The Morning After The Revolution?
UF’s Orange and Blue Party must be feeling in fall 2008 what we in the Students Unite Now Party felt in fall 2000, or Acess Party felt in Spring 2004. Wait… those were all presidential election years. Hehe.
But, no seriously. Blockbuster turnout exceeding 10,400 students… in a fall election. “The one that doesn’t count”! Such turnout is almost unheard of even in a spring election, much less the snooze-fest that is the fall campaign.
And as Christian pointed out on his page, the O&B achieved this turnout without a dime of help from the Greek community and its allies in the student organization establishment. Granted, they did get an assist from the real presidential election, and from the bizarre incident where thousands of Alligator newspapers went missing because they posted an anti-SG-corruption report.
But this is tremendous news. I’ll be able to do a better analysis once I get the actual vote totals, but for now, the historic comparisons…
12/47 seats is the second best performance in a fall election by the GDIs… ever. In 2000, with a split in the Greek community, SUN won 13/40 thanks to Districts C and D. In 1998, they won 8 with seats from on-campus and District C. And in 2005, Impact won pieces of on-campus and District D (like O&B has done today, but just not as well).
O&B split District D for only the 3rd time in recent history. In 2000, SUN won 9/13; in 2005, Impact won 4/13. So O&B’s 5 seats is the second best showing for District D GDIs in history.
District E is a tie between an Independent and a GDI. I expect FBK to elect the Independent if he shows up for the first Senate meeting on the fall senators, just to stick it to the GDIs. But this is the first time since the mid-90s that the GDI not only fielded a candidate for the miscellaneous district, but pushed FBK into 3rd place.
There are 13 on-campus seats, including the vacant Family Housing spot. O&B won 7 to Gator’s 5. This is perhaps the first time ever – I’d have to double check – that the GDIs actually won a majority of the on-campus seats. Vision won 3/7 in 1997 and 1998, I believe Impact won 2 in 2005, and I believe Hume (and Tolbert before that) has been a reliable if lonely outpost otherwise thanks to the honors kids.
All around tremendous news. Now the hard part – laying down the ground work for a serious campaign for the top spots in the Spring. You guys can do it, and you’re proving you don’t even necessarily need rebellious parts of the SG establishment to do it.
Congratulations!
If 0&B would have gotten 50 more votes in C and 50 more in D, we would have won 26 seats.
Combine that with the rumors that Greeks were filling out affidavits saying they lived in C & D in order to change the out come. We are investigating the affidavits.
I’ll post the numbers later tonight.
Damn, that’s impressive for a crew that doesn’t appear to have any support from the usual suspects (greeks, college councils, etc.).
Look forward to hearing more about your feat – and watching you guys take them on in the Spring! (You guys should set O&B up on Paypal – j/k.)
You do realize they campaigned door-to-door, illegally. O&B broke a massive amount of campaign rules, based their campaign on slanderous remarks against the Gator Party.
People didn’t vote for O&B because they thought O&B was going to do great things for the student body. People voted because they saw them as the lesser of two evils. Students were brainwashed into believing the Gator Party is an evil, corrupt group. If those e-mails published in the alligator WERE true, they were probably taken out of context to make Gator Party look bad.
There was certainly a great deal of foul play with this election and it was mostly one sided. O&B doesn’t deserve the seats they got.
On a side note, Greeks didn’t illegally change their addresses. I overheard some O&B person talking about it and the only true evidence he had was hearsay. It never happened.
On yet ANOTHER note, O&B is supported by a student group. They are supported by SDS and just happened to fill their slate with members of SDS in order to gain their support. This sounds a lot like the accusations of what Gator does. Hmm…maybe its just politics, and you O&B people just bitch because you have no friends. I don’t know.
And, pray tell, why would the Alligator run emails they thought weren’t legit? That opens them up to massive legal liability (just like FBK learned with the Grapski case).
And for the love of God and all that is holy, campaigning door-to-door is not illegal if you do it properly.
It’s illegal if you post flyers on doors in the residence halls without the permission of the owner of the room or housing. Is that improper enough for ya?