Let me just say ...

This Fall election will be remembered for years to come. Of course I have known that for a while, but read this summary of the 2000 Election from sloppygators. It's a long article, but a great one. Oh, and don't forget to vote as to whether John is more feminine or douche-like, LOL.

Think about the story-lines for this election ...

Virgil accurately reports on NAGAS' blog that Lydia Washington will resign because of grades. He is harassed at first, but ultimately proven correct.

SBP John Boyles says he will announce a temporary VP ASAP and holds a Veep forum, to which all students are invited to apply. Senate President Mike Patrone (who has only been in office for 8 Senate meetings because SWAMP Senate President Lauren Mierley resigns just two weeks after taking the job) decides to CANCEL the last senate meeting of the summer, forcing John to wait until the beginning of the Fall to name a VP (although we all know Patrone isn't smart enough to take this action on his own, we wonder if it was Weiss or Boyles who pushed harder for the delay). Boyles then announced a VP-- 6 weeks after Lydia's resignation-- who was a personal friend and supporter during the Access campaign in '04. So much for a Veep forum.

A coalition of independents known as "Florida Blue Lightning" begins writing letters to the editor and make their presence known by gathering signatures for a referendum over summer B. Florida Blue Lightning becomes the Action Party (history discussed in the above-linked Sloppygators article) and announces that they will run Chris Chase, former Chief of Staff to Gator VP Joyce Medinah, who fired Chase because he was better at the job than she was.

A former, disgruntled Cabinet Director and long-time SG pundit Bruce Haupt decides to form the "Slumber Party" to mock SG and the election. Slumber Party becomes the "Pants Party" per a facebook suggestion from former Impact Party Treasurial Candidate's Campaign Manager Adam Reith. Pants has gotten positive press coverage just as often as Action since their inception.

Former Access and Impact Party leaders Adelle Fontanet and Kevin Bacon decide to run the "Feminist Party", but miss a deadline to register a party name, and run Kappa Kappa Gamma President Nina Dejong as an Independent.

Swamp candidate Arturo Armande is actually the LAST VP candidate to be officially named and receive the requisite 300 signatures. This blogger wonders how the members of the Black Caucas feel that Lydia is being replaced with Arturo and not Vanessa Goodwin (rumor says she doesn't want it, but who wouldn't want VP, really?). Why else does Swamp wait until Tuesday afternoon to name the candidate? And what do they get in return? 9 candidates? Sam Green as Senate Pro Tem? My sources say they didn't even get that, but instead Sam will be promoted to Budget Chair as Tanaz moves up to Pro Tem. Then after Weiss runs for President, Tanaz will get the shaft as Senate President (see Mike Patrone) for most likely Kevin Reilly.

Wow... Here we are just 18 days away from the end of the election, and we have 4 VP candidates, Swamp running 46 senate candidates, Action running 42, and Pants running 9.

It is obvious to all that with 4 parties there will be a run-off. Christian Duque believes that it is possible for either Pants or Nina to make it to a run-off against either Swamp or Action. He breaks it down as either Pants or Action versus Swamp or Nina. While I respect his idealism, I am sure we all can agree that it will be Swamp and Action come October 3rd. The question is, what will Bruce and Nina do?

I find it ironic that Christian Duque tells Nina and Bruce to not support Action's senate candidates or Action in a run-off, since he is so anti-Progress for not supporting the Independents in Impact in Spring 04. Maybe I mis-understood the Radikal, because this seems unlike him.

While I think the VP election results will be close, Swamp will have 5X the supporters and campaigners that Action does, and should easily pick up 30 senate seats. If Action can break double digits, they would be very fortunate. This campaign does seem to be much more organized than Impact did last fall, but there is only so much that one can do for the senate race, and Pants running candidates in D, RYMAC, and Murphree does not help.

In Action's favor, they will be first on the ballot in most races (except VP and Hume). They also have the Keg effect, in that a large portion of Greek voters who don't care either way will likely vote for Pants. It is interesting to note that Bruce, Nina, and Arturo all have some Greek letters in front of them. What influence can Nina have with PC? Bruce with IFC? Arturo with MGC?

While it's still early to say exactly what will happen, it will certainly be interesting and will have major effects on the Spring race (except for Arturo ... how coincidental). Should Chris win, or even pull a large portion of the vote ...

Ok, now I must go to bed, because the sooner I do, the sooner it is GAMEDAY. Have a fun and a SAFE one,

NAGAS

Action Party Analysis

Forgive me, but this originated as a part of a comment post last night. I spent too much time working on it, went to bed, and decided to publish the response- which turned into the Action analysis- as a post.



Anon 11:21

I'm not an Action Party blogger. I'm not a Pants Party blogger. And I'm not a Nina Dejong blogger. I certainly am no Swamp Party blogger.

