Access Party: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
The atmosphere outside the Reitz was electric on February 15, 2015. Two student government parties faced off that evening, clashing in the traditional battle of chants. Swamp Party, the contemporaneous iteration of the “System” party, had dominated student government politics at the University of Florida for decades. Challenging them was a new political force, Access Party, whose members stood embattled from a contentious campaign season. As both parties waited with bated breath, the announcer declared “Treasurer, Access.” A crowd of blue bodies erupted in triumphant screams. As the excitement calmed, the announcer continued, “President/Vice President, Access.” This time, the triumphant cries did not abate. The Access Student Body President-Elect, Joselin Padron-Rasines, hugged the Access Party campaign president as tears streamed down her face. For the first time in over a decade, the System’s monopoly on power had been broken. Chants of “Access! Access! Access!” echoed into the evening.
The Access Party victory in the 2015 student government spring elections was a historical insurgency. With a record-high turnout of 12,742, the System’s monopoly on the executive ticket was broken by a mere 124 votes. The System, the political machine that runs University of Florida politics, seemed to be on the verge of destruction. Yet this insurgency would be broken by a bitter counterinsurgency that would destroy Access Party and reassert the System’s monopoly on power for years.
As the UF independent political party movement grows with Change Party’s recent string of victories, the shadow of Access Party looms as both guide and warning. Now, more than ever, an objective analysis of Access Party is necessary to cut through the confusion of its dramatic attempt to dethrone the System. Rummaging through years-old Alligator articles, excavating dead Facebook pages, digging up archived web pages, and interviewing participants embedded within the drama, the uf_politics seriousposting team presents a summation of Access Party and the lessons of insurgency and counterinsurgency.
An Atmosphere of Acquiescence: 2012 to 2014
After the near-victory of the indie Students Party in Spring 2012, the independent political party movement was in decline. Alex Cornillie, the student body presidential candidate of Students Party, lost by just 114 votes. On page 40 of the second paper of his master’s thesis, David Bradshaw attributed Cornillie’s loss to a refusal to engage in a backroom deal with the Asian American Student Union. Cornillie’s steadfast principles against corruption, it seemed, cost him the election.
Following their narrow loss in 2012, the Students Party did not recover. They would only win two senate seats the following fall and thirteen senate seats the following spring. Their next executive campaign resulted in a brutal loss of the presidency by 3,180 votes in the spring. “After that [Spring 2012] election I think a lot of the people really lost faith,” a former Students Party campaign president commented. By Spring 2014, Swamp Party ran unopposed, securing all 50 seats and the executive ticket. Students Party had imploded and all efforts to oppose the System collapsed, at least for the time being.
Only one semester prior to Access Party’s dramatic victory, the Fall 2014 student government elections had an atmosphere of acquiescence. Swamp Party, the iteration of a System party, was the only party fielding candidates, with the exception of independent candidates in Hume and District B. The Alligator, which had reluctantly endorsed Swamp Party in the last election, wrote with melancholy on that election: “Regardless of how many students vote in this week’s elections, Swamp will claim dominance over the Senate once the results have been tallied.”
Predictably, the Fall 2014 elections were a sweep for Swamp Party, which secured 49 of 50 seats with one of the lowest turnouts in recent history: 6,733. The continuous years of decline, however, would soon be met by an unforeseen insurgency.
A Schism
The strength of Swamp Party lay in the secretive “System,” a political machine that has dominated University of Florida politics for over a century. As the Bradshaw Papers explain, the System operates through a complex relationship of alliances that coerce votes for particular candidates. Greek houses divide themselves into three factions, or blocs, known as political, social, and third. The “communities” are prominent minority non-Greek organizations which include the Black Student Union, the Asian American Student Union, and the Hispanic Student Association. Bloc leaders and representatives of the communities meet in “The Room” for bloc meetings, negotiating among themselves for political positions, favors, and arrangements acceptable to all parties in the System.
