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The goal of the SAM Party is to streamline the RSO funding process, increase transparency between Student Government and the students, eliminate any cognitive dissonance between the students and the facilities on campus that work with and for them, maintain responsible spending of the budget for events on campus, and further extend the new commissions process to more cultural and religious groups on campus.
Presidential Candidate Gilman and I are involved very heavily on campus in groups like Kappa Alpha Omicron, UNF Esports, UNF Ultimate Frisbee, and Honors Student Union, to name a few clubs and organizations. Along with our involvement in these organizations, we have collected a large sector of peer influence and have increased the number of perspectives that both of us are able to hear from. We value transparency and communication with all 17,000 students on campus, and want to be able to represent all students, regardless of their backgrounds. We feel the best way for all of the students’ voices to be heard is for them to be involved in clubs that represent their interests. Moreover, we feel that increasing the organizations’ knowledge on the fund-requesting process would help increase the number of events on campus, the student involvement, and overall increase the osprey pride of our campus.
UNF is home to many events like Ozfest, Winterfest, and the comedy show during Week of Welcome. Presidential Candidate Gilman and I have a goal to increase the transparency between the university departments in charge of events to allow for students to more easily see how their spending goes into the funding for the events and for there to be more communication between the students and the university departments responsible for the events. Building on the ideas of transparency and communication between students and organizations on campus, Student Government currently has an initiative called the “Osprey Voice” which attempts to tackle this level of communication. President Candidate Gilman and I would love to be able to apply a level of personability to this and all other communication initiatives. We want to make sure that our idea of being representative of the population is first and foremost that we are here for the students and not just holding the positions for the sake of being President and Vice President. We want all voices and concerns to be heard and addressed.
One of the largest concerns that we have heard is that the funding for events is unbeknownst to students or difficult for students to get access to the information. We want the information on how much money is spent on Ozfest, for example, to be fully transparent to the students throughout the process of picking the artists and other aspects of the development process. With this access to information, we also want there to be a level of responsibility applied to the funding and for there to be more events throughout the semester, instead of having more staggered, larger events each semester.
Our last point of information is the increase in commissions to other religion and culture clubs on campus. We want the Vietnamese Student Association, Filipino Student Association, Jewish Student Association, and Latin American Student Organization, to name a few organizations, to have commissions and access to the funding they need to represent their clubs’ goals. UNF is a diverse campus, and that diversity should be fully supported in any way that Student Government can do so.
Presidential Candidate Gilman and I want to highlight that UNF is not just a college, but a culture of care, integrity, accountability, excellence, and civility. UNF is a home for all its 17,000 students and we want everyone to be as represented as possible. With our newer introductions to Student Government and the way it operates, we are aiming to maintain the ideas of our peers and better reflect the overall population of UNF while striving to fill the seats of Vice President and President.
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Editor’s Note: Horatio Gilman and Will Raffier represent the SAM Party and are running for student body president and vice president in the Spring 2025 student government election. Gilman and Raffier are current members of the SG Senate. To view Spinnaker’s candidate profile on Gilman and Raffier, click here.