I did the Action party analysis last night and well, it's not exciting-- at all. It's a 70% white ticket, with 5-6 IFC/PC Greeks. That puts their Greek ratio at between 12.2 and 14.3 %, which sounds to me pretty much exactly like the UF ratio. However, Action doesn't appear to be diverse in other aspects. I did notice a lot more involvement in both College Republicans and College Democrats (see Tommy Jardon, Ben Grove, Joshua Simmons, Matt Dean, Sean Cubillos, Elizabeth Stinson/Stephanie Ruby, Rosemarie Clouston, Danielle Dennis, Robert Lucas) and that's just from facebook profiles.

It appears that there are no athletes this time, and not much Greek influence as in the past. One interesting note is Action's Broward candidate. He's a TEP. So I got to thinking ... Phi Sig I understand ... Chi Phi surprised me slightly b/c of Pants, but Swamp has a Chi Phi too ... PiKapp? I guess ... Teak yeah yeah ... but TEP?

What's going on with TEP? Is this some Nina Dejong-esque I don't need the Greek system kinda thing from this kid? Or is TEP not supporting Swamp since there are no TEP's on the Swamp slate? Very interesting. I'd have to imagine that this young man if flying solo on this one without the support of his house-- good luck sir, you will need it!

Action has two Area Gov't Presidents, as does Swamp. Swamp also has two IRHA Exec Board members. I seem to remember after Jennifer Puckett left, both Mike Reynolds and EJ Walicki saying they didn't want IRHA being political again ... good job boys.

The only other real thing of note is that it seems both parties filled a lot of their slates with their exec members. For Swamp-- Josh Weiss, Kevin Reilly, Keith Hardwick. For Action- Tommy Jardon, Ryan Nelson, Kim Cruts, Rosemarie Clouston, David Meyrowitz, Caitlin Clause, Josh Simmons-- all self-reported from facebook. Maybe that was their plan all along, but it makes you wonder if some of these aren't just filling holes? The Alligator reported that Action qualified 58 candidates, and chose 42 to run for office. While I don't remember the exact number, and my brain hurts from all this research/stalking already tonight, I feel as if though Impact qualified about the same last Fall as Action did now. So perhaps that it natural for a fall campaign. Swamp on the other hand had some ridiculous number-- think 300-- but the Alligator hasn't updated their archives this Fall, so I can't be too sure. I wish I had the time to do a full analysis of everyone who slated with Swamp to determine a Greek percentage, but I must study.

For anyone interested though (*cough Virgil *cough), you can obtain the complete list of candidates and which party they qualified with by putting in a Public Information Request with Sandy Vernon in the SG Offices in Reitz 300.

Coming later today ... a Pants analysis

Until then,
(and specifically for you Anon 11:28)
Not Anti-Greek, Anti-System

It’s been a while … (in the voice of Chad Kroeger)

As you all know, slating is now over, and there are 4 Veep candidates running, as well as 42 senate races (5 seats automatically being won by Swamp). I figured I would do a little facebook stalking, which was markedly easier thanks to the new facebook. I can see when people joined the respective groups, added members of the party leadership as friends, and when they removed the phrase “Alpha Epsilon Phi” from their interests. Oh, thank you blessed facebook. So, I spent about 45 minutes doing this “research” and here are the interesting things of note:

• Swamp really didn’t prep their new senators like they used to. For instance, someone forgot to tell their district E candidate Curtis Garrison to take AGR Room 13 off his facebook profile since he just told the SOE that he lives in Williston full time. And here’s the proof, if you look closely at the 4th line of text.

• My best count has 22 of Swamp’s 46 senators being IFC/PC Greek

• My best count has 7 of Swamp’s remaining 24 senators being MGC/NPC

• They also have one Kappa Upsilon Chi

• 5 of the remaining 17 have their profiles restricted so people like me can’t stalk them

• In case you cared, 9 of Swamp’s 46 senators are black, but 6 of those 9 are in district D, the only really competitive district

• In fact, 11 of Swamp’s 13 District D are Black, Hispanic, or Asian, and the other 2 are IFC/PC. Apparently there are no non-Greek white students in all of 32608 (ahem, Richard Slaughter?)

• 3 of Swamp’s 46 either are in, or are a member of, I love Lambda Theta Alpha, the sorority of former Unite Treasurer candidate Lola Bovel (while non appear on the Action list)

• Of the non-minority, non IFC/PC Greeks among Swamp’s slate, 4 of the remaining 5 are some form of an officer within IRHA (Lindsey Johns VP, Keith Hardwick Business Manager, Ashley Suggs RYMAC President, Thomas Cockriel)

• The only non-minority, non-Greek, non-IRHA kid on the Swamp slate appears to be Joshua James Monroe, their Tolbert candidate.

• The only seat Swamp didn’t slate was Family Housing

I’ll break down the Action slate either later tonight, or tomorrow morning. Pants should follow shortly there-after. Please forgive me if the analysis seems crass, but it’s all information that was publicly available on facebook.


