It’s the same everywhere
Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:12 (UTC -5)This morning, someone with glossy flyers came out of nowhere and started talking at me about all manner of topics. It’s that time of year again!
A university is a microcosm of society. And just like in the actual cosm, school politics have been flaring up over the past few weeks. Student Government elections are next week, and it’s once again down to the classic battle of the Greek party vs. the non-Greek party. The former is the Gator Party, while the latter is the Orange and Blue Party. Here at UF, it’s the same as it is with many universities: the Greeks dominate student politics.
Earlier this year, a UF sorority member (who wished to be anonymous for her safety) had this to say:
In the past two days, the Gator Party has checked in on my sorority house every hour to count how many “I voted” stickers we have. We were told that voting is mandatory, which defies all sense of voluntary political participation. Not only were we required to vote, but we were also told exactly how to vote on every referendum.
Most appallingly, Gator Party members threatened that if my sorority did not have an “I voted” sticker from every girl in our house, members of our chapter would be blocked from future Senate positions and from Florida Blue Key [a shady honor society].
Apparently, in recent years, stickers that say “I Voted” have been banned, but now they just give out “SG” stickers instead. Can you see why the Gator Party might oppose online voting? In fact, they oppose it vehemently. They know what will happen if it becomes easier for students to vote. Turnout increases dramatically. If Greeks are a minority of students, and they’re all already voting, they won’t be the majority of voters for very long.
Last year, I voted against the Gator Party, and I plan to do the same this time. While the Gator Party’s platform includes wastes of money like putting crossing guards at crosswalks that I’ve crossed safely for a year and putting a video rental store in the student union, Orange and Blue’s platform is shorter and actually has details of their plans. And I like what I see: online voting, eliminating wastes of money, socially responsible investing, getting student pep rally acts that people have heard of (unlike last year’s Frank Caliendo and Lynyrd Skynyrd or this year’s Jon Reep and Steve Miller Band). Already this fall, as the minority party, they’ve blocked a regulation that would have limited the legal consumption of alcohol by students anywhere and pushed to make the day before Thanksgiving a holiday. Not bad.
More importantly, we need to shake things up in Student Government. If the people in charge are working harder to stay in charge than to respond to students’ needs and wants, they need to be kicked out. Fortunately, my dorm went for the non-Greek party last year, and our representative is now trying to hang on to his seat, one of the few that Orange and Blue has. Incidentally, I’m acquaintances with his Gator Party opponent, so it would be weird if I saw Mr. Gator Party and was like, “Hey, I’m not voting for you.” But if he tries to convince me to vote for him, I’ll have to tell him how I feel.
Oh yes, even the links are getting political. From Chicken Girl: Sarah Palin’s Greatest Hits.
Another one: Celebrities tell you to vote.
Okay, this isn’t political, but it’s cool. Have you ever wondered what a search query would have been like in the past? Like, what if you could search for “osama bin laden terrorist threat” before 9/11? For Google’s 10th birthday, they’ve brought back their oldest surviving search index, from January 2001, for a limited time only. You can search the web as it was in 2001. Each search result includes a link to the Internet Archive’s earliest archived version of that page for 2001, in the likely event that the page has been moved, deleted, or changed.
