The Independent Student Coalition was originally founded in 1989 as a coalition of "independent" candidates for Senate called the Independent Coalition. In 1993 the Independent Coalition merged with another group, the Coalition of Concerned Students, which formed in 1990 with the goal of enabling students to participate regardless of whether they held elected office.

Currently there are many significant groups which reside under the umbrella of the ISC organization.

The Independent Majority is currently the minority party in Senate.

The Independent Voice is a student newspaper designed to further inform the student body with substantive information that will enable them to be effective participants in campus self-governance and in becoming informed, educated and active participants in local, state, national and world affairs.

The Committee for Student Sovereignty is an organization established to force the issue of whether Student Government is legitimate and acting with the consent of the Student Body. The goal is to provide the students the opportunity to cast a vote to declare whether they consent or not and if not how to restore a government based upon consent.

ISC has established this WWW site to help students to become more informed about what is going on, and to push them to become involved!

Student Government is arguably the single most important entity at the University of Florida. It manages over $6 million dollars, the majority of which are collected through Activity and Service Fees which are part of the tuition that every UF student pays to take classes. Student Goverment uses its budget to manage many on-campus services and buildings, such as the Reitz Union and both of the Rec Centers.

More importantly, however, it is the official voice of the students. Established and empowered by Florida state statutes, the Student Government has a great deal of autonomy and authority. The absence of a legitimate SG which actively seeks to represent the interests and needs of the students directly affects the quality of education and the quality of campus life of all students.

Although SG is so powerful and important, most UF student neither know of it's existence, nor care about what it does and how it does it. Because of this reason, SG has become very corrupt and unresponsive to the average UF student. SG is run almost exclusively by a political machine operated under Florida Blue Key (FBK). FBK uses the fraternities and sororities, through a system of coercion and rewards, as a base of support to maintain its dominance over a body that is supposed to both belong to and represent the entire Student Body.

SG maintains it's power because of the combination of unconstitutional laws, selective enforcement of laws, electoral fraud, a lack of accountability, low visibility and voter apathy. During both fall and spring, elections are held in which less than 10% of UF students vote. The largest bloc of voters in these elections are, of course, the fraternities and sororities. Although this is the largest unified block it is hardly an overwhelming majority. Over the past 13 years the FBK party has only ranged between 45% and 55% of the total votes cast. The system, however, is designed and implemented so that degree of unified votes guarantees them between 88% and 98% of the elected offices. This assures that anybody running with their party in power (currently Focus, but formerly Sun/Progress/Vision/etc.) will win outright.

Why should I be concerned about Student Government? Well, read some of the Rants and Raves that people have had about SG on uf.general, as well as through e-mail with UFSG President Kevin Mayeux.

ISC is active in working to improve the quality of life for UF students, and forcing SG leaders to act responsibly in their decisions. Here are some of the goals of ISC.

Meeting Schedule

For Spring 1996 - TBA

For information on meetings contact Laurie Gelman, 
thayden@grove.ufl.edu or voice-mail ((904) 491-9336).