University of North Florida Student Senate
Senate Meeting Agenda – July 22nd 2013 – 6:30 PM – Senate Chambers
I.
Call to Order
Meeting is called to order at 6:35 pm.
II.
Pledge of Allegiance – Sen. Collin Waychoff
III.
Invocation - Vice President William Namen
IV.
Roll Call – Senate President Pro-Tempore Kaitlin Ramirez – sgaspt@unf.edu
Quorum is established at 15 voting members.
V.
Approval of Minutes
Motion from Sen. Turner to table minutes from last senate meeting. Second. No objections. Moved.
VI.
Approval of Agenda
Motion from Sen. Reich to add Kyle Henning under senate appointments. Second. No objections. Moved.
Motion from Sen. Reich to add JR-13SB-2703 under second read. Second. No objections. No discussion.
Electronic vote.
Motion from Sen. Reich for unanimous consent. Second. No objections. Moved.
Motion from Sen. Reich to add SR-13SB-2704 to second read. Second. No objections. No discussion.
Electronic vote.
Motion from Reich for unanimous consent. Second. No objections. Moved.
Motion from Sen. Estrada to approve agenda as amended. Second. No objections. Moved.
VII.
Recognition of Students Seeking Appointment
None.
VIII.
Student Remarks
None.
IX.
Guest Speakers
a. Spinnaker - Jacob Harn, Spinnaker Editor in Chief; and Joey Taravella, Spinnaker Art Director
Hello everyone. My name is Jacob Harn, I’m the editor in chief of the Spinnaker print and this is Joey
Taravella.
Joey Taravella, Spinnaker Art Director – I’m the art director of the Spinnaker print as well.
Unable to discern between Mr. Harn or Mr. Taravella – And over the summer we have been researching the
possibly of transitioning into a monthly magazine and transitioning our news week operation into a daily
operation, focusing all of our content online and as soon as it goes it, as that seems to be the trend in media
today. The consumer wants things immediately and they go online to seek it out. And with adding a
magazine, that would give us a chance to flush out stories more, get more time to work on them and
incorporate more of a narrative development into them, basically telling a more entertaining story. And so we
started doing a poll I think May 16 and it’s still open but our last respondent filled it out July 1, but it’s been
open for over a month. One of the main questions that’s on there is this one right here: how would you feel if
the spinnaker became a print magazine, and the margin of fair on this was plus or minus 2.3 because we had a
total number of student respondents that was 453; with this question the results were actually really close, it
was pretty split. Obviously we rated it from 1 to 5 from disagree to strongly agree and the field was nearly
split; and in the middle it seemed to be; a lot of people seemed either indifferent or maybe there was an
exchange of cost and benefits to one side or the other, still as keeping a weekly newspaper versus a monthly
magazine; we’re not exactly sure where in the middle ground people were thinking. The second question,
interestingly was: do you feel the spinnaker could better serve its readers if it changed to a monthly magazine
instead of its current weekly format?, and both, between students and alumni the majority strongly agreed, so
there’s a little bit of conflict there with people saying that it was evenly matched saying they didn’t want it but
they did want it, but the majority of people thought it would better serve the readers. With that, we decided to
research a little bit deeper and with current media trends we’ve been thinking that it’s a very good idea to do
so, transition to a monthly magazine. One of the misconceptions with a lot of the respondents who said they
didn’t disagree, or who said they didn’t wnt the magazine, was that it would cost the students more money, it
was would rais A&S fees and they thought it would be wasted money. There was a lot of respondents who
answered just that way. It won’t be raising tuition, of course, we won’t be asking for any more money to
operate. We still have to negotiate a bid with a printer but from the research that we’ve conducted it won’t be
costing us any more. Obviously we had to talk to our advertisers and they’re very eager for the shift to the
magazine and that’s one of the ways we’re going to be containing our cost to what we previously were
spending because they’re willing to spend just as much in the course of the year as they were before. Some of
the problems we’ve been having with the adverttisers for example is being on newsprint, their not getting the
high-wuality add essentially when you’re printing on a newsprint; when you hold it up to the light it bleeds
through. Advertisers are generally more xcited to spend the same money, if not potentially more, on an ad in
a glossy magazine than they are in a newsprint newspaper. Also, we’re able to offer a better opportunity for
the writers; they’re content will be posted online daily instead of this sort of weekly trend that the spinnaker
has now. Also it’d be a better opportunity for all the graphic design and visual media department students,
they’ll be more excited and willing to come in; photographers will be more willing to shoot for glossy print
magazines; graphics look better on there, it’s more legible, it’s easier to read, there’s exponential benefits for
going to something of more quality and a better looking feel than the newsprint that we have right now. And
what we have passed out is about the same size that we were thinking about doing and similar paper type so
this is just an example of what it might look like. Based on what ads look like in this glossy print and as you
can see if you hold up the page, you’re not going to be able to see through it to the other side, things like that.
If some of you have been around for quite a few years, you’ll recognize this; we have made major changes in
the past, we used to bea broad sheet newspaper and then we, to make a more magazine feel, in the summer
of 2009, we switched to the tabloid newspapers to get the more magazine type feel. This really is just a
continuation of the process to make a higher quality product. This essentially started the trend of getting that
magazine feel. You guys are essentially used to seeing a magazine-like cover on the spinnaker, that’s the way
it’s been since the switch. It’s also worth noting that this year when we made the switch to the tabloid, they
won ACP Pacemaker Award which is a national recognition. Keeping up with current trends is always a good
thing. This is some more examples of Florida Atlantic University, and University of Georgia, and Distraction,
and these schools have a much different format for publication than we were planning to be doing. The first
two are weeklies and the university of Miami is quarterly, they publish 4 issues per year. So we’re going to the
punch right there for you, because not too many schools have the monthly magazine and gone full online for
daily news. It would essentially be the middle ground, between going quarterly and weekly magazine. This
would be the tentative schedule for the coming year. We’d have a total of – this is the wrong one, we would
not have a July and August, otherwise it’s all about 8 issues, starting in September, October, published issues
in November, December, and so on.
Chief Justice Goetz – What does your online traffic look like right now?
Spinnaker Representative – It’s actually been getting quite a bit better. That’s actually one of the advantages
with the model that we have, the convergence model. A lot of schools, their newspaper and their online
organization and the TV are all separate, they don’t have any relations with each other, and we are all involved
with each other so we have the benefit to cross promote. And we’ve seen the effects of that recently, I think
at the end of Fall Semester in April, our online traffic of unique viewers matched that of our online pick-up
rate for the paper.
Chief Justice Goetz – Would the distribution of the magazine be the same as used for the paper?
Spinnaker Representative – It will go down a little bit. Right now in a month we produce 16,000 papers, and
from others, we pulled a lot of other universities to see how much their printing costs were, for the various
numbers of magazines they produce and for the same price that we’re doing 16,000 papers a month we could
do 12,000 magazines. But, once we get the bid that might even go up; we might be able to produce more. The
interesting thing worth noting there, however, is the past readership, for every newspaper you assume you get
3 readers out of that, someone leaves it here in the chamber, there in class; the benefits of the magazine is it’s
a sturdier print product so you get a large readership than you do in these newspapers which essentially blow
away in the wind with no staples and bindings, so on and so forth. And the average readership for papers is
about 3.2 and there haven’t been a lot of studies but I found one study on college magazines and the average
readership was 4.2.
Unknown Speaker, Spinnaker Representative – To continue address that question: the reason that I’m up
here is because, as a result of going through a monthly publication rather than weekly, I know a main
concern, at least with us, is how are we going to retain the Spinnaker name on campus if people don’t
recognize what’s been phrased. I’m not the station manager of the Spinnaker Television, formerly known as
Osprey Television, and Osprey Radio is now also known as Spinnaker Radio; this creates a unified brand
under the Spinnaker name, which gives people print, digital, television, radio, it’s also a business prduct all
udner one name. which makes that name retentive on campus to hopefully push more people to that
platform, push more people to the television platform, push more people to that radio platform, which will
continue to drive ad revenue and continue to see what we do offer them. So the Osprey Television did
change to Spinnaker Radio, Spinnaker Television, to keep that name on campus and in students’ mouths, all
the time instead of just switching to the monthly issue.
Chief Justice Goetz – Would there be a way to potentially subscribe to this magazine?
Yes that is more of the plan to make a subscription plan. We haven’t looked into it to much but it wouldn’t
be too hard for alumni to subscribe. Absolutely.
Sen. Estrada – Would there be any added costs to the spinnaker newspaper/magazine type itself?
Spinnaker Representative – The cost of producing one magazine to one paper is obviously more, but that’s
why we won’t be able to produce quite as much at first, but, like I said, we should be able to produce and the
bidding contract, we haven’t gotten that in yet, but we should be able to produce 12,000 at first. Like I said,
we’re not going to be spending more money, we’re not going to be asking for more money, and the students
won’t have to pay any more money to get this product.
President Fassi – Do you think you’re advertisement revenue will increase with the transition?
Spinnaker Representative - I think it will. Like we said, our current advertisers are really eager for it and
generally it’s a better. We’re obviously hopeful that will be the outcome from what we’ve gotten from
advertisers; The Loft and the District and some of the bigger advertisers, they seem eager to jump on board
for the magazine and yes essentially you do charge more for the magazine rate than you would for the
newspaper. Short answer, yes we’re very hopeful.
X.
Judicial Branch Report
a. Chief Justice – Alex Goetz (sgajc@unf.edu) (5-minutes)
Nothing new really to report on for the Judicial branch, however we do have a judicial appointment coming
up tonight, so please appoint him. Thank you.
XIV.
Executive Agency Reports: (3-minutes each)
a. Osprey Productions – John Chwalisz, Director - opdir@unf.edu
Good evening guys, hope you’re all doing well and that your summer B is going great. I know I’m happy
because my class just ended after 10 weeks. We had a couple events this past week, actually we had one event
last night. We had Warm Bodies, and we have one more movie; we are showing Elf on July 24 for a Christmas
in July. I encourage you all to come out, it’s going to be a great movie. If you know any freshman or have a
class with them bring them with you. We also have trivia on this Tuesday at noon; unfortunately it’s not going
to be run by our regular graphics designer, Stormy Goodman, who we also like to call Grumpy Cat. But it will
be run by me and hopefully Tony Stevens, so you should come on out to the boathouse, grab some lunch, it’s
going to be a really great time. Also, since yesterday, we announced our Ozzie’s Weekend featuring Corey
Smith. It’s the first time concert sponsored by Student Government and also our Athletics Program. It’s
August 31, the first Saturday of school in the Coxwell Ampitheater; it’s going to be a great show, it’s going to
be free of course that’s the best part. If you have any friends who aren’t students, they’re only $15 which is not
too bad. That’s it.
b. Club Alliance – Brett Weisman, Director sgacluba@unf.edu
We don’t have all that much to update. Pre-registration is over at this point. We have 150 clubs pre-registered;
way more than we thought we would. We had out last general meeting of the summer last Friday. We had 145
of the 150 clubs we had signed up; we were ecstatic about that. Other than that, we are planning dor Week of
Welcome come August 25. Again, if anyone wants to come out and help we would greatly appreciate it. Other
than that, I’d like to thank OP first of all for helping us at General Meeting. We were packed that entire day;
we had our entire staff to help us.
