With the opening of the University Student Center, students can meet, eat, study and sleep in what is destined to become the center of campus life while taking pride in their sacrifices that turned a 37-year-old dream into a concrete reality.
The opening is especially sweet for the four current and former students who put their reputations, time and coursework on the line to make it happen. A team effort across the entire university system, they all called it, but as these students and graduates walk across the polished concrete floors, they will be first amongst equals—though few remaining know their names or their accomplishments.
“This building was made possible by a tremendous effort throughout the university, especially among the student leaders who worked tirelessly on behalf of their peers,” said USF Trustee Debbie Sembler during the groundbreaking in spring 2011.
“Student leaders,” the press releases have said and will invariably continue to say—the nameless and faceless idealized do-gooders and go-getters of the student body, props in the pursuit of a vision of what the university is and what it could be, organized and led by the professionals and politicians.
But the work of these students not only contributed to the USC by unifying the student body behind an idea, but also helped change state law that implicitly separated universities into haves and have-nots for student services.
There is Jon Ellington, the consensus builder and peacekeeper, the midpoint between his two higher-strung colleagues. Ellington served as student president and then vice president as he partook in negotiations between Tallahassee and Tampa.
Reuben Pressman graduated as the darling of the entrepreneurship program and has started or nurtured several civic and commercial projects. He’s a natural pitch man, personable and optimistic, but has little interest in getting bogged down in committee thinking. “He’ll be the mayor of St. Pete, one day,” said Olga Bof, Pressman’s fellow board member with the small business support group Keep Saint Petersburg Local.
James Scott is the policy wonk, intense and knowledgeable with “the numbers” as his guide. Since early in his college career he has been a major force in the student political structure. Though he lost a bid for a second presidential term, his opponent, Mark Lombardi-Nelson, is bringing him into the executive branch as chief of staff.
The last is Sarah Henry, who gets perhaps the least amount of credit, because while her colleagues were travelling between board rooms and the capitol, she was keeping students engaged and the issue alive at home from her pulpit as senate president. Without her, the students never would have bought into the idea, Ellington said.
“Before we could go to the Pinellas County delegation, there had to be a clear voice of the students,” Ellington said. “You can’t just have the six or seven people in Student Government saying, ‘Alright, this is what students want.’ We had a survey that we sent out, the largest response to a survey in the school’s history. … There was overwhelming support for increasing fees.”
By the time the students were included in the idea to create a student center the project had been alive for eight years, since Bill Heller’s term as USFSP’s chief executive. Heller had attempted to purchase and convert the Bayfront Arena, where the Dali now stands, into a student union and conference center. Even before Heller, civic leaders in the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, then St. Petersburg Progress, had foreseen a need for a student center back in 1975 during the campus’s first major expansion.
“It was simply an inevitable destiny. When they decided to build RHO, there was a new vision for the campus, an urban, residential campus.
At first, the plan was for a “big, big, big building,” Ellington said. “Then, three months later, the economy collapsed.”
Two attempts to get state funding had passed through the legislature, but were vetoed by Govs. Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist.
“We knew the only way this could be done is if the students agreed to increase fees to a level that would pay the bond on a student facility,” said former Regional Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Kent Kelso.
Kelso had been hired by the university to supervise the first years of Residence Hall One, and then to make the push for an expansion of student services. Throughout his career, he has overseen almost 20 housing projects, dining halls, recreation centers and an arena.
“There literally was a moment when we realized it was obvious we (the students) would have to pay for it,” Scott said. “So we needed approval to raise fees. At the time, the Board of Governors and legislature were locked in a legal battle over who could raise fees.”
During the 2010 legislative session, Rep. Darryl Rouson (D-St. Petersburg) and Sen. Dennis Jones (R-St. Petersburg) sponsored identical bills that would allow USFSP to raise its combined fees, which include activities and services, health and athletics, beyond the 5 percent yearly limit. Both bills died in committee.
“There were so many crisis moments, calamities over and over,” Scott said. “When it was axed out of committee, we were so depressed. Between Helen Levine and Kent (Kelso), they were so calculated and so persistent and we just kept at it, it was a miracle it got thrown back in.”
Helen Levine, the Regional Vice Chancellor of External Affairs, has extensive experience in Florida and university politics. She is also USFSP’s official, registered lobbyist. Levine doesn’t get enough credit, Kelso said. “Helen was dynamite on this whole legislative thing.”
In the eleventh hour, the text of the original, failed bills was universalized, granting the same, one-time fee equalization across the entire university system.
The last step was to get the approval of Gov. Crist.
“We ran into that guy four or five times. Strategically, yes, but unstrategically, too,” Ellington said. When the students and Kelso bumped into Crist outside a bathroom in Tallahassee, they made their pitch.
“We bent his ear as fast as we could,” Kelso said. The group also had a home-field advantage, as Crist, a St. Petersburg resident, kept an office in Bayboro Hall. Ultimately, Crist signed the one-time fee increase into statute, giving the students and administration the opportunity to build their campus center.
The scope of this change is not lost on the student lobbyists or administration.
“Not only were we successful,” Kelso said,” but the state of Florida agreed to do it for all Florida universities. It provided a benefit to every public university student in the state of Florida.”
“There are probably buildings and programs all around the state because of our last ditch effort,” Scott said.
“Nothing would have happened if the student leaders hadn’t stepped up and done their due diligence,” Kelso said. “In my 23 years in higher education, that’s probably the most inspiring thing I’ve seen students do.”
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