By now, many students have probably seen the green signs that list the university’s reasons for wanting to expand the Reitz Union. I can’t be the only one who is outraged by some of the so-called problems with the current building, particularly the claim that there is “no place to study.”
Why I am running for Student Senate:
It’s finally here – the first Student Government election day.
Today and tomorrow, we’re going to have an opportunity to vote on a ballot question to register the Student Body’s opinion on whether UF should affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium, a labor rights advocacy group that works against sweatshops through factory monitoring and investigations. If UF affiliates with the WRC, it will help ensure that UF apparel isn’t made with sweatshop labor.
Recently, the Alligator published an endorsement of various executive candidates and certain referenda. However, the newspaper failed to mention the other group of students running for election. Forty-seven Senate seats are being contested during the spring election, and the Student Alliance party has a slate worth an endorsement from the Alligator. Amalgamating a diverse group of students, the Student Alliance Senate slate can be credited with many of the “70 Platform Points” of the Student Alliance. The Student Alliance slate, if given a chance at a Senate majority, will quickly act to annul more than $1 million in waste in Student Government. We will swiftly post our voting records online, mitigate the lack of transparency at the legislative level, pass legislation to encourage ethics at all levels of SG, expand free printing, promote sustainable practices and enact many other of the Student Alliance party’s published initiatives. The current Senate, thoroughly dominated by a Unite Party majority, has been relegated to a lackluster rubber stamp. Never contradicting the executive, the Senate has continually refused to invoke its powers of investiture and its right to check the other branches of SG. If elected to Senate, we will reinvigorate the legislative prerogatives lost to autocratic history. Fight for your rights as students and vote for the Student Alliance Tuesday and Wednesday.
As a Jew and as a decent human being, I was thoroughly offended by Frank Walch’s letter to the editor Monday that compared certain leaders of the Unite Party to Nazi leaders. Though Walch specified that he did not feel as though a Student Government politician could be described as being as evil as a Nazi figure (thankfully he was willing to grant that at the least), his letter is a blatant character-assassination attempt. Tell me, Mr. Walch, how on Earth one could possibly equate a few thousand dollars spent on alleged perks with a “fascist agenda”? How could you possibly insinuate that the hundreds of volunteers for Unite have been “coerced” into giving their time? How could you ignore the accomplishments made in the past year and instead credit the administration?
The Alligator forgot the most important choice voters face in its editorial: the Senate slate.
I don’t get it. Is Richard Selwach for the legalization of the maple tree, or does he just want Florida to secede to Canada? If you are going to stand up for an issue as heated and as important as the legalization of marijuana, do so boldly, my friend!
Monday’s editorial endorsing the Reitz Union fee is indicative of the shortsightedness of the Alligator’s editorial staff. Yes, supporting the fee so long as graduate assistants are exempted from it seems like a good idea. I’m a teaching assistant, and I, too, find the logic that leads to this enticing because I stand to benefit from it. However, there is nothing that Student Government can do to assure us that this fee will be waived for graduate assistants. The Student Body President — Jordan Johnson now, and whoever his successor may be — is merely one member of the board of trustees and can only propose such a waiver. Moreover, as it stands on the day of an election that puts such an important matter to vote, a waiver of the Reitz Union fee for graduate assistants has not even been officially presented to the trustees. A vote in favor of this fee is a vote based merely on the fleeting hope that UF’s administration and trustees will have the goodness in their hearts to cut some slack to those who work the hardest to keep this university running.
The Alligator’s endorsement of the Reitz Union referendum has me at the edge of my seat. I read the Alligator daily and recognize it as the primary and most knowledgeable source for everything going on on campus. For weeks, I have read about the proposed student fee to repair and renovate the Reitz Union. I heard the potential price but wasn’t aware of the potential results. The Alligator Editorial Board has pulled the rug out from under my feet and made me think twice about this issue.
An issue that plagued me considerably last year has recently resurfaced with the addition of wide receiver Donté Stallworth to the roster of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. Stallworth, who nabbed passes for the Cleveland Browns during the 2008 season, was arrested in March of 2009 and charged with DUI manslaughter after hitting 59-year-old Mario Reyes. This event garnered a modest amount of media coverage and paled in comparison to the circus surrounding the Michael Vick case. It’s this disparity in coverage and, more specifically, public outrage that’s at the root of my dismay.
Philanthropies are a chance for the Greek community as a whole, and the houses individually, to provide charitable service to their communities through the power of collective action. It’s hard to believe that such an altruistic goal could be smeared or tarnished, yet recent commentary in the Alligator has proved otherwise.
Jordan Johnson and Hitler: Are they the same? Ben Meyers: Could he be our generation’s Joseph Goebbels? Is Ashton Charles the next Rudolf Hess?
Members of the Dove World Outreach Center should be forced off campus by students and faculty alike. Gainesville residents should not tolerate blatant prejudice, whether it be on billboards or T-shirts. The message needs to be simple and direct: The Dove World Outreach Center does not belong on campus and does not belong on the streets. The hateful messages should be kept inside their festering warehouse of Bibles and screen-printing presses. When citizens become indifferent to religiously or culturally incendiary messages, evil will triumph. Everyone needs to know that genocide begins when lay people tolerate bigotry. If members of the Dove Center can walk freely though campus, student and faculty silence is directly condoning their message. When did the Holocaust begin? Did it begin when the first victims died? When they were put on trains? The Holocaust began when a whole people became desensitized to violence and apathetic to racism. The Dove Center is using religious text to try to label and isolate Islamic people. If this sounds familiar, join me and force the members of this wretched group off our campus and off our streets.
I hope that I am joined by the entire university community in condemning the most recent incident of hate speech on our campus. For those of you who do not know, fliers were distributed across campus and around Gainesville that said, “Student Alliance party is the Nazi Party,” printing our logo and a swastika with an equal sign between them.
It’s that time of year again. The smell of freshly cut grass is in the air, and the faint crack of a wooden bat can be heard in the distance, or at least in your heart. That’s right — it’s baseball season. The happiest time of year for me. Not only is the Gators baseball team getting ready to open its season — one that offers the hope of another trip to Omaha, Neb., and the College World Series — but major league teams are reporting for their first workouts.
We know none of you have read anything this week — we realize the Winter Olympics are far more entertaining than any letter to the editor we have to offer — but please pull your attention away from Shaun White and friends for just a second so we can present you with this week’s after-all-one-of-our-columnists-did-talk-about-curling-for-a-little-bit edition of Darts & Laurels
Katherine Evans deserves some recognition, but the usual two-sentence blurb in the Darts & Laurels won’t cut it. Evans, a UF undergraduate, just helped set a legal precedent.
I thought nothing had the ability to drag me kicking and screaming away from a television when high-stakes international curling was on, but the substantial debate surrounding the Student Government elections at UF this year managed to do the trick.
I was surprised by Wednesday’s letter about how the Unite Party is really the Gator Party, but perhaps it shouldn’t be.
Solutions by The State News
