Leaders from FAU Student Government recently attended the Florida Student Association conference with state government representatives and other student governments to discuss ways to improve Florida’s university system. Among FAU’s nine representatives were David Korn, the University-Wide Council controller; Ancell Pratt III, student-body president; and Michael Moore, Boca Raton-campus governor.
The goal of FAU’s representatives was to show a unified delegation that best served the needs of the students of FAU. At the top of the delegation’s list of things to accomplish was keeping the Florida Bright
Futures Scholarship intact, and trying to prevent further tuition increases.
Governor Moore said that he wanted to lobby state representatives to change the statewide university system from funding universities based on full-time enrollment to funding based on credit hour. What this means to FAU’ s students is that the cost per credit hour per student will be effectively decreased because FAU will receive funding from the state it had not previously received due to the large number of part-time students.
Fortunately for FAU, the FSA had already decided that the state funding system for all state universities was flawed by the full-time student funding system and that all state universities could benefit by lobbying for a change. The Bright Future Scholarship, the university funding system and tuition are all closely intertwined, Moore says. He believes that by changing the funding system to fully fund the university will keep tuition stable, and in turn help to keep the Bright Future Scholarship intact.
The State University Presidents Association is in agreement with the FSA about the need to revamp university funding, and the alliance between SUPA and FSA should prove to be a powerful lobbying body within the state legislature. FAU President Brogan opened the conference with a speech on not only FAU’s needs and goals, but also those of the other state universities in need of legislative change to preserve their educational efficacy.
Moore spoke with Representative Adam Hasner, and Hasner agreed that Bright
Futures needed preservation and that he would work with legislators on ways to accomplish that goal.
UWC Controller Korn sat on the Council of Fiscal Agents, whose job was to improve the way state universities manage their money and accounting procedures for state allocations. Korn’s goal is to implement uniform progress of all the student bodies of the FSA, in order to benefit all students of all state universities. He plans to form the FSA representatives into one uniform lobbying group so that the group can push legislators to help all state schools, rather than just the ones in their district.
On the second day of the conference, the FSA convened three councils comprising student body presidents, vice presidents, and senate speakers to work out a legislative agenda for the year. All three councils agreed that Bright Futures, the funding system and tuition were the top three issues that needed to be focused on in the upcoming year.
The last day of the conference dealt with increasing student voter registration and campus alcohol awareness issues. FAU’s representatives came away from the conference feeling that they had both accomplished and learned a lot.
