By: Joseph Basco, News Editor

Student Government Red Party student body presidential candidate Carlo Fassi will not be the only one running for the position this spring.

UNF students John Fails and Phillip Sabado announced their candidacies under the Moderate Green Party Feb. 6 on Fails’ Facebook page, a contrast from the announcement event the Red Party held at the Student Union Ballrooms Jan. 18.

The candidates created a Facebook group for the Moderate Green Party, which has 96 members as of Feb. 21, all of whom are not necessarily party members. The group page contains a list of nine platform initiatives that Sabado posted, but Fails condensed the platform into a single statement for the Spinnaker in an interview Feb. 17.

“The platform that me and Philip are running on is focused around reopening a new type of dialogue with Student Government and the students around campus, particularly non traditional students, kind of like myself,” Fails said.

Fails and Sabado will plan to run without a group of senators, but Fails said not having any previous party affiliation will allow for new ideas and thoughts to enter the SG forum.

Even though Fails lacks prior involvement in SG, he said he is involved in the Student Veteran’s Association, the UNF chapter of the Political Science Honors Society and the UNF Model United Nations group.

Fails, 28, is married and currently in his second year at UNF as a political science major, after gaining his associate’s degree at FSCJ. He said one of his long-term goals is to work at the United Nations and deal with foreign policy.

Read the Spinnaker next week for a platform comparison of the Red Party and Moderate Green Party.

Email Joseph Basco at news@unfspinnaker.com.

Watch this animated short based on the story you’ve just read. It was created by a student in the Applied Journalism class at UNF.