SGC-BBC steps away from SGA merger talks

Michelle Marchante/News Director

The possibility of a merger between the University’s two Student Government Councils has been shot down, according to a post made by the Biscayne Bay Campus student government president in a Facebook group.

Photo of SGC-BBC President Leonardo Cosio Facebook post sent anonymously to Student Media.

The post, Student Media confirmed, was written by Leonardo Cosio, SGC-BBC president, on Friday, Dec. 8, 2017 in SGA BBC Alumni, a closed Facebook group. The decision, according to the post, was decided by Cosio, Meredith Marseille, SGC-BBC vice president and Jamie Adelson, SGC-BBC chief of staff.

No official announcement was made to the student body because SGC-BBC has not officially stepped away from the merger discussion, according to Cosio and Krista Schmidt, president of SGC-MMC.

“The message I wrote to alumni was intended for that audience alone,” Cosio said in an email to Student Media. “Notifications to the entire student body are to come out of official business and discussions in the committee and I had not shared our decision, that of my Vice President, Chief of Staff and I, with the committee officially in the minutes.”

The group, to which Cosio belongs, has over 100 members. While anyone can find the group and see its members, the posts are only viewable to group members. A photo of the post was anonymously sent to Student Media on Wednesday, Dec. 27.

Legislative structure disagreements between both campuses and needing “more buy-in” from students were why SGC-BBC decided to step away from the deal, according to Cosio’s post.

The committee had previously agreed that if both governments merged, the new SGA would be led by one president from either campus and two vice presidents, one from each campus.

The disagreements mentioned in his post, Cosio explained in an email to Student Media, mainly had to do with the lack of BBC representation in the proposed unified student Senate.

One proposal made by Jose Sirven, SGC-MMC vice president, would have guaranteed eight out of the 40 senate seats for BBC and four for MMC, with the other seats open to either MMC or BBC students, however SGC-BBC believed there wasn’t enough BBC-exclusive seats. Another proposal was to have most seats be elected university-wide by both campuses, but BBC worried the difference in campus population would affect the voting numbers, Cosio’s email read.

Marseille, as Student Media previously reported, had also proposed having two separate senates during one of the meetings held by the SGA Constitution Review Committee.

Cosio himself had planned to propose to the committee a senate where 15 seats would be BBC-exclusive, but recognized how unproportional the arrangement would be because of MMC’s larger campus population.

Lack of support from current and former BBC students, Cosio said, is another reason why SGC-BBC decided to not continue merge discussions.

BBC students were concerned money would be prioritized to MMC under the united government and that there would be unequal representation in the senate, according to Cosio’s email. Students were also concerned over political party tickets, something exclusively found in MMC elections but not at BBC. SGC-BBC alumni’s had also voiced their opposal to the merger.

But Schmidt said that while she understands the concerns students had, the merge, she believes, would have been beneficial for all students and wouldn’t have affected BBC’s “campus culture.”

“The biggest issue is that people don’t understand what SGA does,” Schmidt said. “They don’t understand how we’re operating now and how we could be operating so much better.”

And for Schmidt and her VP, uniting SGA is the best way to improve communication and operations between both campuses. Additionally, SGA’s role is to do what’s best for FIU, Schmidt said, so they wouldn’t be basing decisions on whether it’s an MMC or BBC issue.

“I feel like we’re kind of facing the same problems but we’re not seeing it that way and at the end of the day we’re FIU. When you graduate, you’re an FIU student, you’re not an MMC student, you’re not a BBC student, you don’t even think about those things anymore,” Schmidt said. “So we kind of want to start breaking down that barrier that we’re putting.”

Additionally, the merger would have provided BBC students the possibility to become SGA president and sit on the Board of Trustees, something Lunsford said only SGC-MMC presidents are allowed to do, under Florida law, because MMC is the larger campus. However, BBC students at previous committee meetings voiced doubts that a BBC student would be able to become president because of MMC’s larger population.

Created last semester by Larry Lunsford, vice president of Student Affairs, the committee was appointed to review and revise the SGA Constitution, which includes the Election Code and other related documents to clear up discrepancies which have caused problems in the past few elections, according to Lunsford. The students on the committee – which includes Cosio, Schmidt and their VP’s – also broached the possibility of a merger of the two governing councils. Once the committee’s review was completed, Lunsford would have approved or denied its recommendations.

Other members of the committee include Larissa Adames, SGA coordinator and advisor for BBC and assistant director of Campus Life at BBC; Jamie Adelson, BBC chief of staff; Cooper Eisinger, MMC chief justice; Joshua Mandall, senator for the School of International and Public Affairs and the chairman of the Rules, Legislation and Judiciary Committee; Jerome Scott, coordinator in Campus Life and SGA advisor; Jose Toscano, director of MMC Campus Life.

Cosio said he has no plans to continue pursuing a merge between the two governments during the rest of his term, however, he still supports the concept of a merger if it’s done better. The discussion was rushed and didn’t provide students enough notice, according to his email.

The committee originally had until Friday, Dec. 8, but Lunsford extended their deadline to Wednesday, Jan. 10.

Students with more questions or concerns, he wrote, could email him at sgabbc@fiu.edu or visit SGC-BBC’s office in WUC 301 to request a meeting.

However, Schmidt disagrees with Cosio. In an interview with Student Media on Wednesday, Jan. 3, nearly a month after Cosio’s Facebook post, Schmidt said she supports the concept of a SGA merger, is willing to continue these discussions now or in the future and doesn’t believe the committee was rushed to make a decision.

“It’s a big change for people to grasp so that’s probably why it feels like it’s happening so fast for them,” Schmidt said.

The merger would have united a student government that has been separated since the early ‘90s. Separating into two governing councils happened because BBC students wanted more representation, according to Lunsford. However, BBC was a larger campus back than, with over 10,000 students, an additional college and housing, he said.

The committee will meet one more time before submitting recommendations to Lunsford. The date and time for the meeting is still undetermined as of the time this article was written, but will happen before the SGA applications for 2018-2019 go live in late January.

And while SGC-BBC has decided to not pursue the merger, Cosio and Schmidt are glad to have participated in the discussion.

“We all work for the students regardless of which campus they take their classes at. I am glad this all took place because we have learned a lot from it and because our intentions were to better the student experience at our FIU,” Cosio said in his email. “I want more students to get involved in this process whether it be through election or otherwise because you really help us do our job better and students really can make a difference at this level.”

Featured Image by Bridgett Zayas/PantherNOW