FIUSM Staff
opinion@fiusm.com
When elections are held at MMC, the campus is abuzz with excitement and campaigning parties – throughout the race, FIUSM ensured that students could make sense of it all. As FIU hurdles toward the future, one may notice radio silence from the Biscayne Bay Campus.
Though students may know that Alexis Calatayud and Tiffany Roman Biffa were re-elected in April as the president and vice-president of the Modesto A. Maidique Student Government Council, very little comes through the grapevine regarding positions at BBC.
“BBC is dead after 3 p.m.,” said Abby Davidson, a junior Anthropology major. “They have interesting events, but I’ve never heard anything about elections over there.”
This editorial board holds the opinion that students should be aware of the goings-on of their University – especially one with so many majors split over multiple campuses. When the balance between campaign strategies is so heavily skewed toward one campus, whether it is the main one or not, there is something wrong.
Without any information about the candidates or voting processes at BBC, and without a population of on-campus residents to support worthy officers or parties, there is no one to safeguard the interests of students, and no way to tell if the candidates elected at the north campus are competent.
Jazmin Felix, the previous SGA president of BBC, as reported in April, never expected to run, despite her two and a half years of service in BBC’s student government before she ran. Moreover, she ran without competition – which is hardly a democratic election.
Moreover, the current president, Allhan Mejia, is not a household name. Perhaps his platform regarding transparency and accessibility for students regarding SGA is apt.
There are currently 12 unfilled positions on the MMC Student Government Council. At BBC, there are 29, mostly in the Senate and Executive Cabinet – leaving many departments and student groups unrepresented.
It is no secret that the millennial population is one that votes infrequently, but it is imperative that students have a say in our national, local and student governments if they wish to make a difference – otherwise, those elected have the power of stagnation in office, whether due to under-qualification or deliberate enforcement of an agenda – who knows what can happen when people simply aren’t looking.
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