On Tuesday, much of the legislature and executive branch came together in the University Auditorium for the State of the Campus. Essentially, the address is an annual disappointment where we all come together and scratch our heads at how little we’ve been able to accomplish in the past six months and then console ourselves with the “free” T-shirts and food used to bribe attendees to come.
The address itself was pretty diddly-darn short, coming in at 16 minutes and 37 seconds. Still, in that brief time there were some moments that made me raise my eyebrows.
At one point in the lobbying portion of the presentation, the Student Body President Ian Green said "we were able to successfully lobby for the rerouting of the RTS bus systems [on Election Day] thanks to Chairman of Chomp the Vote Dylan Santalo and make sure that students could be more civically engaged this election season and have their voices heard."
I mean, when I listened to it, it sure sounded like they were successfully in making the bus route alterations happen. When you successfully lobby for something, that usually involves getting something successfully, right? But yeah, that made me raise my eyebrow since I hadn’t heard of it actually happening aside from the rosy, public relations social media post Student Government put out in the summer when Chomp the Vote attended the City Commission meeting to make the initial ask.
So I did the usual Zach Chou thing and dialed up RTS and also emailed the City Commission. To absolutely no one’s surprise, it’s not happening. That’s funny since the Student Body president also mentioned the project in his August Alligator column saying that a “Regional Transit System bus route will be changed to give students more access to early voting.” I don’t mean to turn into Politifact here, but I’m pretty sure that’s false and probably shouldn’t be categorized as a success.
I mean, perhaps they categorized it as a success since they actually made it to the meeting and made the pitch without choking on air, but I really don’t think lobbying is the type of thing that gives out participation awards.
Another small quip that rustled my jimmies was the talk of how academic supplies were made available for checkout from Marston Science Library and Library West. Even though the social media post announcing the “achievement” only credits things such as lab goggles, Expo markers and calculators, the Student Body president apparently thought it’d be real nice to mention things that had already been available at the libraries prior to SG making its small $550 donation.
He mentioned phone chargers, which I’m pretty sure the libraries have had for a while, and he also mentioned laptop chargers, which I definitely know were circulating prior to SG’s involvement because I authored the proposal to get laptop chargers at Marston during the summer (and that wasn’t through SG). It is sad how often the current administration gets sloppy with the facts to try to make something not that impressive seem more so.
After the speech, SG continued to disappoint. On the Facebook post promoting the livestream, there was the promise that “a written transcript of the event will be available within 24 hours.” Did it happen? No, and it didn’t until I commented on the post asking where it was. I’ve already made my feelings about the competency of SG social media public in past columns so I’ll leave it at that.
Yesterday was yet another screw up, again involving Chomp the Vote. Some of you may remember the fateful Summer when the former Student Body president vetoed a couple of bills, including one that I was involved in authoring, requiring closed captioning and transcripts for SG videos. Eventually, a sloppy, watered-down version of the bill was resurrected (without including any of the original authors) and passed through the Senate.
Happy ending right? Nope. Chomp the Vote put out a video about voting that notably had neither captions nor a transcript available until I pointed it out.
Is it really that hard to do the right thing? As a Student Government senator, I’m not sure if I’ll ever find out.
Zachariah Chou is a UF political science junior and Murphree Area Senator. His column appears on Fridays.