Through this alliance of Greek blocs, the communities, and the powerful alumni network provided by Florida Blue Key, the System has remained dominant for much of the twenty-first century. By 2014, the only major loss the System experienced was a 2004 executive ticket loss caused by an internal schism. Discontent, however, was brewing.
As one Access Party member recounted, “The System had gotten powerful enough that they felt like they didn’t have to give as much to the communities: they didn’t have to give as many seats in Senate, they didn’t have to give as many Blue Key taps…And so then the communities got really frustrated.”
Lacking influence, the communities broke from the System. Meanwhile, the indies underwent a process of regrouping and planned to form a new party. Seeing the opportunity to unite against the System, both groups — the communities and indies — decided to slate together and form one party. This coalition would prove to be explosive.
Momentum Builds: Defections and Debate(s)
In January 2015, Access Party emerged with a loose coalition of students unhappy with the state of one-party domination. Indies, of course, participated in its formation: independent senators and former members of Students Party. Significantly, however, Access split members of Swamp to its cause. All three members of Access Party’s executive ticket were former Swamp Party senators and prominent members of the communities: Joselin Padron-Rasines for Student Body President, Kevin Doan for Student Body Vice President and Nick Carre for Student Body Treasurer.
Despite forming from two existing groups, the struggle of creating Access Party from the ground up was immense. A founder of Access Party, Elle Beecher, recounted: “I had 30 days to build the Access brand from the ground up and inspire thousands of students to vote for it…we knew we needed a miracle to win: thousands of organic, hard-earned votes from people who didn’t know Access Party existed 31 days before the election.”
A significant aspect of growing Access’s presence was social media. As Beecher said, “Our party was born and raised on social media.” Within twenty-four hours of its creation, the Access Party Facebook page received more than 1,000 likes. The enthusiasm for a new independent political party coalesced around the slating process, as the number of students slating, over 800, broke records in recent years. Swamp Party, intimidated by the surge of opposition, declined debate invitations by the Pride Student Union, Hispanic Student Association, Women’s Student Association, and Asian American Student Union — all entities part of or adjacent to the communities. The only two-sided debate was hosted by the Freshman Leadership Council.
As momentum built, Access’s insurgency reached new heights. In the Senate, a new independent Senate coalition of twenty senators announced its formation. Its leader, Michael Christ, was an independent senator and the campaign manager for Access Party. Significantly, however, eighteen members of this new coalition were former Swamp Party senators. All eighteen senators had revoked their membership from Swamp Party, citing numerous grievances. Before elections even began, Swamp Party lost eighteen senators — the schism deepened. Taking advantage of the defections, Access Party’s media team took photos of each flipped senator and added a line for why they switched. The campaign produced thousands of reactions across multiple platforms.
Swamp Party, reeling from the sudden defections from its caucus, lashed out at the Freshman Leadership Council debate. Despite more than five hundred students attending, FLC refused to release footage of the debate. After a volunteer with Access Party asked for the footage, they were met with a rant that FLC staffers were busy and that quality videos take time. Later, FLC would release an update that no video was taken to “protect the integrity” of the debate and to ensure no footage would be used “out of context.” The full transcript of the debate was made available on the Alligator.
Finally, after a month of heavy campaigning, dramatic defections, and debate controversies, elections approached.
The Moment of Triumph
The first sign of Swamp Party’s fate came with the announcements of the first day’s turnout: 8,093. Breaking records in recent years, the astonishing turnout was bad news for the System, which relies on voter apathy and low turnouts to secure victory. After the second day of voting, polls closed. The final turnout smashed records with the highest level of voter turnout in UF Student Government history: 12,742.
The story, finally, arrives at the moment of triumph. Access Party, for the first time in over a decade, won the executive ticket from a System party. They similarly won the Senate, with 27 seats secured for Access and 23 seats secured for Swamp.
