Mistakes Were Made, It’s Time to Learn From Them
When we reported an impeachment storm was brewing a few weeks ago, we never knew it would turn into a category five Katrina.
But it did.
And it went way beyond a little golf cart that the Student Government Association members play on every day. In a sense, a type of “perfect storm” was created, for a multitude of reasons, that roared through this University and risked catastrophic damage.
The storm exploded beyond all imagination, and sucked people inside who really should have no place in the middle of SGA — attorneys, politicians and major broadcast news stations from the nation’s 19th largest TV market.
It showed us no one was above it — no matter the position you hold, experience you have or degree you’ve obtained. It showed us what happens when people who disagree refuse to bend, compromise and work together for the greater good of the UCF and Orlando community.
In the process, it has also hurt feelings, reputations and friendships. And that’s a shame.
This is college. We are students. We’re all here to make mistakes — and learn from them. It’s OK if we mess up, as long as we admit what we did wrong and stop it from happening again.
And we at KnightNews.com will start by being the first ones to do just that.
We made the mistake of making a proposal to SGA to advertise on KnightNews.com, even though SGA doesn’t have policies in place to allow more than one person — the SGA president — to make the call on this major contract without involving multiple people in an open bidding process. Orange County Commissioner Linda Stewart suggested UCF and SGA review this policy so it’s fair for everyone.
We agree with Commissioner Stewart, and we have established our own ethics policy. We will not do any advertising business with the SGA Executive branch until they can clean up their policies so major contracts can be awarded in a fair, open and transparent way, which will avoid any conflicts of interest created by allowing one person so much power in the process — especially a person who has to spend so much money getting elected and doesn’t have to account for it.
This problem is not unique to Mike Kilbride. In the past, SGA presidents who did not get the Central Florida Future’s endorsement cut advertising with the paper for that year. It was wrong to use an advertising contract as a weapon to control the media then, it’s wrong now, and it will continue to be a dark mark on this University until policies are put in place to prevent it in the future.
By the way, refusing to advertise with us won’t silence us, because there are basically no costs to publish our work online. The bottom line is KnightNews.com is here to stay. And any attacks against us and illegal stonewalling only make us stronger. It’s like we are a fire of truth and you are pouring gasoline on us, intensifying our desire to uncover how students’ money is being spent.
But refusing to advertising with us will hurt students. It will stop us from buying nicer laptops to edit with, video cameras to cover dances that students work hard perfecting and performing during skits in the UCF arena, and also will stop us from giving more scholarships to students who want to learn a skill they love doing while paying tuition — instead of working at a bar or Taco Bell just to get by.
We’ve talked to lawyers. We know we could sue SGA for First Amendment Retaliation after we were led to believe we’d get this contract until the day our lawyer sent a demand letter detailing why closing senate committee meetings was illegal. We could involve watchdog groups from DC and have a team of lawyers and national media have a field day for this obvious retaliation. But we won’t. We don’t want to put the student body through any more of this garbage.
SGA and Mike Kilbride have mistakes to admit as well. The retreat they had brought a black eye to this University. After KnightNews.com exposed just how lavish it was, at least three professional broadcast operations picked up the story and reported it to tens of thousands of people in Central Florida. We know nice retreats have been done before, but the Reunion Resort is the only 5 star resort we’re aware of an SGA retreat being held at. We’re told the most recent retreat SGA had, the Senate retreat, only cost $6,000 — $2,000 less than Kilbride’s — and served more people. Senators say it was a great time. It was even brought up in the winter break budget meetings.
Instead of SGA admitting it was a bad time to have a retreat at such a nice place, the lack of a prompt, open response detailing everything led us to investigate, request public records, and uncover how the Disney tickets donated to a BOT member raised questions about whether the donation possibly violated Florida’s ethics laws. UCF spokesman Grant Heston admitted UCF is now investigating to see if this is the case.
“Out of an abundance of caution, UCF will look into what reporting action, if any, is required for the tickets,” Heston said. “If anything is necessary, we’ll obviously take the appropriate steps.”
Although we had the form printed and ready to go that could launch a state ethics investigation into Kilbride for accepting these tickets, we decided not to file it. After all, this is college. And we’re all here to make mistakes and learn from them — including the SGA president. There’s no need for us to throw him into an investigation that could stay with him forever.
It was a mistake for SGA to have the retreat at such a luxurious resort. The resulting public outcry from professional media and professional politicians serves as proof. Now these student leaders know that they have to watch it when they go on conferences and plan retreats when they enter the real world. It’s better to make these mistakes now and learn from them, than doing so after graduation when they can cost you in the real world. It’s too bad they still haven’t admitted the valuable lesson they’ve learned.