Until tomorrow,
Not Anti-Greek, Anti-System

Speaking of new threads ...

Have you ever wondered, why aren't people nicer to each other? In general, we as a society are not very nice to each other. More specifically .... we as UF SG insiders are not very nice to each other. Now, some people have really done things to give others reason to not be nice, but for the most part, people just do it anyway. I am pretty sure that all of these anonymous commenters who are so hateful towards each other really don't have good reason, and in many instances, don't even know each other in person. Look at the last thread and all the hatred there-in, it makes me sad.

The purpose of this blog, and most of these SG blogs (back in the day) was not to simply hate on each other, but was to create healthy discussion, and expose rumor and news of course. So I will ask nicely, please make sure that your comments are in same way productive to a conversation, and not simply "XXXX You suck". Because, if this continues, I will require that you post comments under a user name, and no longer allow anonymous comments. Then at least we'll be able to track the anons.

Moral of the story-- be nicer to each other =)

Ok folks, it's time for a new thread...Lets assume that the person JB appoints decides not to run, who do you think should run? Pick a fabulous blue team person, and a red team person too!

Fill in the blanks:
I think ____________ should run for V.P. this Fall because....

EDIT: God forbid we answer the question people... lets be nice...

Darts and Laurels

Bridget, if you are still reading this, I just wanted to congratulate you for the funniest edition of Darts and Laurels I have ever read (and I don't just mean the SG part). Now I know you don't control the opinion section directly, but I still feel like giving you the credit. If you haven't read them yet, do so now.

The only saddening part is how pessimistic we have come towards our own SG. While I agree 100% completely with the comments, I hate giving the incoming freshmen a negative outlook before they have gotten the chance to be screwed over themselves.

Isn't is sad when we have to assume that everything is only for appearance sake, and not sincere? Isn't it sad that things usually are fake, and those in power are generally not interested in getting all students involved at all?

Makes you wonder ...

I for one am glad that John is trying to maintain a transparent government. But I, as many of you reading, knows it's not that clear-cut. I am pleasantly surprised that he received 15 responses in 2 hours though, until I find out that all 15 were from AEPi (hypothetically speaking of course-- just look at the qualifying forms from John's campaign in the Spring).

John, I salute you for making an attempt, for it is more than your predecessors have done.

On a separate note, do you suppose than John might not have been a candidate for SBP if Lindsay Cosimi didn't let her grades slip? I mean, for a long while there it looked as though LC would be the candidate, and then she suddenly withdrew her name from contention. It doesn't do much to play the "whatif" game now, but, it's fun, so let's play.

What if ... Jared Hernandez won the support of Swamp before it was Swamp. Would there have been a race?

What if ... Kyle Jones didn't choose Jamal Sowell as his SBT? Would the likes of Becca Guerra, Lola Bovell, Dennis Ngin, MacKenzie Moritz, and even John Boyles gotten into SG when Jamal started Access?

What if ... no AEPi wanted to be Accent chair? What would we do?!?

What if ... a certain Alpha Chi house leader never started a blog about SG in the first place (be nice now)?

Ok, enough for now. I was simply feeling nostalgic ... ahhh.

May your final few weeks of summer be fun,

NAGAS

Fool me once shame on me, Fool me twice ...

Soooooo I know what Lydia said in Senate on Tuesday, but if John does take "a few weeks" as he said, what is to stop her from fixing the situation just as Cosimi did? I'm not too familiar with the facts, but I don't see what keeps Lydia from at least running in the Fall election (if she can get her summer GPA up to maintain a 2.0 in the previous semester and satisfy that rule).

While on the topic, why not Lauren Mierley? Her internship should probably be over in the next couple of weeks, and could easily fly down for one or two senate meetings until then. Sure, she did resign, but at least she kept her grades/qualifications up. And sure she doesn't know Cabinet, but who knows SG better? Who has a stronger passion?

There are a few old school candidates who jump to my mind, but John will likely want to appoint someone close to him with potential SBP hopes and current leadership experience. Might he want to reward one of his key supporters? Possibly someone close to Lydia? A cabinet chair possibly? Vanessa Goodwin reminds me most of Lydia in that regard, and would be a good choice to groom for a Fall election. However, going back to rewarding his key supporters and friends, what about EJ Walicki? He's already been IRHA President (and I know he reads my blog), so he has the experience and might not mind passing the torch to his VP (who was his age when he became President). I can't say I could name a better choice than EJ.

Thoughts? Comments?

NAGAS

Vice President Lydia Washington Resigns...

It's official. Her Spring semester GPA was too low, and an appeal to DSO was rejected.

Discuss, but keep it civil. The poor girl has been through a lot. If comments get out of hand, the thread will be promptly closed; no warnings will be given. Thank you.