elections
So it's Student Government election time at UF, at least for senators, which means of course it's all lies, corruption, voting errors and then of course being bombarded by party representives everywhere you go on campus. After 2.5 years at UF, I've managed to learn how to dodge them, through a variety of tactics.
1) There's the "wearing a sticker for one of the parties" trick, which has one party smiling at you as you walk by, while the other avoids you like the plague. 2) Then there's the "wearing a t-shirt from the rebel party of two years ago", aka, wearing my Keg Party shirt, which still seems to repel the majority of the party representives... probably because they're fraternity/sorority pledges/freshmen who get confused and think there's a third party they don't know about. Either way, it works. 3) Or there's finding an "I voted" sticker (or in today's case, actually voting, thus getting a sticker legitimately) which deems you worthless to the campaigners.
But no matter how well I dodge them, I'm bombarded with campus politics as soon as I open the Alligator. The Alligator is notorious for being liberal and supporting whatever party is least-Greek. And I can't blame them, because that's pretty much how I vote too. Gator Party = the Greek party. Impact Party = the mostly non-Greek party. But today two articles really just made me angry with how dirty UF poltiics has gotten.
1) I opened the page to find a picture of my "husband" Dustin testifying at the UF student honor court regarding an Impact member breaking campaign policy (and it was a bad picture at that). Of course the Alligator has framed him as the bad guy, because, as an RA, he reported the Impact member. But Dustin is also a member of TKE, and the Impact candidate's opponent is in TKE, so they're pointing the finger at Dustin saying that he was just trying to get his candidate in, basically. Hey man, I don't blame the Alligator for disliking Greeks and I agree that Joe Goldberg is an absolute sleezeball, but come on.
2) On the flipside, the sorority girl who said she was forced to vote because her sorority mandated that they place their "I Voted" stickers on a voting board? This is WHY people dislike the Greek community so much. Just because you're Greek does not give you the right to force your members to vote, especially when you're trying to force them to vote for a certain party. The Greek community only has roughly 6,000 people in it, whereas the UF campus is comprised of 50,000 people. But every semester we end up having a student government run entirely by Greeks because they can mobilize voters, and the rest of the campus is apathetic. How can THAT many UF students be so apathetic about the HUGE amount of funds that SG gets to spend every year?
Man, it really grinds my gears (10 points if you get the reference).
1) There's the "wearing a sticker for one of the parties" trick, which has one party smiling at you as you walk by, while the other avoids you like the plague. 2) Then there's the "wearing a t-shirt from the rebel party of two years ago", aka, wearing my Keg Party shirt, which still seems to repel the majority of the party representives... probably because they're fraternity/sorority pledges/freshmen who get confused and think there's a third party they don't know about. Either way, it works. 3) Or there's finding an "I voted" sticker (or in today's case, actually voting, thus getting a sticker legitimately) which deems you worthless to the campaigners.
But no matter how well I dodge them, I'm bombarded with campus politics as soon as I open the Alligator. The Alligator is notorious for being liberal and supporting whatever party is least-Greek. And I can't blame them, because that's pretty much how I vote too. Gator Party = the Greek party. Impact Party = the mostly non-Greek party. But today two articles really just made me angry with how dirty UF poltiics has gotten.
1) I opened the page to find a picture of my "husband" Dustin testifying at the UF student honor court regarding an Impact member breaking campaign policy (and it was a bad picture at that). Of course the Alligator has framed him as the bad guy, because, as an RA, he reported the Impact member. But Dustin is also a member of TKE, and the Impact candidate's opponent is in TKE, so they're pointing the finger at Dustin saying that he was just trying to get his candidate in, basically. Hey man, I don't blame the Alligator for disliking Greeks and I agree that Joe Goldberg is an absolute sleezeball, but come on.
2) On the flipside, the sorority girl who said she was forced to vote because her sorority mandated that they place their "I Voted" stickers on a voting board? This is WHY people dislike the Greek community so much. Just because you're Greek does not give you the right to force your members to vote, especially when you're trying to force them to vote for a certain party. The Greek community only has roughly 6,000 people in it, whereas the UF campus is comprised of 50,000 people. But every semester we end up having a student government run entirely by Greeks because they can mobilize voters, and the rest of the campus is apathetic. How can THAT many UF students be so apathetic about the HUGE amount of funds that SG gets to spend every year?
Man, it really grinds my gears (10 points if you get the reference).