Pictured Above: This semester, all three USF campuses have seen low voter engagement. St. Petersburg’s voter turnout went from 30 voters in the midterm election to 11 in the most recent interim special election, or expedited midterm election.
Courtesy of Patrick Tobin
By Sophie Ojdanic and Catherine Hicks
In 2015, 394 students voted in the fall elections for student government. This fall’s most recent election? Eleven.
That’s 0.29 percent of the total eligible voters on campus.
The same thing happened at the other USF campuses. At Sarasota-Manatee, only five votes were cast (0.24 percent) and in Tampa, only 1,707 (3.96 percent).
The dismal turnout this fall puts an exclamation mark on several years of voter apathy in St. Petersburg that leaves current and former SG members and campus administrators searching for explanations.
Is SG itself partly to blame for not stressing its work and publicizing its elections?
How much of it has to do with months-long campus closures due to COVID-19?
What about consolidation, which has dramatically changed SG by shifting much of the power to the Tampa campus, 35 miles away?
As regional vice chancellor of student affairs and student success, Patti Helton helps oversee Student Government and other student activities.
She attributes the poor turnout to the pandemic and consolidation, which she says have left students less engaged.
“I’m hopeful that when we get back face-to-face, that we can do better with getting the word out about Student Government and about voting,” she said.
But Dan McGarigal, a 2014 graduate who served as SG’s director of sustainable initiatives for two years, lays the blame on SG itself.
“(The voter turnout) is an utter failure on the part of SG and the candidates to make sure students knew this was happening and make sure they know what each person stands for,” McGarigal said. “ ‘It’s hard virtually’ is not an excuse. Laziness is not electable. Get it together SG. We built you up better than this.”
St. Petersburg has had a student government since its early days as a tiny satellite of the Tampa campus in the late 1960s.
Joan “Sudsy” Tschiderer graduated from USF St. Petersburg in 1971, then became the longest serving staff member in campus history. For years, she was the head of student activities.
“Now, I won’t say that voting was, you know, humongous,” Tschiderer said of the first few Student Government terms. “But …. I can remember a time when there were three candidates vying for the presidency, and it was a tight race. And that was very interesting, because people really recognized that there were funds that could contribute to the good and welfare of the students, and that the primary purpose of the student government was to administer those funds and to provide a voice for the students to the administration.”
But SG has long struggled for relevance on the St. Petersburg campus. St. Petersburg didn’t begin admitting freshmen until 1998 and it didn’t get its first residence hall until 2006.
Even nowadays – before the pandemic – most students live off campus and many have part-time jobs. They seem to have little time for – or interest in – campus activities.
In recent years, SG elections have been marked by apathy, with low voter turnout and SG seats that remained empty because there were not enough candidates. Many elected officials rode into office unopposed and all it took to get elected to the Senate was 25 votes.
Impacts of consolidation
When consolidation took effect in July, SG underwent a change that shifted power from three individual student governments to a university-wide — or federal — government, with local governments on each campus.
The federal government consists of a president and vice president, a 60-member Senate and a nine-member Supreme Court appointed by the president.
USF’s current SG president, Claire Mitchell, and vice president, Gustavo Spangher, both attend the Tampa campus.
In the Senate, each campus is allocated five seats, with the remaining seats apportioned according to enrollment. This year, Tampa holds 44 seats, Sarasota-Manatee holds seven and St. Petersburg holds nine.
Meanwhile, each of the three campuses has a governor and lieutenant governor, a nine-member Campus Council and a five-member circuit court appointed by the governor.
Because not enough candidates qualified to run, St. Petersburg has two vacancies on its Campus Council and one vacancy in the university-wide Senate.
Andrea Campos and Isaiah Castle were elected St. Petersburg’s governor and lieutenant governor last spring.
Helton voiced questions about the positions on SG on each campus.
“One of the things that I haven’t completely understood or, I still don’t understand is, Tampa is a much, much larger campus; I don’t know why we have to have the same exact positions on this campus,” Helton said.
In an interview with The Crow’s Nest before SG’s first special election of the semester, Castle said the Campus Council “would be 100 percent dedicated to serving the interest of the St. Petersburg campus and its students, will oversee (Activity & Service fee) funding (and) confirmations for local positions.”
This year’s budget, which was approved before consolidation took effect July 1, allocated $1.5 million in A&S fee revenue to campus clubs and organizations, including SG itself.
St. Petersburg’s deputy financial officer, Brandon Castle, told The Crow’s Nest that if the Campus Council had not been filled, interim funding decisions would have been handled by students in the federal branch of SG.
According to St. Petersburg’s supervisor of elections, Savannah Carr, this was a concern for the St. Petersburg campus.
“That’s what kept me up at night,” Carr said. “I knew (Campus Councils) were in charge of the budget, but I didn’t realize just how dangerous it would be if Tampa got a hold of our budget.”