XI.
Executive Branch Reports
a. Attorney General – Paige Lehman, sgaag@unf.edu (3-minutes)
I am currently going through the constitution looking to make sure there aren’t any contradictions or
discrepancies and if there are I am making new, and I will forward a recommendation to the CSC Chair. I am
also working with the CSC Chair and the Chief Justice to look at researching code of ethics and enforcement
codes of the university, so we can see if we can better our current code.
b. Treasurer – Joe Turner, sgasbt@unf.edu (3-minutes)
None.
c. Vice President – William Namen, sgavpres@unf.edu (3 minutes)
Good evening guys. I’ll try to make this as fast as possible, it’s kind of a wrap up or update of what Student
Government executive branch, really all of student government has been working on all summer. For events,
which you should be looking forward to coming up, first off, Your Voice Your Choice the SG Convention,
mark that down it is Thursday August 29. The times are from 10-4. Why is this important for you to mark
this down? Because with the help of Chris Brady and Alex Goetz, your Chief Justice it is going to be require
that everybody be there. Why is everybody going to be there? The reason is, this is probably going to be one
of the bigger events that’s going to be putting on in terms of marketing ourselves to the student body. Never
before has student government really reached out to the students and given students the chance to vote on
what they want to do. Kind of the layout of what it’s going to be is the Jaguars ticketing will be out there and
we’ll be working together with them to vote on our own initiatives. Something that you’ll see in our own
press release, I know Ryan Traher has been working on, is unfortunately the students were not really given
the chance to vote on who they wanted as their president and vice president this year so we want to give the
students the chance to vote on the initiatives and the things that we’ll work on. So I’m going to kind of go
over those intiatives later on in my report, as I continue. The second event, Ozzie’s Weekend with Corey
Smith, there’s this huge thing a little bit different than what we’ve got going on in the past. Most of you guys
who have been hrer for a while, we usually have OTC, Osprey Tailgate Classis. However seeing as that is a
tailgate we thought it’d probably be better to tailgate right before some type of sporting event, like all other
tailgates and unfortuntaley there is no tailgates or sporting events in the first week of school. So what we’ve
done is we’ve moved OTC to the Spring semester right before the first JU basketball game, so it will kind of
go hand-in-hand with that, and starting a whole new event with Ozzie’s weekend. So I just want to commend
Osprey Productions on doing a great job of setting this up on such short notice. The next thing is the talon
painting party. I’m not going to touch on this very heavily, just because I’ll be presenting a bill later on
tonight that we’ll talk more about it; I just want to thank Club Alliance Director, Brett Weisman, and Nick
Tillem, our ADSLOP who worked very well on that as well. Lastly, the Chick-fil-A opening, it will be opening
the week before school opens so I believe what they told me was August 19, that’s a Monday, and it will be
open all that week. Look forward to that; that was a big project Student Government worked on last year.
As for our own projects, few things: Ozzie statue, this is something that your lovely senate president has
really championed for himself and is really kind of pushing forward with. One thing this university lacks a lot
is traditions, so we want to change that and one idea that Chris came up with is placing a statue of Ozzie
doing some type of high-five or some type of salute or something in the plaza and before every game to start
some weird tradition like all universities kind of do, running up and giving Ozzie a high-five or rubbing his
belly, I don’t know, whatever you want to do. It’d be good luck before a game, or you’d do it right before you
take a test; something on that line. So that’s something to look forward to, so most likely there’d be some
type of request coming up sometime soon.
The next thing is the Veteran’s Memorial. The veteran’s memorial is another project that Carlo Fassi and I
have been working on lately. We live in Jacksonville and Jacksonville is huge in military, and something our
university fails to commemorate is the veteran’s, so what we would like to do is create a veteran’s memorial
somewhere down in the plaza in between the Coxwell Amphitheater and the food court outside balcony.
There’s a big grass patchy area right there between us and the education building; so we’re going to kind of
level that out, put a plaza maybe some plaque, maybe a few flags, we haven’t really come up with the project
yet it’s still kind of in the beginning phase; the project will take some time. This year we’ll probably be
working on some fund raising which is our goal; we’d like to get a lot of fund raising outside the university so
it doesn’t cost very much for the students at all. So that is a huge project we’ve been working on, and the
MVRC is very excite about.
The last project that we’re working on is the east room, which is basically completed at this point. IN the past
the legislative branch, before they were inside the rotunda, they were behind the door next to the JES
conference room there’s a little hallway that you go down there, that’s where Katie Delaney’s office is
currently and right next to her used to be a fake office; about 6-8 months ago we cut that in half and we put
the Director and SG Coordinator in there, but things have change and we moved them more into a centrally
located area, leaving those offices open. And we don’t want to waste the resources that are provided with us.
So what we’ve decided to do is utilizing that space. The bigger office we’ve turned into a conference room
kind of set up, it’s a lot smaller than the JES set up so it’s more for smaller meetings, it has 2 boards, a decent
sized table with about 6 chairs. And the front room, we’re working on turning it into a workspace for
senators and justices. Quite often you guys want to come up here and work on a project or bill or JR or
resolution or you just want to work on the parking appeals in terms of the justices but they don’t really have
meeting space and sometimes you crowd out in that legislative cabinet. With Katie Delaney being right there,
having her monitor that area, we’re giving her access and a few other branch heads the access to it and
allowing the senators to come in to set up, with 2 L-shaped desks, a couple computers in there, giving you
guys work space. So any time you guys feel free that you need some work space, that area will be open as well
as the little conference room right next to it. So that’s in terms of our projects.
The next section is our programs and initiatives, things that student government will be trying to focus on in
the next year as well as trying to place this on our ballot for the SG convention. DocuTrack is a really kind of
web-based program that streams online our processing in terms of travel and special requests Jaguar ticket
tailgaters which is pretty much in full in effect will be here, we got the same deal with an additional 500
tickets, not 500 more, a total of 500 tickets so about 150 more than last year, when we had about 350ish; it’s
definitely a good increase. Free printing, we’ve worked out the logistics of that, I believe the special request
passed last senate, so that’s in full effect for the next year. Airport shuttles, another thing; one thin gour
university doesn’t have is a lot of outside transportation so if an initiative we’re trying to focus on is placing
airport shuttles during holidays, so come Thanksgiving break those students living on campus that don’t really
have anywhere to go, we’re thinking about placing shuttles that will run 2 different times, at the beginning of
Thanksgiving break and at the end of Thanksgiving break and allowing those students living on campus to go
back to their families by giving them the free transportation to the airport. Hydration stations, you’ve seen
them in the wellness complex is going to be a big push in this university of putting them up everywhere else
in the other buildings; universal scantrons, no more red, blue, green, black, brown, we’re trying to finish it
down to just red or blue or whatever color we decide on. Parking monitors and bike sharing, this is a dual
thing we’re trying to focus on; these are transportation initiatives. We can’t do both because they’re very
pricey initiatives, but we want to work through the ballot of the Your Voice Your Choice convention, to be
able to decide what the students want. Essentially the parking monitors would be placed in both parking
garages that will really just tell you how full they are, how full each level is, should you go in there, should you
not go in there, maybe adding some type of app-base thing to it. Before you even leave your place you know
which garages are full. Then bike sharing, the ide to that is placing bike station throughout the campus, maybe
on in lot 18 and lot 53, one at the fountains, off locations on the campus by placing in the core of campus;
this would be a free program for any students to really use. They can go to the bikes, swipe their osprey1card,
go anywhere they want to through campus, lock it up, it’ll have a GPS tracking system so you know where
each bike is at all times, where you need to find one that is available of course. You look on there, see this
person just dropped that bike over there, you get on that, you can go; it’s a bike sharing program that a lot of
other university dot his. These are kind of our transportation that we’re getting into. Also bike repair stations,
very simple, little machines that kind of stick up in little areas of campus that’ll be able to provide the air
filling, the little tools and stuff you need to fix your bike.
Student legal service; this is something the University of Florida does to provide 4 attorneys to the students
that would basically help university students with any legal problems except for ones that could be with the
university of course. They would work with things such as, fixing a problem with you and your landlord or
apartment or something like that. It’s a free service for students to be provided with attorneys. Scantrons
vending machine; sorry this is a lot, I’m almost done, scantrons vending machine: our offices close at 6
o’clock. However there are classes that go beyond that time and often there are tests that they have to take
and however we’re close and we can’t provide those free scantrons all the time, for the students that take
those classes and cant come earlier. So what we’d like to do is place scantrons in a big vending machine, and
maybe some other school supplies, it would all be free and what you would do is come up, swipe your
osprey1card, you’d be limited to 1 swipe per week and provide them with after-hour access to scantrons. Club
Sports Auxiliary; club sports are very active on this campus and because they are so active on campus they
also do things off campus a lot. However, doing things off campus costs a lot of money and because they’re
college students they don’t have a lot of money. What has already been implemented, we’re working on the
logistics for the rest of the year, is providing a pot of about $10-15,000 to club sports so they can request
based off a tier system, that would provide them the opportunity to travel, to buy equipment, whatever they
need. Volunteer center: I touched about this briefly, I know Carlo wants to probably talk about this a little bit
more later one, but what we’ve basically decided to do is, following some studies that we’ve gotten from
other universities, which happens to be a lot of universities that do this, which is they provide volunteer
outlets through their career services. With conjunction with Dr. Gonzalez and Career Services, we’re going to
be funding a student coordinator position, full time, out of the Career Services office. They would be,
basically, our new outlet for volunteering. That will be our new volunteer center; it will be fully run by them,
fully covered by them, and the reason why we’re doing this Is because there’s so much turnover here in
student government that you can’t always contribute very consistent trafficking and being effective. So by
putting them in a more professional atmosphere, even though the student has been turned over, they have
that outlook, that vision, from more professional staff that will be there every single year. That’s kind of our
view on volunteering.
