“I fear the confusion that lies within consolidation and its new SG strayed some students away,” said Jadzia “Jazzy” Duarte, USF St. Petersburg student body president, on the 2020 elections.
Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By Katlynn Mullins and Emily Wunderlich
When USF’s three student governments consolidate in July, USF St. Petersburg will have its own campus council with nine members, as well as nine seats on the system-wide senate.
But the campus will have to hold a special election in the summer to fill its positions. Only one student has applied for campus council, and six for the senate.
And as campaigning for SG general elections begins today, it remains unclear which of the elected positions will be paid and how much they will earn. This year, 22 members of USF St. Petersburg’s SG are collectively making $70,704 in salaries.
Those details won’t be resolved until the student governments from all three campuses agree on a consolidated financial code, which outlines the process and regulations for allocating student fee revenue.
Although the next meeting about the financial code is scheduled for Feb. 21, Jadzia “Jazzy” Duarte, USF St. Petersburg student body president, could not predict when the financial code would be finished.
“I’m not worried that we’re going into this election cycle with an unfinalized financial code,” Duarte said in an email to The Crow’s Nest. “This code will be used for the next Student Government placements, and the new leadership will have meetings with current leadership before taking office to understand the new process.
“The current budget that we’re making will be for the 2020/2021 fiscal year, so they will not be affected as much until the (next) election cycle comes Spring 2021.”
The three campus councils will be responsible for recommending the allocation of student fee revenue to the Tampa-based, Tampa-dominated SG senate. Each council will have six members, plus a campus attorney, campus public defender and campus financial officer.
Each campus will also have a governor and lieutenant governor who will essentially replace the current SG presidents and vice presidents.
The system-wide senate will comprise 60 seats — five of which will be guaranteed to each campus, while the rest are apportioned “according to the percentages of the total number of students enrolled at each campus.”
For USF St. Petersburg, that means a total of nine seats — leaving three vacant if all six who have applied are elected.
“Personally, I did expect more students to apply,” Duarte said. “We were out tabling and advertising for weeks. We were hoping that through engagement events (i.e. SG hangouts) that we would get more interest.
“I fear the confusion that lies within consolidation and its new SG strayed some students away.”
Students are able to vote for system-wide presidential and senate candidates from any campus.
On the ballot during the March 2-5 election are three presidential tickets from USF Tampa and one from USF St. Petersburg. For governor and lieutenant governor of each campus, there are two tickets from St. Petersburg, one from Sarasota-Manatee and two from Tampa.
According to The Oracle, the student newspaper in Tampa, for the system-wide senate, 68 students have applied from Tampa, six from St. Petersburg and three from Sarasota-Manatee.
But, despite Tampa’s larger student population, its voter turnout has seen a dramatic drop in recent years.
In 2019, 3,677 out of 43,866 students voted. In 2017, 8,636 out of 43,542 voted — a 68% drop in two years.
In 2019, 574 out of 4,908 USF St. Petersburg students voted — putting St. Petersburg’s turnout at about 12 percent and Tampa’s at about eight.
“I do not think that Tampa is at an advantage due to their student population,” Duarte said. “It’s not the population that matters as much, but more so the amount of students who vote.”
St. Pete’s candidates
The following information was pulled from each candidate’s application.
Their biographies were not immediately available because SG’s supervisor of elections, Maria Starr, was inaccessible over the weekend, according to SG adviser Bob Herron.
System-wide president and VP
P: Trevor Martindale, political science major.
VP: Darnell Henderson, graphic science major.
Governor and lieutenant governor (St. Pete campus)
G: Jonathon Hatzistefanou, political science major.
LG: Veronica Jimenez, political science major.
G: Andrea Rodriguez Campos, junior environmental science and policy major.
LG: Isaiah Castle, sophomore political science major.
System senate
Michael Johnson, junior environmental science and policy major.
Yelizza’s Mercedes, sophomore biomedical science major.
Eran Fruehauf, sophomore political science major.
Emily Maronie, sophomore political science major.
Hatzistefanou and Jimenez.
Campus council
Fruehauf.
