Setting the record straight

Daniel Salup-Cid | SGA CASE Senator

A few weeks ago, the Panther Now Editorial Board posted an article on the third writ I faced coming from the College Republicans at FIU. I was incredibly disappointed to see the Editorial Board fall for the same lies from the College Republicans as the Student Government Supreme Court.

Starting with the attacks on my character, the accusation that I would purposefully mislead the Elections Board during the first wave of writ hearings is a preposterous misrepresentation that couldn’t be further from the truth. To anyone that truly believes I engaged in “obvious instances of dishonesty with their constituents and fellow SGA officials,” I challenge you to think critically; do you seriously expect anyone to commit every picture and post they mindlessly interact with to memory?

Moving on, believe it or not, I agree, in part, with one of the Editorial Board’s takeaways from this recent wave of scandals: SGA has its priorities in the wrong place. When we’re seeing universities and governments crack down with extreme repression against students protesting an ongoing genocide, our out-going Judicial Branch opted to take the College Republicans’ bait and devote their energy to relitigating the issue of misplaced posters. This also meant that the outgoing Executive Board had to waste their time cleaning up the mess the Judicial Branch made with their half-baked, closed-door trial.

As CASE Senator and a member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at FIU, I will continue fighting to make sure that our students receive the “honesty, integrity and good faith efforts to truly improve FIU” they deserve. I will continue fighting for financial transparency so that us students know what FIU is doing with our tuition money; to pressure FIU into standing with its students against the attacks on queer rights and pro-Palestinian activism; that FIU doesn’t throw its upperclassmen and international students out of their dormitories into the hostile hands of the Miami housing-market; and that FIU bargain in good faith with the United Faculty of Florida so that our professors can teach in peace and we receive the education we deserve.

Whether from within the Senate chambers or outside of them, I, alongside the YDSA, will continue to fight for a more democratic, just university. I look forward to committing the crime of annoying those who wish to preserve the status quo against the interests of the people that make this university run.

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