Ken Is Speaking

In a tape revealed at a UF Senate meeting, an anonymous Unite Party supporter recorded a mid-election party session that revealed the inner workings of the FBK machine - from over-the-top attacks on the character and motives of their opposition to berating house reps to even encouraging hazing and voter coersion to maximize Greek turnout.

Seriously, outside of accusations of a dry campus, I think the tape was a recycling of virtually every SG cliche in the book. They called freshmen living in dorms as god-damned-independents. They said their opponents had no friends, were up to dirty tricks, probably double voted and stole I Voted stickers. They told their houses that giving away alcohol or denying meals to pledges were good voting incentives to use. They accused the opposition of a level of hostility toward the Greek system that I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard from anyone in the independent movement in the last decade and a half. (The independents are more upset with voter coersion and the existence of a psuedo-secret society like FBK than with anything about Greek houses, priveleges or their social calendar.)

Well, the story has been picked up by The Fine Print and The Gainesville Sun. And just a few hours ago, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd tweeted on the subject.

It’s no telling how long the legs are on this story. “Green Means Go”, “Don’t Taze Me Bro”, and the “Grapski defamation” scandals all started like this. And given this is happening at the same time as UF officials plan to impose a fee students rejects in this same election, I don’t think Spring Break will save UF from embarassment like it had hoped.

UPDATE: And now UCF has picked up the story, in a way much better done than the Alligator’s reporting.

Despite being shunned by angry leftists in the anti-Zionist camp, the Student Alliance won perhaps one of the best electoral showings for an independent party in modern UF history.

There are several statistics that tell the story. 20 senators elected ties 2002 for the best showing a party not endorsed by FBK has ever won (although that year’s contest was unique in many ways). 20 out of 50 seats also ties 1998’s Vision Party for the best share of the Senate an independent party has ever won. In absolute terms, it’s the highest number of senators ever elected for a purely independent party.

They have a lot to be rightly proud of.

Of course, digging deeper, you begin to see that their 42% of the vote is actually much closer to the average for an independent, and other exec tickets in the past have done better. And their Senate victories (Grad, Engineering, Fine Arts, Architecture, most of CLAS) are fairly routine for the independents. Indeed, 8 of their 20 Senators would not have been won in 1997 - as Grad Senators didn’t exist at all back then, and were a paltry three seats from 1998 until 2002-3.

Still, whether it is due to a fairer reapportionment, a unified independent movement, or a strong campaign operation, the Student Alliance should be proud. As Cavataro noted, the opposition has gone from 1 senator in Fall 2008 to 23 senators in Spring 2010. It is a tremendous achievement.

And it should serve as a strong reminder that while there are some differences of opinion within the independent movement (radicals vs. mainstream, self-styled GDIs vs. the long-term veterans, etc.) - it never pays to divide the opposition when the enemy, FBK, remains united as ever before.

After all, if they can blindly ignore a majority of SG voters (including at least 1/4 of Unite’s own voters) when continuing to endorse a misguided new fee for the Reitz Union, our work remains unfinished. There is a lot left to do to ensure UF is a democratic campus.