Was there ever any doubt?
The Gator Party, to no one's surprise, took 44 of the 45 Student Senate seats it slated in the fall Student Government election. The Progress Party won one seat, the Hume seat. And the two independent candidates, Kyle Robisch and Marcus Dixon, both lost to the Gator Party.
Was there ever any doubt?
The ballot referendum about a student-run coffee shop passed, and the referendum on the UF-funded homeless shelter failed.
Was there ever any doubt?
Only 6,790 students voted in this election - a paltry 14 percent of the whole student body. But the turnout was about the same as last fall's.
For once, we aren't going to complain about how no one voted or how people don't care.
We get it. We've accepted it. We're moving on.
Good luck to all the outgoing senators. We know some of you did a lot of hard work. Some of you tried to make SG better for the rest of us. Thank you for that.
Congratulations to all the new senators. You've got your work cut out for you. Now that Gator all but dominates the Senate, it's up to the Senate to start working together to make the Gator platform ideas a reality.
Gator's 10-point platform probably won't even take an entire year to accomplish. Start thinking of new ideas, and revamp ones you thought might not work. SG typically slacks off after the fall election and redirects its energy toward the spring election. Don't let that happen this time. We voted for you. Don't let us down.
And we must say, good job to Supervisor of Elections Sarah Krantz and her team for tallying the votes and having the results on time. It's no easy task. Most days it doesn't seem like she has much to do, but Wednesday night, her job was one of the most stressful anyone could have.
She did, however, forget to announce two of the seats. We guess she was just a little overwhelmed by Gator's domination. When she announced the Keys seat, she stuttered, "Great…" before correcting herself, "Gator."
As for the referenda, we figured the student-run cafe would pass, even though we don't think it's going to become a reality. And as for the homeless shelter, we think it's fair to say the students have spoken. Twice.
The student-run cafe passed with about 75 percent of the vote. Unfortunately, we didn't spot any of the referendum's major supporters to see if they were enjoying any fair-trade, organic cigars.
The UF-funded homeless shelter failed in a race that was much closer than we expected, with 51.54 percent of the students voting "no."
Tonight's outcome was almost exactly what we expected. Now we put our faith into the hands of the students we voted for - or didn't care enough to vote for, whichever the case may be. Regardless of who or what you did - or didn't - vote for, all the students can sit back now and wait to see what the new Senate does.
But Gator, just remember: Just because you all but unanimously control the Senate doesn't mean you can get lazy and slack off with your duties. Getting elected was the easy part. Now comes the real work.
