So Long, Farewell – My Last Post

In less than a month I will be graduating from FAU. And because of my soon to be departure, I will turning over this blog to the UP's Managing Editor Mike Anguille. My time at the UP has been a blast and the students that I've met through working with the newspaper I will remember for a long time.

My time covering Student Government has been especially rewarding and I'd like wish both Tony Teixeira and Jared Torres luck in the coming year. I won't be around to see what happens, but I've trained two students on my staff to take over the SG beat once I leave. I'm sure they'll do a great job and I am just as sure next year's SG leaders will call them biased as I've been called throughout my time here.

Elections Board Pushes Dispute Hearing...Again

On Monday the elections board decided to push the dispute hearing for the second time. It has now been rescheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Dean of Student Affairs' conference room.

Student Bill of Rights and the Judicial Branch

The Chief Justice of Student Government, Jason Blinder, approached me today and asked if I could find out what students would like to see in a student bill of rights. So I am posting this blog item to find out from my readers what if anything they would like to see in such a document.

Blinder also asked what students might think about having a separate student court for each campus and a university wide "supreme court." The supreme court, he says, would have limited abilities and strict guidelines when dealing with appeals. The individual student courts might be set up as having one judge and a student jury to hear court cases.

Hopefully, this discussion will stay constructive, but it probably won't.

Elections Dispute Hearing Pushed to Monday

The elections board was unable to meet on Friday so they've rescheduled the dispute hearing for Monday at 8:30 p.m.

Getting the Girls to Vote

In an elections violation filed against Jared Torres, Elections Commissioner Sadiq Mohamed states that an unnamed Torre-supporter in Indian River Tower said he was "getting all the girls on the second floor to vote for Jared." Apparently, getting the girls on the second floor of the dorm rooms to vote is a violation of SG's elections statutes.

In fact, getting the girls to vote is so awful Mohamed called the actions of the Torres camp "irreprehensible." He believes that even though Torres lost, this act should not go unpunished.

Elections Board to Hear Dispute

SG's elections board met Monday and decided to hear presidential candidate Jared Torres' election dispute on Friday at 1:30 p.m. Torres has said the last thing he wants to do is drag this out and have a repeat from last year's election that ended up taking more than 100 days to resolve. He also says that what he really wants is a detailed print out of where the votes came from to make sure there was no unusual amount of voting activity coming from one location or IP address.

Anonymous Comments

It seems that since SG's elections got into full swing, the comment boards here on my blog have been blowing up, which is great because I love seeing students actually care for once. Of course I do not think personal attacks are very productive or serve any other purpose than to inflame others. And I have to say that these comments would mean a lot more to me if students actually put their names on them. But seeing that most students are afraid they mean very little to me.

Everything that I write whether good or bad has my name is attached to it. All of my work is scrutinized to the fullest. As a journalist I have to accept that and live with it. It's easy to post anonymously and cloak yourselves in the anonymity of the internet. To never have to accept responsibilty for your words or what you write. If I do not feel comfortable putting my name on a piece of work then I don't write it. It's much harder to put youself out there.

There are some students who always attach their names to their work. I don't always agree with them, but I do applaud them. Here are a few of those students:

Michael Hallenstein
Jenna Sereni
Chris Mack
Gary Goldberg
Dan Alexander
Bryce Jones
Sadiq Mohamed

I am sure there are others but the ones above immediately come to mind.