And a couple other things: class registration enhancement and orientation enhancement. I’m not going to
really touch on that; if you guys would like to ask me question later on, please do. Basically we’re just trying to
enhance that to make those things more effective and more efficient. So all those things that I just mentioned
will be on the ballot at the Your Voice Your Choice Convention, Thursday the 29th; students will be voting
and we all will kind of be monitoring the event and providing services to the students that day. That’s really it
for me, I know that was a lot and I promise you, you won’t be seeing more of me tonight.
d. President – Carlo Fassi, sgapres@unf.edu (5-minutes)
Thank you, Mr. President. I won’t be as lengthy as our Vice President but I would like to mention the
initiative that Billy brought up are all going to be on the ballot like he mentioned. The initiatives that are the
ballot are essentially giving the students the opportunity to choose between platforms that they would
originally have had the opportunity to do at the election. What happened this last spring happened, and we’re
giving the students the opportunity to prioritize what is on our agenda internally. So when it comes to
campus life or student life matters, one of the pillars are a demonstration, we know what the projects are that
the students would like to work on first and foremost as soon as the fall semester starts. Going on my report
I would like to thank the Spinnaker for coming, the Spinnaker team really for showing up tonight to present
to you guys. You have a resolution in front of you that your senate president was gracious enough to hear
tonight. Basically it says how we invest in the spinnaker on a yearly basis, but in the last few years we’ve
averaged around $60,000 to the spinnaker on its own, whether it be via subscriptions or salaries for positions,
and in the lst couple years that’s changed. Currently we only pay for the papers themselves that are on
campus. And, again, like I refer to myself as an example when it comes to the university experience, it’s
important that students be given the opportunity to publish newsworthy articles and have that journalism
experience before entering the real world and I think what the leadership has decided to do here is noble. I
generally do believe it will increase their readership and not only their readership but most importantly the
individuals who interact with their online content on a daily basis. Recently I’ve seen a serious spike in the
amount of students sharing and actually engaging with the spinnakers website. They have reporters writing
about the crisis in Egypt right now, and they’re actually physically in Egypt right now reporting on what’s
going on. That’s not something that a lot of student newspapers can say. So I just want to commend them for
their hard work. Piggy-backing off of that, spinnaker radio, previously osprey radio, has the opportunity here
to file for a low-power FM. Essentially, I’m working with them to ensure that that’s happening, that the
trustees will most likely be signing off a the license holder, while the spinnaker radio staff will monitor what
content is being played.
Next, Ryan Traher, our Director of Communications, just handed out a press release. I would like all of you
to know what the SG funded Week of Welcome events are. Everything that’s on that press release breaks
down thoroughly what is happening that last week in august, and I would like to see all your faees at all those
events. Remember the SG Convention is a very unique quantity; a lot of you in this room planning on
running in this election under my party would have had something very similar; this is another opportunity to
get voted on these missions. Ozzie’s Weekend is just a concert Osprey Productions is going to host with
athletics cohosting to some extent and really showcasing our athletes.
Another resolution you guys have up in front of you tonight is for the veteran’s memorial. It’s a joint
resolution that your senate president is sponsoring endorsing the project, that’s basically it. What we’d like to
do is basically give them the foundation so the military and veteran’s resource center can set up a fund raiser
so that the city of Jacksonville can help erect a veteran’s memorial that Florida Gulf Coast and UWF just
recently done. We have the second highest ratio of veterans or active serving heroes per student; we’re
second to UWF. Again, we have 2 military bases in Jacksonville, and I think it’s extremely important that we
do something to recognize that constituency for all that they do for us.
And the last thing, and I have a lot that will be presenting in our special requests later this evening, our
funding requests. The last thing, we have the Florida Student Association planning concert here this weekend
at UNF. All the student body presidents from across the state will be here in the ballrooms across the union.
We will be planning what the FSA will be doing this next year, what we’ll be lobbying for, what the big issues
are, what we feel is most important, and how we’re going to get that done. A lot of that is going to be on the
presentation coming up later tonight and I just can’t extend my sincerest gratitude for Paige, Hailey and Ryan
Traher wherever he is. They’ve been helping unprecedently and they really have made my life a lot easier
dealing with the other presidents across the state. Our lobbyist has been meeting with the entire Jacksonville
delegation over the last 2 weeks, and attempting to meet with the delegation in Tallahassee to see which one
of those members would be willingly to come to our dinner reception either Friday or Saturday night.
XII.
Legislative Cabinet Reports
a. Constitution and Statutes Committee – Chairwoman Kaitlin Ramirez (sgacsc@unf.edu)
There are 2 pieces of legislation before you tonight from my committee, the SBs and the CR. Unfortunately
the track changes for the CR which didn’t get into the print copy but I will be helping Sen. Garrity to be
putting them onto the projectors. So changes will be visible for everyone to see them. Also, I would like to
make a friendly reminder that everyone please turn in their questionnaires at the end of senate. We would
greatly appreciate it. You may ask any questions that you have at the end of senate or anything regarding that
questionnaire. And as our attorney general said, I’ll be working with her and Chief Justice Goetz on Title X;
I’ll also be looking at the rest of the constitution and statutes, so if you have any questions or would like to
give any suggestions on a certain part or a certain section, I would love to hear it.
b. Budget and Allocations Committee – Chairman Fransua Estrada (sgabac@unf.edu)
Good evening guys. Tongith we have 2 requests that passed through my committee. Both requests passed
fully. We go from $108.49, something like that to $48,000, and both passed fully; that’ a special request fund.
We didn’t have any trouble with the requests passed. With that I have nothing else to discuss.
c. Elections and Appointments Committee – Chairwoman Emily Antworth (sgaesac@unf.edu)
How are you guys? We have one appointment coming up today so please give him your full attention, please
question him, get to know him, talk to him, please. And then I want to thank my committee for being
amazing last week. I’ve never seen the elections committee ask so many questions to our candidates that came
up. The advisors that were there said you did really well, I’m very proud and I just wanted to let the entire rest
of senate know that they can do it so you guys can too.
d. Student Advocacy Committee – Chairman Aaron Anderson (sgasac@unf.edu)
None.
e. University Affairs Committee – Chairman Justin Turner (sgauac@unf.edu)
The university-wide committee assignments are completed so you will be notified if you are sitting on a
committee and which committee that will be. Besides that I’ve been working alongside Alin, our student
advocate, looking at the withdrawal policies and the grade-forgiveness policies at other schools in order to
come up with some kind of a resolution against the new withdrawal policy that you’re limited to 3
withdrawals your freshman-sophomore years and 3 withdrawals your junior-senior years. That will definitely
be something coming up in UAC so look forward to that.
f.
Senate President Christopher Brady (sgasp@unf.edu)
Wanted to thank you all for being here, this is the last senate meeting of the summer. This is also the last time
we will be meeting on Monday night, probably for a very very very long time. We are moving to Fridays in
the fall. Senate will be starting Fridays at 1:00pm, the committee times will range from 12:00 to 3:00, so
depending on what your class schedule is you can sign up for whichever committee you would like. And we
do that the first senate meeting of the fall. As Vice President Namen talked about in his report, the Your
Choice Your Voice Convention will be mandatory event for all of you and you will be assessed absentee
points if you do not attend and you will be required to check in with either myself or Kaitlin Ramirez at that
event; we’ll both have a sheet and all this information will be emailed out to you that first week of school so
that you don’t forget. We are working on a new senate orientation; Sen. Ramirez has done a fantastic job
putting together a new senate orientation, we’ve talked a couple times about it, and she’s got a great outline
for it, I think you’ll really enjoy it I highly recommend you guys come if you want to be a senator in the fall, I
really recommend you all attend that because it’s going to be a totally different set up than before. You all got
questionnaires, I really hope you guys filled those out and give them back to Sen. Ramirez tonight. And with
that I am done with my report.
XIII.
Judicial Appointments
a. Lindy Whitfield
William Namen, - This is Lindy Whitfield, she is a senior. There are a few things that really stood out about
her when I was talking to her, and it was her confidence and desire to really change things here in student
government as well as her perspective, it’s something we haven’t seen in a while. I think it would be a nice
change. Also, a little about herself: she’s a criminal justice major, poly-sci minor and she’s involved in
presidential envoys and she’s also participated in a few other clubs and organizations on campus.
Lindy Whitfield –So essentially I was looking in to the judicial branch and my interest is driven from the
criminal justice system itself, so this is an excellent way to serve my university and also go towards my own
interests as well. So I think that really drives me in to do great things for this university. As far as the judicial
branch itself, from what I understand they handle complaints about student government in general and also
work towards, they’re basically the liaison between the student body and student government itself, and they
handle students’ and their complaints or their conduct/involvement in student government. I think it’s
essential to be in fair character in the judicial branch, and I feel like I can offer that especially with past
judicial experience I gained from different things on campus as well; which also makes me a well-rounded
candidate. I’ve been in everything from Greek life to presidential envoys. I’ve also traveled abroad and was
given that opportunity from the university so I feel that I can really provide a fair experience in the judicial
branch and for the university.
Sen. Turner – Besides your activity in Greek life and Presidential Envoys, what other leadership experience
do you feel as though you have that you could bring to student government?
Lindy Whitfield – Essentially, I’ve held leadership experience in past music groups for as far as actually
leading; I was the captain for my section; just getting to that position and holding that position. Also, one of
my first leadership experiences with UF was actually a WOW leader with Week of Welcome so I got to know
the incoming freshmen and work with student government in that way. In those 2 leadership experiences you
really get to learn how to work with different people who may or may not disagree with how you run things
or how you work. Working with that, I think, is a real experience because you get to become flexible and
really learn how to work with people and get things done.
Sen. Turner – You said you’re a senior, why wait all 4 years before finally coming up here?
Lindy Whitfield – I’ve actually spent my time doing a lot of different things on campus. I think it’s one of the
best ways to o things. I started my freshman year as a WOW leader; I moved into the music program, I was
involved in many different things: pep band, drum line. I moved into presidential envoys. I’ve really gained a
lot of enjoyment from getting to know different perspectives on campus. And now I have this opportunity in
my fourth year at the university to bring all of that to student government and really represent the student
body.
Sen. Moore – Do you currently have any other commitments?
Lindy Whitfield – Currently I’m till with presidential envoys, and I’m working to finish my last year in that.
Other than that, just to be here.
Motion from Sen. Turner to confirm Lindy Whitfield for associate justice. Second. No objections. No
discussion. Electronic vote. Passes 15-0-0.
XIV.
Senate Appointments
a. Kyle Henning
Sen. Antworth – This is Kyle, he’s an incoming freshman and has been one of the easiest people to work with
so far. He had his application in before he even knew to have it in; he had everything ready to go. He’s very
excited about senate; he used to be in boy scouts; he’s had a lot of leadership opportunities, and I would like
you guys to give him your full attention.
Kyle Henning – I’m Kyle Jenning, I was born in Germany to a military family; moved around a little bit then
settled down in Naples, Florida and ended up graduating from Naples High School in the past spring. The
leadership opportunities that I have had: I’m an eagle scout, which is one of the most prestigious awards you
could win in Boy Scouts of America. My project consisted of over 150 hours of constructing a patio area for
the YMCA. I’ve also been on Outward Bound, which is a leadership experience program in which we stayed
on a sailboat in the Keys for a week. I’ve been in marching band, I was a 4-year marcher for my high school, I
also held a leadership position there my senior year. I was in the Teenage Republican Society as well, and I
was a leader there and held the leadership position of Outward Growing to reach the students and get them
to be involved or join the Teenage Republican Society. I really wanted to join student government here to
give a fresh spin; I’m a freshman so I think that’s pretty young so I see some of the issues with becoming a
freshman and the transition from high school to freshman and I think I can give viewpoints and help out on
that.
