UF Student Government: Incubator of Nepotism

Leave it to the Gator Party, the ruling majority of the University of Florida's Student Government to blatantly abuse its powers in the Student Senate and the Student Executive. UF's Student Body President, a member of Theta Chi & Florida Blue Key, has allowed his Student Body Treasurer to take a summer-long leave of absence, in addition to relying on shaky constitutional grounds to create a proxy and work through that proxy from a cush Wall St. internship (that he applied to after being elected, but priort to inauguration).

The Student Body Treasurer oversees one of the largest student budgets in the United States, exceeding $15 million per annum. In a May 29th article for the student newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator Student Body Treasurer Paul Dratyon said: "Rene [Medina/the Proxy] and I will communicate daily,” Drayton said. “SG Finance will operate as if I was still physically present."

However in an exclusive with www.TheRadikal.com on June 25th, Rene Media acting in the capacity of the newly-created Chief Financial Officer position, stated that: "When I first began working as CFO, Paul and I communicated a couple times daily. However, now we communicate more than anything if and when a major problem arises. The last couple weeks have been very slow in the Finance Office, with work mostly limited to approving SAR's. The need for constant, daily communication, therefore, is momentarily unnecessary."

Whether momentarily unnecessary or necessary, Paul Drayton failed to live up to the standard he purported to be setting in the student newspaper not even one month before.

----------And through all of this, nothing from Student Body President Reilly: nothing, nada, zilch. To a fly on the wall, one would think Paul Drayton was the Student Body President.

Fast forward to less than a month from that controversy and now you have Reilly in the picture! Only thing is, Reilly is in the picture for no less than appointing an absent candidate to a year-round top cabinet position. But that's not even the tip of the iceberg! Whereas Paul Drayton phoned into a Student Senate meeting out of fears of impeachment, Reilly's candidate phoned into a Senate Meeting to take questions pending confirmation by the Student Senate.

Student Body President Reilly is by and far the worst Student Body President that the University of Florida has had in the last twenty-five years. His ineptness will only continue to herald new lows for UF's once prominent SG and it will only be a question of time until the Florida Leader and other top SG publications get wind of UF's dropping of the ball.

Sadly, any formal opposition to Reilly and his minions would be ineffective, as the Minority Orange & Blue Party lacks the sufficient numbers in Senate to carry out any kind of lasting defiance, except for desperate measures such as Filibustering -- a tactic they have not used before.

The Machine (a slang term referring to the four Greek Councils + Florida Blue Key) has been almost exclusively been run by System Parties (e.g. the current ruling Gator Party); this control extends, arguably, into the courts. There have been years when Independents, failing to rally efforts in Senate, have gone back to the students and secured popular petitions and/or won referendum options, but the System-dominated Courts have been used as a desperate measure to counteract even the will of the STUDENTS!

Although it's always been an unspoken truth that the secret elites control UF's Student Government, many still refused to believe, even after the successful Grapski lawsuit of the mid 1990's. With Reilly, the once subtle control is now more blatant that it ever has been. And with it being out in the open, the iron grip can only tighten.