With UCF’s Student Government Association Senate Elections starting soon, KnightNews.com gathered information for students wanting to run and asked SGA Attorney General Nick Gurney for an opinion on when active campaigning is allowed to start.
In the opinion, Gurney wrote that “all Active Campaigning should be withheld until after 5 p.m. on the Wednesday of the Fourth (4th) week of the Fall semester.”
In order to run for Senate, students need to collect signatures on this petition form from the SGA website. Most will need 50 signatures from the college they represent.
The signatures are due by this Wednesday at 5 p.m. to the SGA office on the second floor of UCF’s Student Union. Check out the information sheet for candidates SGA published here. Those running will need to attend at least one information session to hear the rules. The dates are on the information sheet linked earlier.
Once all the signatures are collected, candidates will need to fill out this SGA declaration form and have it turned in before 5 p.m. Wednesday. Anybody who is late won’t be able to get their name on the ballot.
KnightNews.com will work to contact each candidate for office to determine where they stand on major unresolved past SGA issues, including a controversial provision in SGA statutes allowing members to hold secret meetings, even though many lawyers have come out saying it’s illegal. SGA launched a review of this statute after a letter was sent by KnightNews.com’s attorney explaining why secret meetings are illegal by state agencies.
Since that letter was sent and review began, UCF argued in the Ereck Plancher wrongful death case that its Athletics Association, a private company, is considered an “affiliate” of the University and therefore an agency of the state, subject to public records laws. The Orlando Sentinel issued a scathing editorial after that argument, calling for more transparency at UCF.
As far as SGA is concerned, it’s even more clear the body is part of the University and UCF admits in writing that the SGA Senate and its committees are subject to open government laws. UCF attorneys never made an attempt in writing to KnightNews.com to defend the legality of the controversial SGA statute allowing members of the LJR committee to gather in secrecy to conduct interviews and compile material for a pending impeachment vote. Instead, the UCF attorney waited until after the senator resigned — as expected — and declared the issue “moot,” a legal term suggesting the controversy is over and no longer worth discussing, without giving a legal basis to defend the statute.
KnightNews.com’s attorney then explained in a letter that as long as the statutes contain the provision, the issue is not moot. Soon after, SGA announced it would review the statutes. It’s now been several weeks since that review started, and the outcome has not been announced. KnightNews.com will begin looking into the status of this review to find out what steps — if any — have been taken to review or repeal the secret meeting statute.
KnightNews.com has learned that SGA has been blasted for holding secret impeachment meetings in the past. In a 2008 Central Florida Future story, the paper reported UCF Associate Counsel Youndy Cook downplayed the amount of advice SGA Adviser Christa Coffey said she was given by Cook during a similar controversy, then refused further comment after reporter Stephanie Wilken uncovered e-mails suggesting Cook was more involved than she let on.
In Wilken’s story, she reported a public records attorney she contacted in Miami as well as Adria Harper, the director of the First Amendment Foundation, which promotes transparency in government, both agreed that SGA violated Sunshine Law by closing LJR impeachment meetings.
Check back to KnightNews.com regularly for further updates on the ongoing SGA Secret Meeting Statute Review and for full 2010 SGA Election coverage, including the stance of candidates on major issues, such as whether they support repealing SGA’s secret meeting statute.
Click on the next page below to read SGA Attorney General Nick Gurney’s opinion on early campaigning.