Speaking of the real world, it is completely inexcusable the way UCF Associate General Counsel Youndy Cook has behaved. Based on our observations, the UCF attorney has incited both sides into an all out war just to try and prove a point. In the process, she appeared to try misleading our attorney about whether UCF could send us e-mailed public records electronically instead of by charging us a much higher amount to print them. When we involved other parties — including the Florida Attorney General’s office — in an e-mail thread about this topic, UCF promptly admitted they could release the records in a cheaper format. As you can probably gather, our investigation suggests an attorney from Bill McCollom’s office informed Cook she was wrong about refusing to release electronic records in the past, and she kept that stance with us even though she knew it was wrong.
Youndy Cook should be setting an example about being honest and open and why it is important. She should not be pushing the legal limits of secrecy just to prove a point — that fighting her will cost thousands of dollars in court and likely isn’t worth it. She did this to Beta Theta Pi, and the fraternity prevailed when the University settled. This adversarial approach should not be her standard operating procedure, and her boss Scott Cole and President John Hitt should reign her in before she causes someone to file a lawsuit against UCF that will cause much more harm than can be imagined. Instead of fueling the fire, Cook should also have been doing her job and spending time advising Kilbride about ethics laws instead of concocting ways to justify him keeping meetings and documents secret that shouldn’t be.
Moving Forward with a better SGA, UCF Community
We know the last few weeks were rough, after this minor impeachment storm grew into what could have — and possibly still may become — a public and costly lawsuit for the University. We hope the storm is over, and that we’re not just stuck in the eye with another violent squall about to consume us all again. We also hope that like with any bad storm where things get nasty and rough, there is a silver lining after it passes and the sun comes up.
It’s at that point when people come together and rebuild. Neighbors help neighbors, groups come together, new ideas and ways of doing things come about, and the community that suffered through such a rough time comes out better and stronger in the end.
It’s time for UCF and SGA to do just that and change their policies. It’s time to stop hiding behind FERPA privacy regulations to stonewall the public, when media and students want to know what their money is being spent on. It’s time UCF and SGA work with us to settle our disagreements before we are forced to bring this issue to court. According to legal experts, the excuse of using FERPA to redact SGA leaders’ names from SGA records likely won’t hold water in court anyway.
The identities of students who choose voluntarily to be involved in SGA’s public proceedings become public at that time. It defies credulity for UCF to assert that their identities are public to those who attend the meeting, and can even be published in news stories, but then somehow FERPA entitles them, after waiving any right to confidentiality, to have UCF redact any identifying information from the audio of the public meeting, legal experts have said.
SGA President Mike Kilbride took a good faith step to stopping this practice last week. Although he cautioned it wasn’t precedent changing to SGA records policies, he finally forked over a stack of documents related to the retreat, and didn’t charge us one dime for it, and “waived” his FERPA rights so we could see his name on the forms. It’s early in Kilbride’s presidency and these last few weeks will be forgotten in favor of great things he does — if he chooses to stay on the side of students and fight for them the rest of his term.
The documents Kilbride released showed our initial reporting was accurate regarding the $35 per plate meal– a $29 base price which was subject to a 21 percent service charge — bought the cabinet members a nice meal option including possibilities of coconut-curried mahi mahi, grilled jump shrimp with a pina colada essence, baked pork loin with jerk seasoning, and other fancy sides. The documents also showed SGA tried negotiating prices down, and tried finding good deals where they could by shopping around to different resorts.
With a Senate election around the corner, it is now up to SGA officials to start writing bills, changing statutes and removing provisions for secrecy — or else risk being removed themselves by an uprising of students who don’t like the way things are being run. This means the LJR impeachment closed door policy needs to be repealed. SGA has admitted they’re reviewing their policies, and we can only hope this one is at the top of their list.
Even though legal experts believe the documents are public regardless, everyone on SGA should waive their FERPA rights so students and student media can access agendas, e-mails and other public records county commissioners believe we’re entitled to get without being raked over the coals to get them. We will ask each candidate whether they will waive their FERPA rights before Senate elections, and let our readers know who will stand for openness and who will stand with secrecy before they vote.
Finally, SGA needs to become more open and transparent when it comes time to award big contracts — especially those over $5,000 — so there will be no question of pay to play scenarios and people won’t try and buy candidates during campaigns anymore. We aren’t naming names on this topic, or even administrations, but the bottom line is this process has gone on for years and UCF’s professional advisers should have done more to monitor it, and need to put policies in place to remove even the perception of it happening in the future.
It’s time for SGA to show the students and surrounding community they can operate in openness and be proud of what they do. Because if they choose to fight transparency the next time around, and spark another storm as a result, there’s no telling whether everyone, or even SGA as a whole, will make it out standing.
SGA has been shutdown before when spending and policies became over the top. Let’s all work together now to make SGA stronger, transparent and an organization that serves the student body in a way which everyone can be proud.
