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For far too long, the SOAR Party has dominated Student Government elections at UNF, leveraging Greek life popularity to secure seats for candidates. They claim to champion accountability, yet time and time again, they fail to hold their own members to that standard. Instead of prioritizing leadership and service, SOAR has filled the Senate with individuals more focused on personal gain than meaningful change. And this election season, SOAR’s presidential nominee fails to meet the very standards the party claims to uphold through vague and repetitive campaign promises.

“Leadership isn’t about talking, it’s about showing up,” claims SOAR presidential nominee Anthony Balsamo in their most recent campaign video. However, all nominee Balsamo has done so far is talk a big game with no articulation of real achievable strategies to implement this so called “change” on campus he claims to make if elected Student Body President. In SOAR’s recent campaigning efforts, Balsamo consistently flaunts his experience as the previous Attorney General to support his run for Student Body President. While nominee Balsamo states that in his Attorney General position, he’s spearheaded initiatives like securing Icemen Hockey game tickets for the Student Body, I vividly remember him attempting to reserve tickets only for his Chi Phi chapter brothers and other close friends. Actions like these, which I’ve personally witnessed nominee Balsamo make, leave me questioning his integrity and dedication if elected as Student Body President.

Furthermore, in my attendance at the Presidential Debate on February 27th I noticed that instead of offering innovative tangible solutions for student needs, SOAR nominee Balsamo perpetuated the same cycle of vague regurgitated SOAR initiatives with no intention of expanding on his strategies for implementation: a sad cycle that has plagued SOAR for years. In nominee Balsamo’s most recent Letter to the Editor, he makes several commitments to things like academic success, campus safety, and student life but fails to provide goals or strategies he plans to implement to make those commitments a reality.  The student body deserves a leader with a vision and a plan for commitment, not empty repetitive rhetoric.

Lastly, this is not a diss to the SOAR party or any of its members. Currently serving under the Barcal- Davidson administration as Chief of Staff, this will be my third year in Student Government, a journey that began as a SOAR Senator. Early on, I noticed a trend: SOAR Senators using their positions to pad their resumes without putting in real effort. Apart from a few shining senators, this is a trend I continue to see in the SOAR party election season after election season. In the October 18, 2024, Student Government Senate meeting, four SOAR senators—Kate Ferguson, Erin Flowe, Sophie Carollo, and Jessica Till—were removed from their positions for failing to attend their absence appeal hearings after receiving multiple absence points for failure to show up to Senate  events and meetings. Their removal highlights the lack of accountability within the Senate and further demonstrates SOAR’s failure to uphold its own standards—proving that SOAR values loyalty from Greek organizations to recruit student senators over dependability. 

This is why SOAR no longer has my vote, and why you should reconsider your own vote this election season. It’s time we broke the cycle. We deserve representatives who are committed to REAL goals, who are responsible to their elected duties, and dedicated to all students, not just those in their inner circles, sisterhoods, and brotherhoods. This election season I will be voting for TALON in hopes of demanding better leadership and holding Student Government political parties to the standards they claim to uphold.

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Editor’s Note: Kayla Charde currently serves as Student Government Chief of Staff for the Barcal-Davidson administration and served in the same position for the Grosso-Sullivan administration during the 2023-2024 school year.