Carr’s main concern, she said, was that the Tampa campus does not have the same priorities that the St. Petersburg campus does.
Why is turnout low?
SG members and advisers were quick to point out one thing that greatly affected this semester’s turnout: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Almost all classes have been online since March, meaning there are less students coming to campus. The two open residence halls are both under capacity, with Osprey Suites only 48 percent full and Pelican Apartments only 62 percent full this fall.
Campos, the St. Petersburg governor, said the pandemic “kind of has uprooted everything.”
“I think we are equipped a little bit better this semester to handle the fact that we are not engaging students in a normal way. Or, you know, what would have been seen as normal in past years. So we have planned around that, and we have tried to engage students in different ways.”
Some said consolidation seems to be another factor in SG engagement.
Tschiderer said that being a part of a consolidated SG would be too much for some students.
“If I were going to consider participating in Student Government, at this point in time, I would absolutely not,” Tschiderer said. “I’m not going to – even before the pandemic – drive over to Tampa to be in a lame-duck position to make decisions that impact that (campus), which I don’t actually have much say over.
“You don’t have that sense of control over your own destiny, you’re now just … part of the larger picture, as you’ve always been, but you’ve lost the control of your own destiny. It’s in somebody else’s hands, you can make a proposal. But nobody has to really care about it, because they don’t know anything about St. Pete.”
St. Petersburg SG adviser Robert Herron said consolidation has not had much of an impact.
“I mean, has (consolidation) helped? No,” Herron said. “But I guess I can’t stand here and say, ‘Oh my gosh, if it wasn’t for consolidation,’ because, before we consolidated, we had a difficult time filling up Senate seats.
“So, I don’t think it’s fair to put all the blame on consolidation. I think there are just so many environmental factors – you have consolidation, you have lower enrollment … and yet there are people who still feel like, even though we’re going through all these things, that the output needs to be the same. And I think that’s just a lie. And I think it’s unfair to put that burden on students.”
Enrollment on the St. Petersburg campus has fallen sharply in recent years. This year, the campus’ combined summer and fall enrollment of first-time-in-college freshmen was 386, down dramatically from 647 in 2016.
St. Petersburg’s director of student life and engagement, Dwayne Isaacs, said he started to see a drop in engagement when St. Petersburg began rapidly raising its admissions requirements in 2018 to comply with consolidation standards.
“When the admissions standards changed, and when consolidation was announced and that started to take a little bit of effect, I think things started to become a little bit uncertain for students,” Isaacs said. “I think involvement still was fine. But I think incoming students, we started to see that dip.
“And as we start to see the dip in enrollment, naturally, you’re going to see a dip in involvement. Only because we just don’t have the usual number of students that we have coming in.”
Carr hypothesized that low engagement was caused in part by the pandemic.
“We don’t have students on campus,” Carr said. “But I’ve also heard students are already overwhelmed with online classes and online club activities. They don’t want to have an online job … So I understand that I think it’s mostly due to the pandemic.”
Carr also questioned enrollment’s impact.
“But I want to look at the correlation between enrollment dropping, and SG’s involvement dropping since 2015, not just the last year,” she said. “I wonder if that has anything to do with it.”
Tschiderer shared concerns about the communities that St. Petersburg’s SG is prioritizing.
“This is only my opinion, (but) when you had the residential population (added), more of the programs were designed with the residential population in mind,” Tschiderer said. “So if we have 1000 students who (live on campus), and we have 4000 other students (living off campus), there’s 4000 students that perhaps don’t feel there’s anything for them on campus.
“They come, (go to) class, and they leave. Even though there’s been initiatives, there haven’t been as many initiates that really deal with older students (or) students with families.”
Regional Chancellor Tadlock acknowledged the need to further engage commuter students.
“I think we always need to find more ways to reach out to our commuter population,” Tadlock said. “That is the majority of the students enrolled here. They don’t live on campus, the majority of our students do not. Anything we can do to reach out more and involve commuter and part time students… that would be absolutely something I would support us doing.”
Students seemed to believe that there wasn’t enough done to share information about the election.
Three students shared with The Crow’s Nest on Facebook that they were unaware of an election.
Sophomore management major Austin Banttari said he “had zero clue it was a thing.”
“It just popped up in my OASIS so I clicked on it,” Banttari said. “All I did was read the candidate bios (from the ones who actually put in the effort to write one) and I chose the best one.
“There was no effort from the student body, there was no effort from most of the candidates, and there was no effort from SG to make the election known widespread.”
Senior psychology major Cassie Ellison also said she hadn’t heard about the SG election.
“I usually vote in every one,” Ellison said. “I understand that it (being virtual) is more difficult but I feel more could have been done to get the word out about this election.”
Suggestions to remedy low engagement
Isaacs explained that SG isn’t the only area suffering from low engagement this year.