Sen. Turner – If you were confirmed tonight, have you done enough research into what the different
committees are to determine which one you would most likely go in?
Kyle Jenning – Yes.
Sen. Turner – Which one would that be and why?
Kyle Jenning – I would like to join Student Advocacy to help get the word out about student government to
get more students in here to inspect things on different subjects that could maybe alter their tuition money or
something like that.
Sen. Moore – I’m curious, I’m also an Eagle Scout, what did you learn the most from just scouting in general?
How would you transition that into student government?
Kyle Jenning – what I learned the most about it is probably always give your best, and to strive for greatness;
it’s not beseeched upon you but you will achieve it once you learn through trial and errors.
Sen. Abreu – I honestly I have no idea what an Eagle Scout it; how long does it take you to get to that point?
Kyle Jenning – I joined the scouts as a first grader and you sort of are in it until you finish; which you have to
finish by your 18th birthday and you have to consist of a number of, I believe, 38 merit badges which are the
different tasks you have to do. Then, you have to lead by yourself a over 100-hour service project for the
community.
Sen. Turner – What are the other organizations on campus that you’re involved in?
Kyle Jenning - As of right now I’m uninvolved in any organizations. I’m looking maybe at Greek life here in
the fall or spring. But other than that I’m not involved in any organizations.
Motion from Sen. Turner to confirm Kyle Henning for a general senate seat. Second. No objections.
Discussion.
Senator – I had the privilege to be in B&A and interview Kyle. We absolutely drilled him with every question
you could think of and he nailed each question perfectly, even though he seemed a little shy tonight, I think
you should give him a shot and bring him aboard.
Sen. Moore – I am totally behind you. I see a lot of myself in you, like Eagle Scouts, drum line; I had a lot of
the same pre-requisites going in. I feel like you’d be very set for senate.
Sen. Turner – Being an Eagle Scout is definitely an admirable thing. You work so hard for everything that you
do, it’s not an easy task, as you said first grade to senior year in high school you’re working non-stop. It builds
all of the leadership qualities and cooperative qualities and someone like you we would definitely want to see
in senate.
Sen. Antworth – He completely has my support. Like he said earlier, he answered all the questions my
committee through at him, and my committee questioned him for about 20 minute straight. He didn’t slip on
anything; he knows about the tools better than I do, which isn’t hard to do, but he’s got the basics already
done.
Electronic vote. Passes 14-0-1.
All appointees are sworn in.
XV.
Fiscal Requests
a.
SB-13SB-2701: Executive Branch OGA – Sen. Mitchell Moore
Sen. Moore – I had the privilege of talking to a lot of senators and members of the executive branch about this
bill. It’s a request for a little over $57,000. I believe this bill is necessary to bring this university to a new high
interest in student government.
Carlo Fassi, President – Just like to briefly go over the contents in the handout; the first 4 pages are, I
apologize, the cover page and the next 4 pages are what we gave to the university administration when we
came up with the idea for the office of governmental affairs; the 6th page, our additional responsibilities for the
office of governmental affairs including the director of communications, the director of governmental affairs,
and the attorney general; the next page is a break down of lobby tools – this essentially is what we’re
requesting, it’s about $3,200 charge, I believe, it’s on the request itself; the following page is a breakdown of
what Aim Higher 1.0 was for the 2013 legislative session; if you turn the page, it’s a quick takeaways for Aim
Higher, what the state university system contributes to our state; and the last 3 pages are a breakdown of what
the executive branch’s budget looked like 4 years ago and what it currently looks like. Now we’ll start with our
PowerPoint. I’d like to first introduce Matt Brockelman; he is the student government Director of the Office
of Governmental Affairs, which is again what was created with our first executive order of the year; he is our
lobbyist, he is a registered lobbyist in the state of Florida to lobby the legislative branch and the executive
branch within Tallahassee.
Introduction to state Issues: we’ll move on to the first slide. How many schools are there? Does anybody
know, anybody in general? There are 12 schools, 11 of which have students; Fall of 2013 is when Florida
Polytechnic in Lakeland, Florida will open it’s doors. Currently it looks like a building with giant shell; it’s
being constructed and it will open it’s doors to students in the fall of 2014, and they just hired their first faculty
member about a month ago.
Matthew Brockelman, Director of the Office of Governmental Affairs – Back to the basics, when you first
became a senator you probably didn’t learn the things you had direct control over in this room and the things
you have more indirect control over as a senator at UNF. So of course, the break down of laws starting at the
state, you’ve got Florida State Constitution and State Statutes; you’ve got local and municipal laws, so in our
case that would be the Jacksonville city code; then you’ve got University regulations which are approved
through the university president and the Board of Trustees, and of course our own constitution and statutes,
which you guys directly modify here. As you can see, we kind of have a good grip on doing the legislating in
this room and also influencing university-wide matters on the different committees the student president
appoints you to. What we’re trying to do now is break into the state aspect and really influence things in a prostudent way on a state level.
President Fassi – So we have some major topics that each and every one of you in this room if you’ve served
over a year as a senator, you know, with the Aim Higher campaign that we started last year that this Senate
endorsed, the more state funding that is cut on behalf of our legislature and our governor, traditionally, tuition
will increase. Because, you can only get revenue one of three ways in a state university: fundraising, some
universities don’t have the means to, and then there’s the state revenue and the tuition revenue. Currently in
the previous fiscal year, 51% of UNF’s budget was state revenue while 49% was students’ tuition dollars.
Again, the state funds provide the general infrastructure of what the university needs: professors, paying the
electric bill, making sure that classrooms are up to date, etc. Then there are state policies which affect how our
revenue is spent and can or cannot be spent on, then you have the Bright Futures scholarship eligibility, and a
variety of other topics that we have addressed in this rooms; capital improvement trust-fund, the CITF fee,
again bright futures, PECO funding, which is Public Educational Capital Outlay funds which will construct
buildings on this fund on all university campuses.
Matthew Brockelman, Director of the Office of Governmental Affairs – So we’re going to cover 2 examples in
depth with you guys tonight so you have a more grasp of some of the state issues we’re dealing with. The first
one is state-funding level, so how much does the state give to our universities and what does that mean for
students in terms of how much they pay in tuition? And the second is going to be looking at one of the
student fees that you guys pay every semester and that’s the capital improvement trust fund act.
President Fassi – Going back to what I was saying earlier as state investments in higher education, and this is a
triangle you’ll see across the country, as the state investment decreases, the tuition per credit hour on behalf of
every student increases. This graph which shown at our Aim Higher rally last year really hit home to a lot of
students. You’ll see the blue line is the state investment to UNF in general; the red line is the tuition revenue
that UNF students contribute to our campus. So you see, this last fiscal year, the lines intersected. You had
students contributing about 50% of what UNF’s total operating budget was. After this legislative session you’ll
notice that tuition slowly stayed where it’s at in it’s current level; it went up 1.7% of its rate of inflation while
the investment that the state contributed was higher for fiscal year 13-14.
Director Brockelman – You can see from this visual how the amount the state puts into our universities
affects how much students have to put in on the revenue. Onto the specific thing I want to talk about is the
capital improvement trust fund fee. This fee was created in the 1980s with the intent of being used to
construct student life buildings. For example, this very building was partially constructed using money from a
student fee you guys pay. And last year, the fee was $6.76 per credit hour. So multiply that up over your course
load and now you know how much you paid for CITF. Last year this generated about $2.7 million in revenue
for our universities. So here’s how it works: you’re a student, you get your tuition bill, you pay a certain
amount of money in this fee to the university. UNF gets this fee and then every year they send all of these
student fees to Tallahassee, all of the CITF fees. The reason that Tallahassee works like this is actually very
simple: when Tallahassee is able to collect the student fee money from all 11 universities in our system that
have students, they have a lot more money than they can use for big projects, and you’ll understand why that’s
important on the next slide. So what Tallahassee does is they accumulate this fee money, so every year all the
universities pay the capital. The capital accumulates for 3 years and then at the end of that third year, the state
returns the money to the universities. You’ll understand the specifics of that on the next slide as well. When
we get the money back, we can construct big projects, again like the student union, like the new student
wellness complex.
President Fassi – Like the stadium; these are all examples of CITF projects.
Director Brockelman – Why does this money sit in Tallahassee for 3 years? When this fee was created it was
set at a pretty low dollar amount per credit hour for a specific reason. The rationale was that if students pay a
small amount in the student fee and we collect it for a few years, all of a sudden we’ve got a lot of money,
because you’ve got every student in the state system paying for this. So then when we get a lot of money, the
state can turn around to lending institutions and say we’ve got, say, $70 million in cash here; our universities
want to construct this building, this building, this building, and this building. For those projects we need $200
million. Can you get us a loan and we’ll use this $70 million as a down payment and over the next few years
our students will pay you through the CITF fee. So basically what happens is the state leverages the money at
the beginning to construct the projects and then whatever’s left over students pay off over a few years so you
can get buildings done quicker and you don’t have to worry about saving money up for a decade before you
can finally build a building like this.
What happened this year? This was actually the first year, and this feeds more than a 2 decade existence, where
the governor and the state legislature said we’re not going to let you guys use this money for taking out loans
anymore. It’s the third year, we’re going to get some money back, but we’re only going to give you the amount
of money you’ve put in, we’re not going to let the state take out loans and give you more and more money. So
this is what we got this past year from 3 years worth of this fee; UNF got $3.5 million and those 2 projects
came directly out of that amount of money allocation. But, if the state had allowed us to use the money to take
out loans, the box on the right is what would have happened. You can see you had a couple extra projects on
the right if the state had let us take a loan out on this money, but the interesting thing about this, and if this is
the only thing you remember about this, that’s fine, no matter what happens on this screen, students still pay
the exact same amount: $6.76 per credit hour, that doesn’t change. So the question for you guys is if you’re
going to pay this money, what should you get out of it?
