben Meyers.
