In mid-March, news broke that former Biscayne Bay Campus president Pablo Haspel was declined a chance to run for the same position at Modesto A. Maidique Campus.
Haspel said he was disqualified on the basis that 50 percent of his classes were not on the MMC campus. The SGA appeals board, however, said it was because his major was based out of the Broward Pines Center, which falls under BBC jurisdiction, and promptly slammed down a 4-0 vote against him running.
Haspel is now left hovering in purgatory.
FIU has always championed a message of being worlds ahead. We’re all about being international and mixing everyone together to create one big, happy family, right?
So when did we ditch that ideology and segregate BBC and MMC and restrict what activities its corresponding students can and cannot do
The Beacon believes that whether Haspel’s or the appeal board’s reasoning was correct, either rule is dated and unwise.
Declining a potential candidate on the basis of where his major is or how many classes he takes on which campus, severely limits the choices that students are handed.
At the time of press, there’s only one candidate for the MMC position, Liane Sippin.
While the Graham Center will undoubtedly be more tolerable without the harassment to vote for three or four different candidates, we’re supposed to be a democracy, not a dictatorship.
In the past, the both campuses have had candidacies run uncontested –Haspel being the lone candidate, as a matter of fact—and that doesn’t bode well for a campus. It promotes an “if you don’t like it, deal with it” atmosphere, which is all too familiar in this society.
As the race begins to heat up, if students don’t like Sippin’s platform, what are they supposed to do? Sure, they can refuse to vote, but in the end she’d still be the winning candidate by default.
This rule eliminates a chance for discourse between potential candidates. If Sippin runs unopposed, who will challenge her ideas? Or how can she convince everyone that she is the better candidate when there’s no one to compare herself to?
The Beacon has two offices, one in MMC and BBC. How unfair would it be to decline BBC writers the opportunity to write about events happening in MMC? Or how thick would we have to be to tell an established MMC staff writer that he can’t cover a keynote event in BBC because he has the majority of his classes in the former campus?
Haspel’s experience as a president of a campus can serve him well, but it looks like the student body will never find out.
The SGA must consider revising this rule as soon as possible. Give students a choice and if that means bypassing rules like the one that keeps Haspel out, then so be it.
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