Before you decide you want to be a student leader, or before you decide that you want nothing to do with Student Government, hear the facts.
Every student at the university pays an activity and service fee, which is about $14 per credit hour.
This fee makes up about a $17.5 million budget, which SG controls.
The budget funds SG itself, the J. Wayne Reitz Union and UF’s Department of Recreational Sports, among other recipients.
To understand where your money goes, you should first understand SG.
SG is made of three branches: executive, legislative and judicial branches.
The executive branch is made up of the president, vice president and treasurer.
The current president is Tj Villamil, the vice president is Sabine Justilien and the treasurer is Juan Rodriguez.
Under Justilien and Villamil, cabinets and executive secretaries deal with programming and policy.
The next branch is the legislative branch, or Student Senate. There are 100 senators who represent either a housing district or a college.
The most important people to know in the Senate are Senate President Aundre Price and Senate President Pro Tempore, Logan Harrison. The Senate approves bills, appointments and changes to statutes.
Committees within the Senate divide up the legislation.
The last branch is the judicial branch, or the Supreme Court.
UF has a Supreme Court with six justices and a chief justice. All justices must at least be in their second year of law school at the university.
Out of the two current political parties, Unite Party is the majority party, and the Students Party is the minority party.
Party names tend to change often.
Technically, parties only exist during the election cycle.
But twice a year, they are all students talk about.
Students can vote for the 50 senators who represent housing districts in the fall.
Voting for executive candidates and the 50 senators who represent colleges happens in the spring.
Last spring’s election pulled the biggest turnout in school history.
Some of their biggest decisions this past year have been keeping Library West open 24 hours and switching to online voting stations for elections.
Contact Samantha Shavell at sshavell@alligator.org.
