Pictured above: Martindale (left) and Henderson’s knowledge of consolidation and demonstrated commitment to the branch campuses make them the best option for president and vice president of a consolidated Student Government.
Courtesy of Trevor Martindale
By The Crow’s Nest Staff
When you cast your vote this week for the first president and vice president of a consolidated Student Government, there’s only one ticket that fully understands what’s at stake for the smaller branch campuses after consolidation takes effect July 1.
Trevor Martindale and Darnell Henderson’s “4 All” campaign encompasses the specific needs of both our campus and a consolidated university.
In fact, they’ve already been endorsed on social media by USF Sarasota-Manatee’s sole ticket for governor and lieutenant governor, Josh Ghansiam and Melisa Escobar. On Sunday, the Hatzistefanou-Jimenez gubernatorial ticket for St. Petersburg also endorsed Martindale and Henderson.
Of course, we wouldn’t know that if it weren’t for the duo’s exhaustive efforts to campaign across all three campuses.
A successful consolidated Student Government election requires a consolidated effort to inform students about what’s at stake — especially since USF Tampa and USF St. Petersburg consistently struggle with poor voter turnout.
SG leaders on the three campuses have done little to educate students on the new ballot, the big changes and the sweeping implications for their campuses. Not one of the three Student Governments has a website that even lists the candidates for office.
Simply put, the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses cannot afford to be swallowed up by Tampa — especially not in the crucial first year of consolidation.
Tampa is already guaranteed 44 seats on the system-wide senate, leaving USF St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee with only nine and seven, respectively.
If the SG presidency goes to a Tampa student, you can expect that supreme court and key executive posts — all appointed by the new president — will be dominated by Tampa, too.
Geographically, the St. Petersburg campus is the “happy medium” between USF Tampa and Sarasota-Manatee.
Our campus is 35 miles and a long bridge away from USF Tampa. For a Tampa-based SG president to lead effectively, they must be willing to make that drive often — an unrealistic expectation for St. Petersburg, and even more so for Sarasota-Manatee.
But first, some backstory.
One candidate for SG president, Peter Radulovic, is also running for campus governor of USF Tampa. In a gubernatorial debate Feb. 19, Radulovic said: “My vision is that the governor would be an advocate for this campus on its own… The closer the power is to home, the better,” according to The Oracle, USF Tampa’s student newspaper.
If Radulovic is advocating for his own campus as a gubernatorial candidate, how can he be trusted to keep the smaller campuses’ best interests in mind as the system-wide president of Student Government?
Another presidential ticket from Tampa has only been on the ballot since Feb. 23. Claire Mitchell and running mate Gustavo Spangher apparently joined the race 30 hours before the presidential debate, according to The Oracle.
The swift shakeup came after Yusuf Fattah — who was running for president — decided to drop out of the race, leaving his running mate as the new presidential candidate. Mitchell quickly named Spangher as her new running mate.
And that wasn’t the only last-minute change of plans, either. Radulovic initially tapped Guy Dayhoff as his running mate in both the presidential and gubernatorial races. But on Feb. 23, Radulovic added Thomas Knudsen to his presidential ticket after Dayhoff learned he was ineligible to run, The Oracle reported.
It is unclear if Radulovic has found another running mate for his gubernatorial campaign on the Tampa campus.
Their initiatives
Martindale and Henderson’s “4 All” platform has four pillars: for students, for consolidation, for health and for the environment.
For students, they want to establish a “first-generation college student transition program,” where students would be admitted into a six-week summer program to “help with acclimation into the campus environment and academia,” according to the campaign’s website.
They also want to establish an SG scholarship expansion program with funding from SG fundraising events and “other avenues,” set up early syllabus viewing and limit how much money candidates can spend on campaigning — presidential at $2,500, gubernatorial at $1,500 and senatorial at $500.
For consolidation, the pair promises to “veto any budgetary recommendations that jeopardize funding of the smaller campuses.”
They want to establish a trolley system to transport students to and from each campus; allow students to speak with academic advisers from other campuses; and start a biweekly “One USF” podcast in which executive cabinet members would interview students and teachers to “promote unity and identity in the ‘One USF’ model.”
For the environment, the duo has promised to sign an executive order on their first day in office to “not collaborate with or use products from unsustainable corporations.”
The pair would also like to put ORCA food biodigesters on all three campuses, establish a “green gardening fund” to promote SG gardening events and launch a “net zero fund” to create strategies that would achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
For health, Martindale and Henderson are advocating for a reconciliation program that would allow students to complete educational training for drug and alcohol use if they’re first-time offenders, “instead of these mistakes being permanently placed on their student record.”
They also want to provide free menstrual products and extend the amount of counseling sessions available to students for a small fee of $10 to $20.
They’d also establish a student health committee to “ensure that all students are in the correct state to succeed at USF.”
Their SG records
Martindale and Henderson are the only ticket in which both candidates are current members of SG.
Martindale, who serves as St. Petersburg’s chief legal officer, was elected as a senator in fall 2018. Henderson joined the executive branch of SG as its director of marketing and design in fall 2019.
They are also the only ticket that has visited all three campuses in the USF system, according to The Oracle.
But the ticket isn’t completely free of controversy.
In a letter to the editor on Jan. 27, former SG senator Chase Cooley pointed out that two senate applicants for midterm elections in October were accepted after the statutory deadline.
Cooley said his request for a trial through the SG supreme court was denied because the “Chief legal officer (Martindale) determined that since the statute in question does not explicitly state candidates have to be refused, there was no violation.”
In an interview with The Crow’s Nest on Feb. 25, Martindale stood by that decision.
“There’s nothing in the statute that says you cannot run,” he said. “It does not make you ineligible. Case closed.”
He added that enforcing strict guidelines “doesn’t show inclusivity from Student Government.”
“We want as much involvement as possible,” Martindale said.
In April 2019, Martindale sponsored “memos of impeachment” targeting members of St. Petersburg’s SG supreme court. The memos accused five justices of mishandling a trial by acting unethically and unfairly.
“The reasoning behind that was in terms of legality. It made sense,” Martindale says now. “But I was a naive freshman. I was inexperienced.”
The move was countered by then-SG senator Naya Payne, who filed his own memorandum of impeachment against Martindale and the co-sponsors of his impeachment memo, Veronica Jimenez and Zoe Dukas.
Payne also moved to impeach the senate president, the SG vice president and the chief legal officer.
Payne accused Martindale, Dukas and Jimenez of attempting to impeach the judicial branch “out of personal reasons and out of hatred.” He accused the others of conspiring with the senators to impeach the judicial branch.
Payne’s effort failed, and the whole episode gave SG a black eye.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Martindale says now. “You shouldn’t just be banned from Student Government or impeached right away… That was a huge mistake on my part, to just jump straight into impeachment.”
When asked what he would do if a similar situation arose under his administration, Martindale responded:
“I think it would’ve been really helpful if we all just had an emergency meeting… I don’t think much of that would’ve happened if we were all in one room and had talked about it.”
You won’t find a presidential ticket with a spotless record.
However, Martindale and Henderson’s knowledge of consolidation and demonstrated commitment to the branch campuses make them the best option for president and vice president of a consolidated Student Government.
We hope you will vote for the ticket that will ensure USF St. Petersburg and USF Sarasota-Manatee are not forgotten after July 1.