“I think students have a lot on their plates that is occupying their time,” Isaacs said. “… And so I think those things rise to the top of their things that they’re going to choose to spend their time on or focus their mind on. And it’s hard to compete with that. So it’s not just SG turnout that’s low, we’re seeing engagement in general as low, and that’s not just in SLE. That’s in Compass, that’s in housing … Anyone that is putting out a program is seeing low turnout.”
Tampa Governor McCloskey and Lieutenant Governor Blair-Andrews acknowledged that in light of consolidation, there should be more efforts made from the Tampa Student Government to assist with elections on the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.
“I think we definitely can work towards a consolidated (or) ONE USF marketing… We can also help outside of just Tampa elections,” McCloskey said. “So, let’s say if we have an election at St. Pete, we just had one – we definitely could have helped with the marketing. And I think we should do that moving forward.”
“One thing that’s already been discussed for possible changes to this new structure is a few more positions at the federal level that are marketing related to kind of consolidate the Student Government brand in a way so that the marketing across the three campuses looks more united than the three different styles it looks like right now,” Blair-Andrews said.
Campos and Castle said that this year, SG has had to become more “inventive” with its marketing.
They also hope to reach out to more students in the future to coincide with increased enrollment.
“One of the big things that we were trying, we’re working already to kind of improve, is not only the diversity of our campus, but just increasing enrollment in general,” Castle said. “Turning (student engagement) around is going to be something that we’re going to try to prioritize in the future.
“I think one of the easiest things that we can do is have more than 11 votes, have more than 11 people participating in anything that we’re doing. That’s an easy goal that’s right in front of us.”
But Herron doesn’t think there needs to be more outreach.
“All students know that Student Government is here for them, to advocate for them, to provide for them,” Herron said. “But … let’s not creep on people until they sign up for our lecture, and get our newsletter. It’s just a fine balance. It’s a fine balance, particularly on a campus like this.”
Herron went on to question the demand commuter students have for SG.
“What’s the demand of commuter students when it comes to our services?” Herron said. “And again, I think it’s a mixture of both ‘do they know what we do and do they feel like they need what we do?’ And so we can help communicate that first one. But we can’t make somebody need us.”
Read the rest on crowsneststpete.com.
The future of SG
General elections will be held in the spring to elect a new university-wide president and vice president, as well as new local government leaders.
Advisers, participants and employees of Student Government look to the future with optimism and hope that student engagement will improve.
Herron said he remains optimistic for the future of SG on the St. Petersburg campus.
“It is OneUSF now and it is one student government,” Herron said. “And I will say that with everything that’s been put in place, I believe (Student) Government will be stronger as a whole and will be stronger here at the St. Petersburg campus.
“It might look a little messy, but I believe (consolidated SG) is gonna work. And I believe it’s going to serve the students of USF, and empower us to serve the students of USF, including the use of our campus.”
Tschiderer is also optimistic about SG’s future.
“I would love to see us return to a collaborative inter-campus conversation between three independent Student Governments,” Tschiderer said. “And each of those Student Governments could focus on their own constituents and encourage more participation with their local constituents. And then have a collaborative (virtual) meeting or two that keeps the lines of communication open between all of the campuses … I think you can get more done when you focus.”
In Tampa, McCloskey and Blair-Andrews recognize the importance of incentivizing student engagement through recognized positions to engage with Student Government.
“(One thing) Student Government has improved is we have more programs being offered right now where students can engage with SG in an official way where they kind of have a title on a roll,” Blair-Andrews said. “Giving students the opportunity to apply for an official role where they can engage with SG, (where) it’s not just like counting on them to show up to town halls – that has been a plus for us this year,” Blair-Andrews said. “… I think we have more boards, official boards and groups going on right now than we ever have before, all at once, where students, like students from outside of Student Government that are on our payroll are involved and have a say in things.”
Despite the optimism that Student Government efforts will improve student engagement and operations, some previous SG members expressed concern and distrust.
Madeline Rhodes, who served as an SG senator last spring, said her time in SG made her “apathetic to the supposed democratic processes on campus.”
“I was on the appropriations committee and many senators felt that we were strong armed into making decisions by SG advisers,” said Rhodes, a senior international studies and sociology major. “I left SG feeling that student representation on campus is ultimately a facade to create the illusion that students have a voice in the allocation of our school’s funding.
“Whether I argued hard or not, almost all of the funding that the school wanted to push through was passed. So, this is a hot take that some die-hard SG members may argue against, but I never felt like I had a real voice, and that has to translate to how the student body feels. Maybe the system needs to be restructured to give students more autonomy in SG. I doubt it, though, because the school wants what it wants.”
Tschiderer hopes to see developments soon.
“The primary student voice needs to be strong,” Tschiderer said. “And I look forward to a great resurrection.”