President Fassi – So the 2013 legislative section started in roughly February, it started a little alter than
expected this last year and it ended in around the days of April. At the August planning conference in Orlando,
the Florida Student Association adopted Aim Higher, and Aim Higher was very simple. All it said, and it’s on
one of the pages in your handout, raise awareness of the benefits investing in a higher education due to your
state; and encouraging our lawmakers in Tallahassee to increase investments in the state university system for
subsequent budgets. We ask that the cuts that we have received for last fiscal year be reinstated for this
upcoming fiscal year, and that university presidents, in exchange for reinstating those cuts, they would not
have requested a tuition increase whatsoever. I have to break down tuition because it’s not going to make
much sense if I don’t. there’s 2 ways to raise tuition: the first, the state determines what each tuition is through
the general appropriations budget, the budget they pass every year, again we’re state entities, or there’s tuition
differential, again you see this on your tab at the beginning of every semester. Tuition differential is increased
by the universities requesting a 15% increase, Board of Trustees approving it, and then ultimately Board of
Governors approving it. This last year we’re expecting the first surplus since the recession, and going in to this
last legislative session, the state university system had been cut almost 40%, causing our tuitions to increase
roughly 90% since 2007. The ask, again, was to restore the funding. We got a $300 million cut, the largest cut
we had received in the last decade, and the promise was the universities wouldn’t increase their tuition. This is
what happened: the funding went up, and the tuition stabilized somewhat. The problem we had this last year
was when, I believe, Governor Chris was in office, there was a bill that passed the legislature and the governor
signed it, that mandated every year the tuition must go up at the rate of inflation, very much how other
industries sell their products; Costco would go up with inflation, tuition would the same way, and our Board of
Trustees approved a 1.7 tuition increase, again if we hadn’t we’d be in violation of state statute, and then it
would put all of that state funding in jeopardy.
Director Brockelman – Now that you have a lot of state-level commission thrown at you, what does that mean
for this request in front of you? There’re several broad things that we’re going to do this year in the office of
governmental affairs. The first and probably the most important, at least you get it started, it to educate
students about the issues, and that’s going to be done on our campus both in the senate chambers and in the
first few meetings of the fall semester when we go over some of these topics, and then down in places like the
student union plaza and other places where we can talk to students and engage them. The first step is
obviously to get as many students as possible to really understand what it is that causes their cost to go up and
down in college. The next thing we’re going to do is to encourage students to act on their own. That’s very
important, especially for the student constituency for our state representatives and our state senators, when
they hear from students it means a lot. The second thing is going to be to get them to act on their own. The
third thing is, regardless of whether or not we can mobilize them to act on their own, we’re still going to be
acting on their behalf. Carlo, myself, Hailey, Ryan, Paige, and really a lot of you in this room, hopefully, will be
going out to Tallahassee, will be meeting with legislatures; we’re going to be selling the case to them directly,
so that’s kind of a supplemental thing to the students doing it at a level by themselves. Then the last one,
organizing the state-wide efforts. As the FSA chairman, Carlo was elected by the other student body presidents
in Florida to be their spokesperson on the Florida Higher Education Board, and with that comes the
responsibility that our student government has and we’ve won the acceptance to lead the system and organize
all the other student government’s efforts around this. So, when we go to Tallahassee, we’re all singing the
same song and the legislatures will listen to us, and they know that what we’re saying is what the students want.
President Fassi – Before going on to the next slide, a question that came up in B&A that I believe is a valid
question, however my response hasn’t changed, why should UNF student government, you guys, affectively
pass a funding requesting to lead the system? When a lot of these issues, us tackling them may benefit other
institutions better than it benefits us because there may be more students who are in jeopardy of losing bright
futures at FIU or at UCF. None of the issues we will be tackling would not be in the best interest of the
student body. Don’t picture it as us looking at FIU, UCF, FSU and focusing in on them, on their students.
We’re looking at you, we’re looking at the UNF student body, and FSU, UCF, or FIU are standing right
behind you. We’re addressing issues that are important and affect us all financially in huge ways, and it really is
an opportunity that we take advantage of to lead the system. It’s something that UNF has done before, and it’s
something that we do very well. It’s something that we’re respected for amongst the other schools. This is the
opportunity that we need to take advantage of and seize so that this next year, if for anything, it’s remembered
as the time as the one year that we kept the momentum going in Tallahassee, that our legislatures remembered
that our students are important and that the future of Florida is by far most important. So the staff structure,
it’s myself, Hailey Guerra, Director of Governmental Affairs, Ryan Traher, Director of Communications,
Paige Lehman, our Attorney General, and Matt Brockelman, our lobbyist. On one of the pages in your hand
out you’ll see additional responsibilities, things that myself, Billy, Tony, Matt, cannot do on our own. What
we’ve requested here is budget authority for 40 hours a week for each of the individuals working in the office
of governmental affairs. I’m already compensated 40 hours a week, you can’t increase the hours I work
anymore. However, the workload that Paige, Hailey and Ryan have gained in the positions, is going to reach 40
hours a week, I believe roughly 80% of the year, and they need to be compensated for the time they’re putting
forth, again addressing issues that are important to the UNF student body and the system as a whole. Tony
Stevens up here, he’s our Chief of Staff; Tony signs off on all of their time sheets. He will not be signing off
on a timesheet in which any of the individuals do not work the 40 hours if they are clocking the full 40 hours.
Again, it’s simply budget authority; you’re not writing a check and handing it off to the executive branch and
never expecting to see that money again, if the money isn’t spent it will be placed back into special, is that
correct?
Tony Stevens, Chief of Staff – That is absolutely correct. I would not sign off for anybody, and that’s actually
for everybody in my cabinet; I make sure I check them.
President Fassi – Currently, the Director of Communications and the Director of Governmental Affairs are
budgeted at 20 hours a week and our Attorney General is at 30, and we’re going to get into the financial
analysis here in a second. Before getting into specifically what it is we’re doing, our director of the office of
governmental affairs has been with us since we were transitioning into our second term. What we did was use
money in our special projects index to pay for the 2012-2013 fiscal year and since the 13-14 fiscal year has
started, what we did with the volunteer center is 3 things: we took the $34,000 allotted to the volunteer center
and we separated it into 3 major projects – first, volunteerism. At the end of the day like my executive order
said when I executed it, was that we’re committed to providing students with the opportunities to get involved
in the city of Jacksonville and to allot community service hours. We’ve worked with Career Services as Vice
President Namen said, to create a position in career services like LSU does, like the University of Florida does,
like the University of Central Florida, engaging philanthropy with career services so internships can potentially
become a career; philanthropic projects can potentially become an internship. The Education Advisory Board,
which is non-profit organization that recommends policies to universities, actually recommended this. So we
set aside money for that; we placed the salary for the Lend-a-Wing pantry director in the executive branches’
budget so the director of the pantry is directly overseen by the executive branch, and the remaining bit went to
the salary of the director of the office of governmental affairs. What you see in front of you is the remaining
bit of the salary, which would pay from roughly January to the end of the legislation session; it’s a one-time
cost. The student government lobbyist will be here for my administration, again it says it in there in the
initiative of the Fassi-Namen administration, and the next year you’ll be able to review the budget and see if
you’d like to hire a lobbyist yourself; that’s for next year’s administration in the senate.
If you take a look here, you’re looking at the executive budget’s history, and at the last 4 years of what OPS
wage revenue we have. I chose 4 years ago because when I was a freshman 4 years ago, John Barnes was
student body president and he was an FSA chair. And he had roughly $66,000 more to work with when it
came to OPS wages revenue. All I’m asking is to be at a closer level to what that administration had. This
breaks down the wages; again total OPS wages, the $6,562,586,255 is the long sum of money you give me to
hire cabinet, excluding the president, vice president, attorney general, and treasurer. Those are the positions
like Hailey, Ryan, Chief of Staff, the cabinet members; the bottom includes the president, vice president,
attorney general and treasurer. And then this is the operating expense. The only operating expenses we’re
requesting her, I wouldn’t necessarily consider lobby tool sin there, is travel. We’re requesting a $10,000
increase in travel again if it is not used it will be placed back into special request. We need, again we’re
requesting what we feel will solely is an appropriate base for the infrastructure we need. $21,000 ago, was what
Barnes had for the executive branch in 2009. We’re requesting a $10,000 increase for $35,000 so that if for any
reason, when we’re traveling throughout the state for the system, we do get to a level where we don’t have the
funding to travel anymore, at that point what do we do? At that point, this is really a buffer, and again if it’s
not spent it will be placed right back in the special request. Why does it matter? These are issues that students
expect us to be addressing. If we weren’t how good of a representative are you? This allows the executive
branch to work at the level I expect it to. As a second term president, as a chair on the Florida Student
Association board, as the student representative on the Board of Florida Governors, I’ve had the expectations
for this year, and I can’t do that if I’m the one clocking 40 hours, working 40 hours, expecting work to be
done for my cabinet and they’re all maxed out on their hours. They were given a budget that was cut almost an
average of almost 10% over the last 4 years in the executive branch. Again this is a on-time expense; this is the
opportunity to give us the wages, the revenue, to operate at the level the FSA expects us to. We went in this
year with a lot of high, people are excited; they’re motivated to get to Tallahassee and to tell the legislatures
there what we think about our funding and really, this is the 3 events sitting at the back of the room and the 4
of us sitting up here, the means to be as effective as possible.
Sen Turner – Can you just mention the changes that were made in the Bright Futures scholarship and how
that would affect the students?
Director Brockelman – Bright Futures was created in 1997 to be a primarily merit-based scholarship for the
program. In the 2011 legislative session, the Florida legislature passed changes to Bright Futures to cut down
the cost because more students are going to college now, which is a great thing. But what they did is they
voted to increase the academic requirements, so the GPA is still a flat 3.0 for a base for Bright Futures; but
what they did was over a 2 year period starting with this year next fall they are hiking the ACT scores and the
SAT scores up. So last year one of our students, to qualify for bright futures, needed a 21 on the ACT or a 980
on the SAT. This current coming fall semester, they will need a 1020 on the SAT or a 22 ACT. But here’s the
kicker, next fall is when the big shift comes; next fall they’re going to need an 1170 on the SAT or a 26 on the
ACT. So what does that mean for students across the state? Between 2012 and 2014, about half of those
students who would normally qualify for bright futures will no longer qualify. So in 2012 there was 31,000
students in our state to qualify, in 2013 they’re projecting a little over 15,000 will qualify. There are some things
being done to see how it affects different minority populations. I think the latest figures out of a USF study
said that 75% of the black students that currently quality for bright futures would no longer qualify; it’s about
60% of Hispanics that currently qualify would no longer qualify; and about 40% of white Asians. For a lot of
our students this isn’t retroactive, because it only applies to students coming out of high school; however the
number of students eligible for this program, that I imagine a lot of you had while I was here, that is going to
drop drastically. To answer the second part, when it comes down to what we can do, there have been ideas
floating around now. On interesting idea is introducing some sort of need-based component to the equation;
right now it’s been very much a merit-based; our congress has been talking about not switching it totally, just
adding another qualification. That’s something that’s going to be unfolding this year, over the course of the fall
semester moving in to spring and it’s something that affects a lot of students here a lot of students in the
system so we’re going to be watching closely. We’ll keep you guys up to date on what the conversations look
like.
Senate President Brady – Thank you for the answer, but try and keep your questions toward the actual request.
The state issues are to be lobbied, because the information is above them.
Director Brockelman – Just to add on, we are planning as parts to the new senate orientation to involve you
guys in discussion a little bit throughout the semester on things we’re going to be going over. We’re planning
on keeping you guys up to date.
Sen. Turner – FSA dues used to be $10,000 per year, what did that cover?
