The UF Student Senate had a busy night before Thanksgiving break.
The chamber voted on Tuesday to eliminate seats designated to senators from the Heavener School of Business, Fisher School of Accounting and Rinker School of Construction Management.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and graduate students will also lose seats, decreasing from nine to eight and 12 to 11, respectively.
The changes are part of a reapportionment bill for the Spring 2026 senator seats — namely the 50 spots designated to represent UF’s colleges.
The seven eliminated seats will be used to add a new seat for the Hamilton School and four for the Warrington College of Business. The Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and the College of Journalism and Communications will each receive an additional seat.
Sen. Austin Britton (Vision-Graduate) proposed to amend the bill, but it was denied by the majority of the chamber and sparked debate.
Britton called for the addition of five seats to the Senate’s total 50 Spring positions and asked that the reapportionment be reconsidered to give extra seats to select colleges based on population, including the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and graduate students.
Senators opposed to Britton’s proposal argued changing the 50-seat standard may open the door for future apportionment abuses by allowing drastic modifications from year to year.
The Senate Constitution allows for the total seat number to vary from 40 to 60 every election, Britton said, and it “just made the most sense” to change the decades-long 50 seat precedent as the university gains population and new colleges, like the Hamilton School.
Although his amendment failed, Britton ultimately voted in favor of the bill because legally, he said, senators are required to pass apportionment bills by the end of the year.
“If we failed it this time, it would have caused a larger headache,” he said.
Senators also reapportioned Fall 2026 seats, which allot 50 Senators to represent living areas. The legislation eliminates the Graham Area position, given its recent demolition, and adds one to the 37 off-campus seats. The bill passed with a majority vote.
Sen. Andrew Larsen (Change-Arts) voted against the passage of both reapportionment bills, citing Britton’s “statistically more representative” proposal for the Spring seats as the reason.
“I could not bring myself to vote for a less representational map,” he said.
Though Larsen knew the bills would pass Tuesday, he said he took his “principled stance” against them regardless.
The Senate residence area map was redistricted Fall 2024 to group off-campus seats into a one-at-large district, and Larsen said the change promotes a one-party system as students who vote along partisan lines are unlikely to elect multiple parties into one district.
“By eliminating that, we’re silencing a lot of voices,” he said.
Senators will vote on the changes again next week. All legislation pertaining to SG codes must be heard twice, though Larsen added he believes the results will be the same.
Resolutions
Student Body President Blake Cox authored a resolution passed on Tuesday expressing the Senate’s support for the proposed increase in university athletic and health fees.
This month, UF announced a $1.56 and $0.27 increase to the athletic and health fees, respectively, and Cox declared his plan to write the resolution at a Student Senate meeting the next day.
“I believe the fee changes will benefit students in many ways,” Cox said.
Students will see reduced wait times at the Disability Resource Center with the health fee increase, he added, and UF’s ratio of students to accessibility specialists will become “much more competitive” among comparable universities.
The resolution calls on the UF Board of Trustees to approve the proposal, and the Board will review it during its Dec. 4 meeting.
In the spirit of giving thanks, the Senate approved two other resolutions recognizing the University Police Department and Native American Heritage Month.
Larsen sponsored the first resolution, and he said it aimed to thank UPD for its recent collaboration with SG and for a positive working relationship moving forward.
The resolution lists the Oct. 2 campus walk, where SG, UPD, university administration and student leaders inspected areas on campus in need of safety reforms, and the Nov. 4 Senate meeting held at UPD, where senators received a tour of the facility, as reasons for gratitude.
The resolution does not push any further action, Larsen said, and is simply a “statement of sentiment” toward the police department.
Another resolution declares the Senate’s celebration of November as “a month to celebrate and recenter on supporting Indigenous communities.”
The resolution supports the use of Land Acknowledgements to expand visibility of Indigenous communities “in speaking the names of the tribes whose land was taken from them in order to further awareness of their legacy.”
Less than 1% of UF undergraduate students identify as Native American, the resolution said, so it’s important to allocate resources to the celebration in light of their underrepresentation.
“The University of Florida Student Senate supports any efforts that acknowledge the legacy of Native students at the University of Florida, as well as the visibility of Indigenous communities, through preserving their names,” it said.
Contact Maria Arruda at marruda@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @mariazalfarruda.
Maria is the Fall 2025 student government reporter for the Alligator. She's a sophomore journalism and political science major at UF and hopes to work as a political correspondent one day! Maria loves to read, hang out with her friends, see her family and go to the gym in her spare time.
