UF students will have a chance to voice their opinions on coffee and the homeless in addition to voting for 47 student senators during the fall election.
UF's Student Body Supreme Court approved two referendum questions at a meeting Monday night.
One question asks students whether UF should allocate funds to open a student-run homeless shelter in Gainesville.
The other asks whether UF's administration should allow Student Government to fund a non-profit, student-run café on campus.
Sarah Krantz, SG's supervisor of elections, said students would have the option of voting yes or no in response to the questions. They can also choose to vote only for senators and ignore the questions.
Krantz said the initiatives would pass if 50 percent of students who choose to vote on the questions vote yes.
Voting on the issues is just the first step in a long process of approval, she added.
"By no means does voting 'yes' enact [the referenda] as law the next day," she said.
The referenda only serve as a recommendation to the Student Senate if they're passed.
The Senate would still have to decide if it supports the ideas.
Final approval would be in the hands of UF's administration.
Skeet Surrency, a UF junior who authored the café question, said he hopes it will help determine if students want a student-run café.
Surrency said he expects a positive response.
He said he would like to create the café near a library or the Reitz Union by 2009. This is when UF is set to renegotiate its contract with Aramark, the company that provides UF's dining services, he said.
If SG provides the start-up cost, the café would pay for itself, he said.
It would not be driven by profit, and students would only pay for the price of providing the service.
"There are plenty of places to get coffee around campus, but this is an alternative to buying corporate coffee, which isn't as good, is overpriced and is usually linked to questionable moral practices," he said.
David Reznik, a UF doctoral student, authored the question concerning the student-run homeless shelter.
Reznik could not be reached for comment.