Director Brockelman – The FSA used to have a management firm, so my ear when I was student body
president was when I had it cut out, in about 2012. It used to go for a few things: one, the universities would
pay the dues up front and then all of the marketing costs for the FSA throughout the year like flyers, a bus ride
to Tallahassee for Rally in Tally, stuff like that would be covered, the FSA would pay for the meetings the
student body presidents would have every month, but now that’s shifted away. Yes, the FSA did used to have
a professional staff that no longer exists and now it’s completely student run. There used to be a lot more
things but because of the situation that occurred in 2011-2012.
Sen. Turner – Can you expound upon what LobbyTools is, and why it is deserving of the $3,350?
Director Brockelman – LobbyTools is the state’s best-known system for staying on top of what’s in
Tallahassee; it’s a third-party program that offers a lot of services to us, and just so you guys know, this
account, would serve all of OGA so I could log in, Carlo, anybody really, it’s open-ended like that. Let’s say
that the Higher Education submitted something to the House and it’s looking at 5 different pieces of
legislation in one afternoon that affect Higher Ed. Let’s say we’re over in appropriations committee to try and
make sure that UNF gets funding so we can’t be there physical. We’re going to get an email sent to out phone
about everything that happens in that meeting about everyone of those bill, if they were passed or not, if they
were amended, what are the changes if any, are there news articles coming out about these bills, so we kinda of
have an idea of which way the public reception is going. It will allow us to stay on top of every single aspect of
our legislative campaign in Tallahassee from computers on a moment’s notice. It’s ensuring that we show up
to work, we don’t have to spend the first couple hours trying to figure out what happened last night; we’ll
already know.
President Fassi – The program doesn’t read the legislative report, it simply tracks where it is. The additional
increase, and the staff you’ve put around us, is going to be charged with not knowing all this information, what
all these bills do if they were to pass, holding the implications for UNF. Again, this is what Rick Robinson,
what all the major lobbyists in the state use; we can be just as affective as they are, even more in my opinion,
considering we are students. We’re directing their constituents.
Sen. Ramirez – I look forward to the fruits of everyone’s labor on the policies that are being presented. Could
you elaborate on your travel arrangements?
President Fassi – Absolutely. We’ve been traveling quite a bit already for the past summer to a few FSA
meetings already and meeting with the other SG presidents. Majority of what our travel line is going to be
spent on are for the FSA meetings, which happen on a bi-monthly to monthly basis, traveling to Tallahassee to
visit with the Board of Governors Office, the Chancellor’s office, and legislators and governors office. Since I
was elected chairman I believe we’ve met with the governor three times now, and we need to be able to on a
given notice call up Jessica, our accountant in the Business and Accounting office who is incredible, and she
can get us a car over to Tallahassee to get us meeting with whoever we want. Really though the majority of
what that travel is going to be spent on is for him to be in Tallahassee when the session starts. Unfortunately, I
have class and I can’t be in Tallahassee every day of the week; that’s why we brought him in, because he knows
the issues and really when it comes to speaking to a student or someone representing students you need to
have somebody who’s fresh out of it really, and he had the experience in the mayor’s office last year working
for Mayor Brown and getting that local governing experience, and he can now take that and use that here to
help the 16,000 students.
Sen. Estrada – That was an extensive report you made on the presentation; I think I missed it, but did the fees
or tuition drop down from last year?
President Fassi – Tuition went up 1.7% at all our schools. Every school has the same base tuition so it all went
up 1.7%; some schools did tuition vouchers. Primarily universities that had the majority of the Board of
Trustees appointed by Governor Scott because it was his prerogative to keep tuition low. Fees did go up
though; fees across the system, local fees did go up, the CITF fee was killed at the Board of Governors level
this June, there were green fees that were proposed that were killed. The student fees, the activity and services
fees which you are reviewing here in health and athletics were increased here, at UNF; they weren’t increased
the full amount that they could have gone up, the Student Fee Assessment Committee which is composed of
myself, Senate President Brady, and we didn’t increase the full 5% increase that’s a potential. We increased
about a $1.50 to a $1.92.
Sen. Ramirez – The FSA meetings, do they have to be travel, or I see that the urgency for all these matters is if
we want to have an impact we need to be present in Tallahassee, so at the FSA meetings, would they draw
away from the same $10,000 or can FSA meetings be held on Skype?
President Fassi – we have regular conference calls and Skype meetings. The bi-monthly, so every other month,
we meet in person because we are much more effective that way. When it comes to conference calls, we’ve
had, being in the past 4 years, we’ve had presidents not call in, and at the end of the day I don’t think that that
should necessarily influence the decision-making in this room, when it comes to the $10,000 travel. What that
really is primarily there for is to have us in Tallahassee when the session starts.
Sen. Estrada – This is a very important, there’s a lot of money that’s being thrown around here or being
allocated in the sense, if we approve it all; you guys say that you will work hard and at the end of the day if you
guys all work 40 hours a week, and the legislatives decide not to go with you guys there’s no obligation that
you guys have to the legislatures who don’t have any obligation to say that they agree with you guys. So what is
your stance on let’s all work 40 hours a week, let’s spend $57,000 to funding and not be able to produce any
results?
President Fassi – I would turn around to the student and say that we put forth the most effort any
administration had ever done; even if we didn’t get anything out of it. Also, you’re not throwing around
money, I’m sorry, that’s not how I would phrase it. This is for immediate impact, and really if there was a way
you can affect the lifestyle of your students on this campus I think this is the way that could really go the
farthest when it comes to saving students money in the long term.
Director Brockelman – Just another thing I would add is that when you think about the money that you spend
from A&S fees, think about this $57,000 request in the context of the much bigger pictures. We do everything
in student government from having fun things like concert and talon painting; we do all that stuff all the way
up to the real political issues. I would imagine that if you were just an every day student, you would want your
student government to be balanced with how it spends. You wouldn’t want to fund everything on the state
level stuff or everything on the fun level stuff, but just from my experience, I ask for students the big tuition
vote 2 years ago to send in their personal stories, and it’s funny because Ryan Traher actually sent me one back
in the day and I received a lot of those, and I wish you guys could have read them because when you hear
about the ways these issues really do affect our students, you only have a chance but to care about it. That’s
something that I’ll take it upon myself to make sure throughout the fall semester that we keep you very much
up to date and engaged about what’s going on because I believe that at the end of the year, you will look back
on this and say that was completely justified and you’re proud of what we were able to do.
Sen. Estrada – Just curious, last week in the committee, we amended the Director of OGA to increase at
$6,630.48, I was curious where that money came from or those funds came from and, a second part, out of the
job duties increased from the time you guys turned in the request to the time it went through committee, that
it would deserve such a large increase?
President Fassi – With the Volunteer Center’s revenue, we haven’t determined how much is going to Career
Services. When Career Services got back with the amount of revenue that would be needed to fill a full time
position there we already submitted the request. May I answer the previous question as a follow up? Aim
Higher last year, and I mentioned this in your committee, required a significant amount of down payment to
start the campaign to put up a website, to get the video filmed, to get the promotional material, the t-shirts
everywhere; this room approved a request for I believe $20,000 last year for it. But not here, at UF, when
President TJ started Aim Higher, he went to their university president and said I need money to start this
campaign and it’s really going to coincide with what you want, what you want for your legislative priorities.
This is what we’re doing here: investing the cost and hopefully April rolls around and we’re able to see a very
similar session to what we saw this last year, with over $450 million being placed back into our system’s
budgets.
Sen. Ramirez – I notice that Director of OGA, the amount is written differently from the other 3 positions,
and maybe this is just because it’s a staff positions, but is that amount for from when he was hired until when
the position expires, so from 2013-2014? Why is it an hourly breakdown?
President Fassi – It’s a lump sum because it’s a salary position, and that will pay him, and I apologize I had said
in January, it’s actually roughly mid-November until the end of the session. It’s paying out the remainder of his
contract. I don’t know how it came up in B&A that it was a raise, but it’s just paying out the remainder of his
contract for the rest of the year.
Sen. Ramirez – What was the raise?
President Fassi – I was not present at B&A, so I do not know.
Senate President Brady – Just to follow up with that; if we have a contract to pay a lobbyist for the rest of the
year, what would happen if this request were to not pass?
President Fassi – If this request were to not pass we wouldn’t have a lobbyist for the FSA session.
Sen. Estrada – can you a bit more specific for the whole senate to describe the different duties between the
Director of the Office of Governmental Affairs and the Director of Government Affairs?
President Fassi – The student Director of Government Affairs works a lot on the logistics behind the Aim
Higher campaign, mobilizing students on a university level from across the system. Again, organizing the
rallies, organizing visits between student body presidents across the system and their delegations, going out
and talking to students, like we said up here engagement within the overall student body here, she’ll be
organizing and coordinating a lot od these effects. Matt’s really relationship at the end of the day, and I know
that sounds weird, but he’s going to be meeting with senator Bean, all the representatives in the Jacksonville
delegation, the representatives in all the major delegations, all the leadership in the house and in the senate. At
the end of the day, yes when it comes to being coordinated in Tallahassee, we will have student there, because
like Matt said it’s important to have students there in Tallahassee fighting for these issues. At the end of the
day, we have classes and they don’t expect us to be there. Right now, the students don’t have a lobbyist, the
students in the system do not have someone representing them in Tallahassee on a day-to-day basis; that’s
what Matt’s here for. Hailey and her position, like it’s been every year, is really to do the logistical work, the
ground level work, in getting everything organized, and when the legislative section does start we have videos,
we have flyers, we have students mobilized, we have events already scheduled, we have Rally in Tally and
individual university days at the capitol, which she’ll be spearheading as the leader of director of government
affairs for the students. Just like Ryan will be writing and controlling the message of what the FSA is endorsing
at a system level. He’ll be drafting up ads that the student body presidents can be sending to the local papers,
he’ll be drafting press releases; he’ll be controlling the FSA’s message, Hailey will really be working on the
grunt work and the logistics behind everything. This is what I had to read for the first BOG meeting; these are
articles, work plans, that all the Board of Governors members are expected to know inside and out. These are
a lot of issues, and a lot of these articles touch on issues that students and those working with legislature are
expected to know. We’ll be breaking down all of this, we’ll be breaking down the 3,000 pages of legislation that
affect SUS individually and we’ll be making very simple talking points and be able to refer back to them
because of all the work Hailey, Paige, Ryan, Matt and I have done, also with the help of Billy and Tony, with
the OGA.
Sen. Estrada – Last year, the Director of Governmental Affairs, also managed to help with Aim Higher, so
how much extra work is going to be present this year for the allotment of the positions full 20 hours? Why is
there a need for an extra 20 hours, when you have mentioned that the tasks are basically the same except for
just that little extra work?
