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Friday, March 29, 2024

A rebuke to the student body president and “accomplishments”

I’ll just go ahead and say it. The Student Body president’s latest column Wednesday seemed pretty impressive (albeit bland).

If you missed it, like I did until I realized I had to find something to write my column on, it’s basically a recap of everything that has been done this year.

Superficially, it looks pretty good. I mean, I suppose anything looks pretty good after the previous administration set standards lower than my GPA. I really suppose any subsequent Student Body president who didn’t get arrested would have been doing pretty well, relatively. (First year students, Google “Smith Meyers arrest” if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Try not to laugh, then try not to cry.)

OK but onto substance, or perhaps, lack of substance. There are a dozen things for me to write about for this column, but I guess I’ll just go until I run out of words.

Free Student Government printing in Fifield Hall. Not exactly my first choice for an SG printing station, but I guess that’s an accomplishment. You know how much it cost? $520. That’s some real impressive stuff. I mean, it’s great and all, but where’s the free printing in the libraries? In Newell? In the residence halls? It ain’t easy (clearly), but I know we’ve tried in the past; SG should make it clear to students why free printing in these locations isn’t a reality yet.

Next up is the all-access pass to the Aly Raisman show. The column mentions students “chosen” to be able to meet Raisman. How did that work? I certainly hope it wasn’t just the addition of the four VIP passes that Accent Speaker Bureau hid in two locations on campus the day before the event. Not exactly brag-worthy but I’m sure other people were “chosen” too, as usual. Typically, as the photos show, it’s just SG folks (more than the deserving Accent folks) in the meet and greets, plus some students from groups related to the speaker’s field. I’m just not impressed. Maybe I would have been if we were a bit more transparent about the process.

Next up are two agencies the Student Body president created to provide us with “incredible programming.”

First are the class councils, which ambitiously aim to increase class cohesion and get more students to donate so our ranking goes up. The president only attributes the #WearBlue campaign for the “Lousiana” State University game to the class councils when that was just SG riding off the coattails of our head coach. The only thing I got out of that paragraph was that someone somewhere didn’t use spell check. Actual programming that corresponds to our classes has yet to be executed, to the best of my knowledge.

Next is Bridges Minority Outreach Program, meant to help provide high school students with mentors and apparently “free visitation days.” All the president says is that we’re proud to partner with six high schools from across the state. Now I don’t mean to turn on my dad-level roast mode here, but does that mean we’re currently helping six high schools then? What do free visitation days even mean? Like, it’s pretty free for someone to just walk onto campus these days. Does it mean we’re facilitating travel? Hotel? This is good stuff here, potentially, and I don’t know why we’re so tight-lipped about it.

Finally (since I’m getting close to that word limit), is SG’s diversity programming committee, comprised of different cultural organizations’ presidents and some executive branch officials. Basically, it’s for SG to hopefully get a better sense of who to bring in for shows. But yeah, that committee has been in existence for a while so I wouldn’t say SG should be credited for just having meetings — rather that we should value the tangible programming that comes about from these meetings, which we are given no details about. Pity.

It’s easy to say “we’re doing this and that,” but I encourage you to take a closer look at what’s been promised in the past compared to what’s going on right now and what you aren’t being told about.

Zachariah Chou is a UF political science junior and Murphree Area Senator. His column appears on Fridays.

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