Boo Key

Independent Florida Alligator, Vol. 68, March 11, 1976

Meet Florida Blue Key.  
	"Florida Blue Key is best evidenced by its truly democratic and representative nature, in its spirit of unselfish service to the university..." from a Blue Key newsletter.
	Unfortunately, the best evidence is that Florida Blue Key is neither democratic nor unselfish and is representative only of its members and the elite special interests they represent.
	Blue Key, an honorary service organization, makes no bones about the elite nature of its membership.  They're proud of it.  Although membership is granted to only one-half of one per cent of the UF student body, the newsletter boasts, some of the biggest names in Florida politics are alumni.
	And that's the key.  Go along with the system, make the right friends, join the right organizations and you too can gain access to the powerful network of vintage Blue Keys, like Florida Attorney General Robert Shevin and State Agricultural Commissioner Doyle Connor, when job-hunting time comes around.
	But cross the system, or never join, and life ain't so easy.  Dan Lobeck's rival for student body president Art Aspinwall put it, "I think he (Lobeck) is really hurting himself for the future.  All these people who are going to be lawyers -- what I want to know is how he's going to find a job.
	And for those who never even joined, an impressive resume and good grades may be a waste of time if they have the bad luck to compete against a Blue Key brother for a choice job.
	Nor does the damage done by this" service" organization end in the outer offices of prospective employers.  The anti-democratic nature of Blue Key machine politics clamps a stranglehold on Student Government and stifles political participation to the great majority of UF students.  SG administrative posts become stepping stones to the prestige and influence of Blue Key membership and are doled out to ambitious junior politicians in return for support from their faction.
	"It all boils down to getting a major (the Blue Key term for an important student post) so you can be tapped," one Blue Key explains.  "That's why Blue Key really gets involved in elections.  There's no other way of getting any positions."
	It's a closed system.  The result is a sterile, inbred, unrepresentative and ineffective government that so turns off students nearly nine out of ten don't even bother to vote in elections.  Ironically, the very lack of participation Blue Key control of campus politics fosters is precisely why the elitist system continues.  It only works because the special interests represented in Blue Key are the ones who vote in elections.  Although the problem is complex and deep rooted, one structural reform would go a long way to break the machine politics that destroy mass participation.
	As it stands, student political parties slate a whole string of candidates, from president to senator, that appear in a neat line in the voting booth.  This system only serves to allow party leaders to trade positions on the slate for political support.  If each candidate was forced to run on his own merits listed on the ballot in alphabetical order, the free rides would be over and the political machine would lose an important source of power.  An independent would finally have an equal chance with system politicians.