President Fassi – Yes, a lot of the tasks will be the same, however they’ll be coinciding with what’s going on in
other universities. In September we have a DC fly-in, where the Florida Student Association traditionally takes
in all their student body presidents, they go up to Washington, D.C., and they lobby for increased investment
in health grants and cutting the interest rates on staff loans. The chairman is expected to basically have all that
organized. Hailey, like the Director of Governmental Affairs at UCF did, was also working 40 hours a week,
will be making sure that’s coordinated; Rally in Tally, whatever the individual dates at the capitol. I don’t want
us to be looking at the state university system in this request and really our state level advocacy really in what’s
best for UNF and what’s UNF going to be doing. We really need to be looking at this whole request and
what’s going on this year as a whole and issues that affect the students at UWF or FGCU affect us as well.
Again, there will be weeks when she’s not working 4o hours. Probably during intercession, a few weeks during
the semesters; however, the majority of the time she will be, and she will have full workloads, and we wouldn’t
be presenting this request if she didn’t.
Motion from Sen. Turner to approve SB-13SB-2701. Second. No objections. Discussion.
Sen. Turner – I definitely see this in its entirety as being very beneficial and fiscally responsible for not only
student government and not only our student body but the student bodies of all other state university systems.
The ability for us to go lobby at the state level for higher education is necessary and imperative. I know
personally I don’t want my tuition going up 50% for another 3 years while I’m here. Being able to keep that
low, knowing what’s going on all the time and how we can react to that, and what changes we can make to our
university as well as the FSA, that’s something that we definitely need.
Sen. Estrada – Contrary to popular belief, I do like this bill. I just really think what needs to be changed is I
don’t see the need for a $6,000 increase when they didn’t even know they had the extra money to be beneficial
to that position. That’s something that we can use for the students for actual, tangible results, for something
that can actually improve. I honestly believe that some cuts in the wages, that something I personally believe in
myself, for something that would actually be beneficial to the students; I believe that we should rescind the
motion and go back amend it.
Sen. Turner – I don’t feel as thought any changes need to be made. All the things that are listed here have a
reason for them; they need these 40 hours a week because of the whole workload that they’re going to be
doing. This extra $6,000, not to make it sound weird, but that money is there; this money that is in that special
budget is there, and it’s continually getting turned over to the next fiscal year. It’s a smart way to be spending
the money, and we don’t need to be spending the money, well definitely spend the money on other things for
the university, but since we’ve already done so much at the university, why not take that next step to the state
level and start spending the money at a state level.
Senate President Brady – In the initial request the $6,000 wasn’t additional; in the initial request it didn’t have
the right full amount for the salaries requirement as per the initial request. That’s why it wasn’t a $6,000 raise; it
was to be the initial commitment when Matt was hired.
Sen. Reich – I think the most important word that we heard from Carlo in this presentation was investing.
This is an investment in the student body. If you look at this entire request, not just the $6,000, it breaks down
to approximately $3.50 per student. I’ve wasted more than $3.50 in gas looking for parking spots in the
garages; this is not a huge outlay. $57,000 is a huge amount of money; I’d like to have 57 grand or I’d drive a
nicer car. In terms of the broad scope of higher education in the state of Florida, this is not a huge amount of
money. We saw $300 million get put back into the system last year; just for UNF students that was about $338
per student. Basically, this needs to be only 1% more effective than it was last year for it to pay for itself, in
terms of student spending, student costs to the university; and I think that while you might argue this could be
less, this could be more, we could spend it in different places, I think concerts and free food for students is
great, but I think that lowering or preventing the necessary increase of tuition is a lot better of a result than
one more pizza party or one more tailgate.
Electronic vote. Passes 14-0-2.
b. SB-13SB-2702: Executive Branch Talon Painting Party – Sen. Kaitlin Ramirez
Sen. Ramirez – As you know this is Brett Weisman, the Club Alliance Director, and the Vice President Bill
Namen.
Brett Weisman, Club Alliance Director – We are talking about the talon painting party, that name may be
changed later. Right now there’s 41 talons, there are about 25 spots that are just blue. This proposal basically
changes the shape, makes them more standard, it will keep them all the same size and will be open to clubs
and organizations to paint for the first time or repaint their talons if they currently already have them. This is a
kind of one-time event really for tradition in a different sense; one you make this talon it’s going to be there
for a very long time. It’s not something that we’re doing to change yearly, the clubs are welcome to do that if
they want on their own time, but this is a one time thing and we put it up for clubs to see if they wanted to do
it, to email me, and we have last time I checked about 48 clubs that are interested in doing it.
William Namen, Vice President – Again, this is the talon painting party, on September 13. It’s about 2-3 weeks
after school starts, so it’s enough time to where everyone is kind of situated, everyone’s ready to go, and early
enough to where everyone won’t be able to do it again. So back to the basics of what it really is. Obviously it’s
an event sponsored by student government; it provides the student organizations with the opportunity to paint
and repaint the talons. There are a lot of talons to large shaped sizes to smaller miniature ones. It also gives
these organizations to really represent themselves on campus and obviously, with this request, students will be
provided with the supplies they need to paint to music, to food, to entertainment, but really the meat of it
which is the paint. These are some examples on the left; the left one is Osprey Racing, a beautiful talon,
however it got messed up right after they finished and it dried up before they even realized it. On the right one
you can see it looks like a great talon, but on the right you can kind of see where they were pressure washing
and that’s an example of why it can’t come off. Right here, cost:; so these are what we’re requesting: chemical
removers, like I said we’re going to be removing the paint, we tried pressure washing, it doesn’t come off.
Basically, the mixtures of the sun and the acrylic paint just melted it on there permanently and it will not come
off. We did a bid with physical facilities and they received feedback that they don’t have the equipment to do
it, so we had to get outside companies; we received a quote from about $2,500, another for about $2,100, and
this one for $1,100, so this is the cheapest we can get for chemical remover; it’s obviously eco-friendly
chemicals that are necessary to remove that and they’ll pressure wash the rest of the dirt and everything else.
So it will essentially get rid of it permanently. Paint, like I said, we’re going to provide supplies for the event.
The sealer, so like the Osprey Racing, what we’re going to do is put sealer on it right after so it doesn’t get
smeared or ruined or dirt on it. The next thing is brushes to brush the paint. And then food; so this is where it
comes down to the advertising. What will kind of draw attention, as Brett said we’re already packed, we don’t
need to draw attention; it’s more so giving the students the time to relax and be comfortable in the situation
we’re providing them. Last year or 2 year ago, Vice President Courtney Warner and I originally painted all
those talons out there, not all of them but the straight blue ones with no design on them at all. We were there
for a whole day and it was absolutely miserable. This is kind of a step forward in providing that comfortablility
with the food. So the total cost that it comes down to is $1,600, with over 41 clubs attending, say each club
brings 2-3 members, $600, it really doesn’t come out to be all that bad.
The benefit really overwhelms the whole thing. Obviously it provides student government with the chance to
engage other students. That was the big question when asked; when I come in to my office and my cabinet I
ask what is the bigger problem: we just never engage the students, we never get to talk to them, we never get
to know them, we never get to see what they want, what they’d like to see change. So this provides student
government the ability to meet with them one-on-one, to come up to the students so they can get to know
you. It obviously creates branding for the organization, as well as student government. When we’re doing this
event, students are going to see that this is a student government event, and while you’re walking down there
as a new freshman or a new member and you see the talons, you see how cool it is and so it provides branding.
That’s something that’s missing on this campus as well. Next thing obviously promotes student with an
atmosphere to incoming students, that students here are really involved. The university embraces the students
and allows the students to do things that change the environment. Lastly, I think most importantly, it
stimulates a growing UNF tradition. These talons got started 3-4 years ago and I’ve been getting emails since I
became Vice President of people asking if they can paint a talon how can I change mine, do that; it really puts
that landmark there as a UNF tradition, as well as that Ozzie statue that I talked about earlier. This really
comes down to the summarization of my presentation.
Motion from Sen. Estrada to approve SB-13SB-2702. Second. No objections. Discussion.
Sen. Estrada – I think it’s a really cool idea, there are a lot of talons out there that don’t have any active
representation so this is a good way to have new clubs and new organizations come out and display what their
club is all about. If you guys have seen the other Society of American Engineers, they have a really cool talon
and it displays what that club is really about. I think it’s a really good way to start a new tradition and start a
new phase at UNF.
Sen. Abreu – I also agree; I feel like this is a really good thing to have within our campus because I’ve gone to
FIA and they have the paw prints but we’re using something and we’re making it our own and I feel like we’ve
created a tradition.
Sen. Turner – I just want to say this is something that definitely needs to be done because when I walked
down that walkway and I see those plain blue talons, it’s a bit upsetting because it’s wasted. So it’s definitely a
great way to finally get all of those completed.
Electronic vote. Passes 15-0-0.
Vie President Namen – I forgot to mention that we are expanding on the talons as well so it’s going all the way
from her to the arena.
Director Weisman – Just to go off the FIU thing, we thought it’d be really cool that once you get out of the
arena all of our teams are going to see this.
XVI.
New Business
a. Legislation considered for 1st Reading
b. Senate and Joint Resolutions on 1st Reading
c. Legislation considered for 2nd Reading
i. CR-13SB-2700: Article V Revisions – Sen. Connor Garrity
Sen. Garrity – Before we get started there were some problems that were noticed so I would like to
send the CR back to the CSC committee for further revisions.
Motion from Sen. Moore to send CR-13SB-2700 back to Committee for revisions. Second. No
objections. Moved.
d. Senate and Joint Resolutions on 2nd Reading
i. SR-13SA-2696: Senate Policies and Procedures – Senate President Chris Brady
Senate President Brady – This is the senate policy and procedures for my administration as Senate
President. Every year the senate president convenes a committee to draft policy and procedures. This
year that committee consisted of just myself and Sen. Ramirez. We met a couple time to talk about it
as well as talking about it with the attorney general for some recommendations, and that’s what we’re
presenting to you right now. This has gone through the CSC committee twice, as there were some
more changes after the first time that we expelled and needed to be made to before it came to you all.
We’re going to go through this step by step and explain everything. It shouldn’t be too bad because
there aren’t a lot of changes that have happened in the past couple of years, but there are some big
changes near the end that I’ll explain to you all. If you have any questions, if you’d like you can ask as
I go along or you can write them down and wait until the end.
So there’s none on the first page. So the firs thing here under membership requirements in the strike
through section, there’s something our attorney general caught that in the constitution it sets out our
membership requirements to be a senator. It also says that no other requirements can be imposed on
students to become a senator. Therefore this section actually goes against the constitution and it can’t
really be here, although I do think it’s a great requirement that should be added to the constitution;
this isn’t the appropriate place for it and it contradicts the constitution so we’re going to go ahead and
remove that. The next one is under senator duties, including new duty of senators to fulfill all
scholarship requirements and that line in the later section that I will explain later. This is a new section
that’s been morphed a lot with the policy and procedures. Even if you don’t want your scholarship
you still have to do all the things that are a requirement, or are necessary to receive that scholarship.
