UPDATE: Read Kilbride’s Knightmare by clicking here.
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A powerful SGA senator, who has been fighting SGA President Mike Kilbride for access to his Knightmare spending database for months, is finally getting a look at the spending data Kilbride shut him out of last year — and he’s speaking out about portions he considers questionable.
KnightNews.com showed Conference Registration and Travel Chairman Fernando Gonzales the portion of Kilbride’s Knightmare database KnightNews.com exclusively obtained through a public records request. One item that caught his eye was how SGA’s Executive Branch spent about $2,000 to fund UCF’s Best Dance Crew in 2010.
UCF’s Best Dance Crew, a philanthropic dance competition, was started by Beta Theta Pi fraternity in 2009. When 2010 rolled around, Beta was unable to host the event because the fraternity was suspended from UCF. So SGA, whose Vice President was a member of Beta at the time, decided to step in and host the event itself. That raised red flags for Gonzales, who said he could only give an unofficial comment on what he considers a “hypothetical” situation, because he still can’t officially see the spending activity directly on Knightmare for himself.
“Over my nearly two years of Senate experience, I have never seen any event be taken over by SGA if the Registered Student Organization couldn’t do it,” Gonzales said. “There are many cases of great events not coming to fruition due to lack of funding, or the organization is no longer registered with KORT, etc. If this former Greek event was indeed adopted and funded by SGA, it will be the first time that I have ever seen SGA continue an organization’s event. This can raise questions of fairness.”
Kilbride, who was Chief of Operations, a top-level cabinet official during the Peterson/Lewis Administration, refused to comment about SGA’s decision to take over UCF’s Best Dance Crew. Specifically, he refused to answer questions relating to whether SGA took any steps to prevent individual members of Beta from being part of or helping with the event while suspended, or whether Kilbride or SGA had any concern of how it might look to the students that SGA took over a suspended fraternity’s event.
“The event you’re asking about happened during the previous administration, and President Kilbride can not speak on their behalf as they have both graduated,” Kilbride’s spokesperson said in a late night email to KnightNews.com.
Kilbride seemed to be heavily involved in the event, as he was an admin for the 2010 Best Dance Crew Facebook page, KnightNews.com uncovered.
According to SGA records, the Best Dance Crew event happened April 14, 2010 — after the Passing of the Gavel Ceremony where Kilbride was symbolically handed power by Peterson. Although Kilbride officially wasn’t sworn in until May, he had considerable power and knowledge over SGA at the time of the event, as his transition from a top cabinet official to president was under way.
Although Kilbride refuses to directly address the issue, Gonzales still has serious questions about SGA’s decision to take over an event a fraternity started but couldn’t host while suspended.
“Why would this event have been deemed worthy of continuing and not the multitude of other events that are often discontinued?” Gonzales asked. “And who exactly made this determination? It is strange that the Exec branch allegedly made a decision like this, when Senate is the branch that directly deals with RSO funding. Of course this event in question being previously run by a Greek organization also raises questions of fairness.”
KnightNews.com had been working since Monday morning to gather information from all parties involved. While Kilbride’s paid team of public relations staff waited until the end of the day to respond, Beta’s Vice President of Communications Jared Greenbaum was available all day and more than happy to handle questions about the event.
While Greenbaum said it was saddening that an event aimed at helping others could become controversial, he was up front about the situation in 2010 when asked about whether members of Beta may have enjoyed or participated in the event while the organization was suspended and not an official registered organization on campus.
“There is no way to control or know if individual students may or may not have helped setup or assist with running a student event,” Greenbaum said. “It must be understood that members of our fraternity are highly involved in other areas of campus, so brothers may have been supporting the event for a different group that they are a part of. As students, we feel we need to support philanthropies put on by the UCF community.”
Now that Beta is back on campus — after UCF Associate General Counsel Youndy Cook signed a settlement agreement following a lawsuit from Beta over what it called an illegal suspension by UCF — Beta is back to hosting the Best Dance Crew event itself. SGA, however, is not completely out of the picture.
This year, SGA helped Beta put on the event by awarding the fraternity one of the limited amount of days where it can allow groups to enjoy heavily discounted rates at the Venue. Kilbride’s spokesperson defended that decision, but provided few details about the approval process.
“These days have been used in the past for events such as KD Shakedown, Zeta Lip Sync, CAB comedy events, Freshman Frenzy, etc.,” the statement released on Kilbride’s behalf said. “Student Government is happy to be able to assist these organizations whose successful events have outgrown the Pegasus Ballroom.”
Kilbride’s office did not respond to questions emailed Tuesday night asking for more details about what agreement SGA has with the UCF Arena, and how many days are available at the reduced rate. For that reason, it’s not clear if SGA has to spend a certain amount of money to qualify for a certain amount of reduced rate days.
The statement from Kilbride’s staff did say, “The venue’s reduced rates days are available to any student organization who hosts an event requiring such a capacity. These days are given out on a first-come first-serve basis, and the application is available on the SGA website and through the Office of Student Involvement.”
Kilbride’s office refused to answer questions posed earlier Tuesday regarding who specifically approved Beta’s application to enjoy one of the discounted rates.
Records provided by Beta show that the fraternity paid the arena $1,260 to rent the space for Best Dance Crew in 2011. When SGA hosted the event in 2010, SGA paid nearly $1,960 to the Arena, records show.
Kilbride’s office also provided information which seemed to conflict with that of the Beta spokesman regarding the fraternity’s intentions to have SGA’s recently created video service cover the event and post videos online.
“And finally, in regards to the incorrect assumption about SGA Extra covering the Beta Theta Pi event, the organization never requested the service. Therefore, SGA Extra never planned on covering the dance competition,” Kilbride’s office said.
But according to Greenbaum, it appears Beta did try to book SGA to shoot the event — just not in time.
“As far as filming goes, we did not book SGA extra in time. There are two cameramen, one was booked for a CAB event at the same time and the other had class, Greenbaum said. “There was no problem or hard feelings, we understood that they couldn’t make it.”
Gonzales wanted to make it clear that he is “not contesting or diminishing the merit of the event in question,” which raised about $5,000 for the American Cancer Society this year. Gonzales indicated that he just wanted to make sure Activity & Service Fee dollars were spent in the most responsible and legal way in this situation.
KnightNews.com also contacted former SGA Chief Justice Matt McCann for his take on the situation. McCann pointed out that while Student Government cannot legally provide funds to Greek Organizations, SGA can certainly do many things to help out and highlight the Greek Community and its accomplishments, which he considers an “integral part of the UCF community.”
“If Student Government can legally and ethically assist in the continuation of a program that brings interest from hundreds of UCF students, Greek and non-Greek alike, then by all means I feel the organization should do so,” McCann said. “It is important, however, to remember that all organizations must be given access to this assistance equally, and with no bias present.”
KnightNews.com will continue investigating SGA’s arrangement with the UCF Arena for allowing organizations discounted rates at the Venue and will post updates when available.
Read Kilbride’s Knightmare records he released on the next page:
