Recently, a task force to review Student Government was proposed by the UF Administration. The official response of the Committee For Student Sovereignty was that this was hypocritical and unresponsive. Hypocritical because the administration stated that it did not want to interfere with the "students" government, yet proposed a task force led by a faculty member, consisting of a number of non-students, all hand-picked by the administration. Unresponsive because it did not address the issue that led to its formation - the denial of the students' right to decide for themselves whether they consent to the current form of SG and to determine how to establish an SG based upon their consent.
However, the Committee For Student Sovereignty, under the guidance of its parent organization, the Independent Student Coalition, determined to treat the task force as something potentially beneficial. While the task force could not legitimately change SG - it could listen to the facts.
The task force could have served to place into the official record of the administration the historical, legal, and political facts that lead to the undeniable conclusion that SG at the University of Florida is inherently corrupt. The Independent Student Coalition believes that anyone who hears the "mountain of evidence" that it possesses can come to no other conclusion.
The task force, however, proved to be more of a task farce. This was not the result of the individual members, only about half of which attended its first meeting. It was the work of the three men who directed its every action: President John Lombardi, Vice-President Arthur Sandeen, and Dean Jeffrey Lewis.
As chair, Lewis stated he wanted to keep the task force "free from bias" at the start. But his actions, preventing the members from hearing anything beyond what the administration viewed as the problem, created that bias. The power to keep things off an agenda is the power to determine its outcome.
All of the task force members present admitted having little to no knowledge of the operations of SG or of the controversies surrounding it. As such, the way the question is framed for them at the beginning will determine the outcome of their deliberations.
This is not to say the specifics of what they will conclude are necessarily predetermined - but that by keeping certain issues off the agenda some potential conclusions cannot be arrived at. Lewis limited the scope of the task force's vision at the start - he has thus guided it off the track that will look into the underlying corruption. Instead the framework of their investigations was shaped by Dr. Lombardi and Dr. Sandeen.
Lombardi set forth the mission of the task force. They are to look into "whether the current structure [of SG] is ideal for the current circumstances [of UF]." His emphasis was the contention that SG, in its current form, was created when UF consisted of 10,000 students. Now, with more than 40,000 students, it appeared that UF may have outgrown its SG. All of its problems could be reduced to this premise. Those problems were further trivialized by Sandeen, who after praising it, stated that SG at UF is "always controversial - as all governments are."
The cause for its very existence was missing from the picture that was sketched for the task force members. No one mentioned the disgust or distrust of the Student Body toward SG. No one mentioned the failure of SG to uphold its own laws. No one mentioned the illegal nature of the electoral systems. No one mentioned that SG is completely run by a political machine operated by Florida Blue Key. No one mentioned the "Initiative of the Student Body of the University of Florida" that spurred the very creation of the Task Force. No one mentioned the "Vote No One" campaign nor that more than one thousand students actually did.
And by denying those students who have attended these meetings, including representatives of the Independent Student Coalition, the ability to state their perspective from the start - these issues, the only real issues, were kept off the Task Force's agenda. When the members discussed what they want to see, what they want to hear, who they want to hear from - they were guided only by the premise set forth to them by the administration. That premise is clearly a false one. It assumes that the problems with SG are recent and result form demographic changes in the environment of the University as a whole. But these are not new issues. The Independent Student Coalition is prepared to present the historical record to the Task Force, the administration, and the world. And that record shows the same problem consistently for the last seven decades. That problem is that a small group has controlled SG from its inception. That group is Florida Blue Key. It has done so by manipulating the Greek system as its base of support and with the financial backing and endorsement of a Good Old Boy network of prominent alumni who have occupied almost every office in the government of this state. It has been aided, abetted, condoned, legitimized, coddled, and protected by the administration of the
University of Florida every step of the way. The real issue - the one deliberately kept off the task force's agenda - is the corrupt control of the Student Government by the Florida Blue Key political machine and Good Ol' Boy network.
The official response of the Task Force Chairman is that is was just a first meeting and they didn't want to bias its decisions of how to go about its mission. The fact is that by allowing the Administration's view to be heard (and nothing else) bias was established from the outset. The Independent Student Coalition has spent numerous hours and a significant amount of money, from their own pockets, to bring information to the task force. They had hundreds of pages of documents related to the recent election copied and bound - as well as hundreds of hours of analysis to present as well. This was not the complete argument that they were prepared to give - simply an introduction to the problem as they saw it. But as a representative of the organizations, Sean McLendon, coordinator of Save Our Schools, attempted to explain the desire to present this to the Task Force, he was instructed by Dean Lewis to "sit down now." Aside from being rude and disrespectful to students, this has prevented the real issue regarding SG from being addressed. This Task Force is just a diversion, a way for the administration to "claim" they are addressing the problem without ever really seeking a solution. The voices of the students are one again silenced - this time not by the Student Government, but by the administration that has allowed SG to remain as it is. The members of the Task Force, including four faculty members, a prominent alumni, a member of the Board of Regents who is also an alumni, and eight students all selected by Sandeen, have thus been denied the ability to understand the true scope of the problem. The agenda has been set - and the bias has been imposed. While conclusions have not yet been made, the have clearly been impacted. The result is that this Task Force can be nothing but a Task Farce.
Once again, the Independent Student Coalition and the Committee for Student Sovereignty stress - now demand - Let the Students Decide.