So for senators who are trying to get community service hours for that organization, that’s fine, you
don’t have to take the scholarship, you just have to complete all the requirements to earn a
scholarship. This year under my duties, it’s changing to say during the first week of classes rather than
the first day; this is because of the senate change to Friday meetings. If we don’t change this that
means to say that the first senate meeting would be on a Monday and every other senate meeting
would be on a Friday, which doesn’t make any sense. This is to make sure that we are having business
when the school year starts, so it will just be the first week rather than the first day for this transition.
Under the Senate President Pro-Tempore duties, we stoke the attendance and changed the absence
policy to remain consistent throughout the statutes and policies and procedures, it’s always been
referred to as the absence policy and not the attendance policy. Also, with proxy vote forms, currently
the senate president pro-tempore is in charge of filing and saving those so it only makes sense to be
sending those immediately to the pro-tempore rather than the student government advisor who
literally just hands them to the senate president pro-tempore afterwards; it just makes more sense for
the same person to be collecting them and holding on to them. Under Senate Secretary, striking the
line saying once approved by the SG president, the reason for this is that after President Fassi signs it,
if he doesn’t sign it, he vetoes it or he doesn’t sign it at all within 5 business days, it automatically
become law. If he vetoed it he automatically has to come back and tell you why he vetoed it. It just
doesn’t make sense for every meeting the senate secretary to say President Fassi signed the bill, over
and over, when that is kind of inherent when he doesn’t tell you he vetoed a bill, it’s going to be
passed, and it’s going to be put into law. Under the new senate orientation, it was one of those worded
kind of weirdly so we decided within two weeks of swearing in senate orientation has to happen, and
we also added a last sentence stating that appointees will have the next regularly scheduled new
senator orientation because those senators are appointed to senate rather than just for those that are
elected. Under Committee meetings, it currently says they need to be posted just one week prior to
meeting; we’re going to have it say at least 2 business days, that’s kind of what we follow since that’s
the standard that we use for all our meetings. Prior to every semester there’s a full schedule of when
the meetings are, so it’s saying if a meeting needs to happen it needs to be 2 business days not a week.
Striking that all committee agendas must be given a designated time slot for remarks; this has been
removed because currently in senate that is a requirement and everything that goes through
committees is eventually going to go through the senate and it makes more sense for student remarks
to be heard by the entire senate rather than by one committee. The one exception to this is travel
requests, and the B&A committee usually has those remarks anyway and it will be up to the purview
of the chair if they want students to be in their giving their remarks on another student’s travel or club
event. That will be up to the purview of the chair if they decide to have those remarks or not. Once
again under senate meetings, changing 1 week to 2 business days, and in number VI, it’s just saying
that the newly elected senate president shall be at the committees to approve on senate. This is an
exact copy of what is under the senate president’s duties and was stuck under the senate meeting
section out of place and has no reason to be here, so this is just removing it and its already in another
part of the P&Ps. Under legislative cabinet meetings, we’re striking acting as a clerk under senate
secretary, since we removed that slide from the duties earlier in the P&Ps, as well as striking the CSC
chair, since now the CSC Chair and the Pro-Temp are the same person. The way that it’s written now
is saying that Kaitlin is 2 different people, and she’s great and she might think she’s 2 different people
with how much work she does, but she’s not so it makes sense for us to take that out. This right here
is just basically the specifying the difference and explaining the resolution of the past, the way it’s
stated here it says that a motion should pass by the majority of the senate, and it’s just clarifying that
all are passed by the majority of senate, and how some of them are 2/3 vote. Under the absence
policy, just crossing out Wild Osprey Wednesday because this event doesn’t occur anymore. Also,
changing it from 6 to 5 business days when turning in an absence form, it’s kind of a loophole that
was discovered by our last pro-temp, so it gives us the opportunity to fix that. Also under section e. it
states that I must inform my pro-temp within 5 business days of receiving an appeal, what that
currently is, is that I could hold on to an appeal forever and just never approve or deny it, and then
this kind of holds the senate president accountable. Not that I would ever do that, but in the future
you never know. We wanted to put this in here to make sure no senate president every abuses his or
her power when it comes to approving or denying absences. This is just changing the wording under
senatorial scholarship to make it make more grammatical sense. This is explaining what is required of
senators to receive their scholarship. This is something that President Varshovi initially instituted into
the P&P, so striking attending a polling workshop since the election workshop is pretty much the
same, since it’s strictly done by the E&A chair. So instead of having to do separate workshops on this
list it would make more sense to have you only do one. Rewording this so it says you only have to
complete one of the following listed bellow. Say each senator has to either sponsor a fiscal request, a
senate bill or constitutional referendum, or a senate or joint resolution; this is the way it’s currently in
place, just rewording it so it’s more clear for those reading it in the future. Then, this last section 3, is
something I decided I wanted to add; it’s one of those things that I ran on in my rants as senate
president to be more involved especially in agency events. So what this is, it says that each senator
must either volunteer 10 hours with the Lend-a-Wing food pantry, volunteer at 2 agency events, or
volunteer 5 hours at the pantry and 1 agency event; and this is for each semester. This is to get you
guys going to these events that you may not normally go to. It also gets you more active with what the
executive branch is doing. So all around this is going to get you more involved with the agencies, and
it’s going to help you be a better representative to your students, because you might meet students at
these events that you wouldn’t have met otherwise. Lastly, just saying that it’s your responsibility to
prove that you have achieved the scholarship requirements; you will be getting a form that you can
turn in 2 weeks prior to the end of your term and that will be distributed to all of you beginning in the
fall, so you have that. It’s going to be due to Kaitlin by 2 weeks prior to the end of your term in order
for you to get your scholarship. It’s just going to outline that you met all the requirements here. For
example when you sponsor a bill, you’ll right down the bill date, I’ll sign it saying you sponsored a bill.
When you work an agency event or you volunteer at the pantry, you will need to get whoever is
working at the time to sign it for you saying you worked an event or worked hours at the pantry.
Under senate chambers, this section was really redundant with my ability to remove people from the
senate chambers; we used to think that there’d be so many people that some might need to be
removed from the senate chambers, so we got rid of some since they’re all pretty redundant. This is
just striking where orientation will be held because under new senate orientation and under skills
workshops, this is saying that we’re going to transition the new senate orientation in place after the
senate orientation rather than meeting with me separately. I can still meet with senators and teach
them how to write a bill, but this is to make it not happen at new senator orientation. In addition, I’m
striking out the line that says Senate President may delegate the teaching workshops to an officer of
the legislative cabinet, because it should be my duty and I should have P&Ps under my duties that I
shouldn’t be giving to somebody else to do. It’s a duty, it should be a duty, it shouldn’t be something
that should go around. Lastly, we’re striking out an absentee point for every pro-workshop that you
miss since all these workshops are going to be included in the new format for new senator orientation.
They’re already included in the absentee policy for that. That is all the changes for the policy and
procedures for this upcoming year.
Sen. Turner – Just so everybody knows for this, if this passes, starting this fall they will need to be
doing the volunteering with the Lend-a-Wing and the agency events.
President Brady – If you’ve already done these things it will be grandfathered in. so those of you
terminating in 2 months we can’t have you do all these things in the next 2 months or you’ll lose your
scholarship; it’s a grandfather system with the scholarship committee, so I think the scholarship
committee is actually meeting this week or next week, and that will be addressed there and it will be
for those coming in in the fall. It won’t be for those terminating their term this fall.
Sen. Estrada – Motion for Section XI under C. the legislative cabinet meetings, instead of striking out
the constitution and statues committee chair, why not add it to the parentheses of the senate protemp’s duties or instead of acting as the vice chair and the constitutions and statues and committee
chair? That way at least we’re not eliminating that position from our procedures.
Senate President Brady – Under the pro-temp’s duties earlier it states that they act as the chairperson
for the constitution and statutes committee and so this section is just saying the people who sit on that
committee, so there’s no need to put their job duties next to their name.
Sen. Estrada rescinds his motion.
Motion from Sen. Turner to approve SR-13SA-2696. Second. No objections. No discussion.
Electronic vote.
Motion from Sen. Turner for unanimous consent. Second. No objections. Moved.
ii. JR-13SB-2703: Declaration of Support for Military and Veterans Resource Center Memorial – Senate
President Chris Brady
Senate President Chris Brady – Basically this is what President Fassi talked about a little bit earlier.
This is just the senate and executive branch working together to support this veteran’s memorial. This
has been a project for a while, and this is just this senate and this whole student government’s joint
resolution showing our support for this project. Basically we are the second largest veteran population
on campus with all the universities within the state university system. I think it’s be very appropriate
for the 2 bases that we have here in Jacksonville; we’re known as a military town. I think it’d be a great
way to support war veterans and the members by saying we the student government support this
project for the members of the University of North Florida.
Motion from Sen. Turner to approve JR-13SB-2703. Second. No objections. No discussion.
Electronic vote.
Motion from Sen. Waychoff for unanimous consent. Second. No objections. Moved.
iii. SR-13SB-2704: Endorsement of the UNF Spinnaker’s Transition to Monthly Publications – Senate
President Chris Brady
Senate President Brady – Before I even start because I know there’s 2 friendlies in this bill that needs
to be changed. First is on line 9 and 10 it says Center of Student Media, this needs to be changed to
Spinnaker Media, because that is their new name. As well as on line 23 it currently says “Jacop” with a
“p” and it needs to be “Jacob” with a “b”. Basically this is a simple resolution saying that we as a
senate support what the Spinnaker talked to you about earlier tonight, with their transition to a
monthly magazine. I think they did a really great job, and I know it’s something they’re really excited
about, I’m excited about it, Carlo’s really excited about it. We just want to say thank you for coming
up tonight and we show our support to you on behalf of this legislation that says we support what you
guys are doing and we look forward to reading them during this next year.
Spinnaker Representative – I just want to say thank you and if anyone has any more questions they’d
like to ask, and I’m sorry if this doesn’t stand protocol here, you can email me at
editor@unfspinnaker.com. I ‘d love to hear anything you have to say.
Sen. Reich – Friendly motion to strike CSM and replace with Spinnaker Media.
Motion from Sen. Moore to approve SR-13SB-2704. Second. No objections. No discussion.
Electronic vote.
Motion from Sen. Turner for unanimous consent. Second. No objections. Moved.
XVII. Announcements
Senate President Brady – Thank you for staying tonight, I know it was kind of a long meeting. Remind you to
please turn in your questionnaires to Kaitlin after senate tonight. I hope you all have a great rest of your summer
and good luck in summer B classes like I am. I will see you Friday, August 30 at 1:00pm in this room.
XV.
Final Roll Call - Senate President Pro-Tempore Kaitlin Ramirez – sgaspt@unf.edu
Quorum is reestablished with 16 voting members.
XVIII. Adjournment
Meeting is adjourned at 9:05 pm.