A History of the Statement of Principles
The Statement of Principles was written in the Fall of 1993 by Independent Student Coalition founder Charlie Grapski. Earlier that semester the formal merger of two organizations founded by Grapski, the Independent Coalition and the Coalition of Concerned Students, occured at the home of James Schockett. Those present were Grapski and Schocket, Todd Underhill, Colin Murphy, and Kerri Hannon. Preparing to run a slate of candidates for the Student Senate under the ISC label, the issue of a "party platform" arose.
As ISC is not a party but a coalition of individuals coming together to work on what they hold in common and to debate the issues on which they differ, it did not seem appropriate to form a platform. Parties, as described above, tend to be centrally organized around a predetermined "platform." The majority of those in the party organization seldom have had any input into the establishment or development of that "platform." Instead, in order to join the party organization, one is supposed to profess an allegience to the items, or planks, of the platform as it already stands.
A further problem with the traditional party "platform" is that it tends to be non-substantive. Platforms, by their nature, can offer little other than sound-byte styled "planks." They are not designed to have detailed explanations of the background of the ideas, the need for the idea, the specific elements of them, or the details of their implementation.
They tend to be election oriented -- say what the people want to hear -- materials. In fact, no organization or party would ever create a platform that had items on it that people disliked. They are designed to have things on them that will appeal to a broad audience.
The experience, historically, of platforms formed at the University of Florida has been a recycling of ideas from older platforms -- especially planks that are viewed to work. Most often the platforms of parties are devised by the core group of people behind the campaign asking the question: "what would they like to hear?" This the ISC did not believe was a responsible nor a responsive way to put forth its ideas to the public.
Platforms also tended to be bounded -- whereas government is a
In contrast, ISC proposed a statement of the underlying philosophy of the organization. Persons sharing a belief in this philosophy are then welcome to develop
non-substantive
election oriented
bounded -- open ended