The euphoria of victory swept Access. However, many were aware that their historical triumph was only the beginning. As one Access Party campaign manager said, “Now the real work begins.” In their unprecedented loss, Swamp Party took the news solemnly. Their mind was already fixed on ensuring this moment of triumph would be fleeting: “The Fall campaign starts tomorrow.”
As both parties were determined to assert their power in student government, an Alligator editorial prophetically commented:
If Access is truly going to bring change to SG, the party needs to stay sharp. Winning the election is getting a foot in the door. What matters now is how Access holds up in the months and semesters to come…We predict titanic resistance and opposition from sitting and newly elected Swamp senators and from their supporters and allies in the Student Body at large. Swamp Party has proven it will do anything within its means to hold its grip on power. It would be naïve to think anything different now that its preeminence has been taken.
Titanic Resistance
Access’s insurgency, from an objective perspective, was incomplete. Despite winning 27 seats, taking the executive ticket, and securing the defection of 18 Swamp senators, they were never able to obtain a clear majority in the hundred-seat Senate. This incomplete insurgency provided a doorway for titanic resistance. Gridlock tied the hands of the Access-controlled executive branch, drowning their victory in the legislature.
The agency heads of the Executive Committee, for instance, faced fiery debate. Although the Senate unanimously approved half the nominees, others were rejected in partisan struggle. The agency heads for Accent Speaker’s Bureau, External Affairs, Chomp the Vote, Student Government Productions, Student Government Productions Comptroller, and Action SG remained empty.
Significantly, Swamp was not the only player rejecting the nominations. While Swamp did object to the Action SG chair’s affiliation with the Access campaign, Access senators similarly objected to the nomination of Kevin Gerson for the Accent Speaker’s Bureau. Michael Christ, the leader of the defection earlier that semester, argued that Gerson’s membership in Alpha Epsilon Pi was unfair; 22 of 25 previous Accent Chairs were from the same fraternity. The Access executive, then, faced opposition not only externally but internally as well. The independent, non-communities portion of Access would not approve of nominations they saw as corrupt.
Another battle brewed over the Supervisor of Elections. The nominee, Sarah Winter, did not receive the ⅔ majority vote for the position, which was blocked by Swamp in a vote of 29 yes to 42 no. She was rejected again in the next Senate meeting by a vote of 31 yes to 53 no.
By July, 6 of 13 agency head positions were still not approved. The vacancies left $1.5 million untouched, frustrating the efforts of the Access executive team. As an exasperated Access senator wrote in a guest column: “They’re doing their best to distract from the effort to reform. They use the two remaining branches they hold control over — the judicial and legislative — to logjam SG. The judicial branch refuses to perform its job. The legislative branch seems to think its only jobs are to rig the rules governing SG and launch political careers.”
In August, Access President Padron-Rasines went on the offensive by vetoing two sets of code revisions passed by the Senate. Additionally, she finally made progress on the executive nominations, obtaining Senate approval on the final six agency heads after 105 days.
Despite slight progress, the System had weapons other than gridlock in their arsenal of counterinsurgency. The System would reassert its power in a classic move: the rebrand.
Impact Party: Deepening Counterinsurgency
Ahead of the Fall 2015 elections, a “third” party emerged focused on “bringing together both parties to achieve a common goal” and “overcom[ing] gridlock.” The formation of Impact Party was a transparent effort by Swamp Party to rebrand and move past its historical defeat, but its efforts would be secured through the defection of Access Senators. Impact Party had a real claim to their alleged goal of overcoming gridlock: the party formed from a coalition of two Swamp senators and two Access senators.
One of the two Access defectors stated, “I started seeing trends in Access Party that I saw in Swamp Party…It was the same game, just different players.” Access, recognizing the threat of the rebrand pulling in more defectors, was determined that they wouldn’t lose any more party members. They understood that the upcoming Fall 2015 elections would be decisive; the fate of a gridlocked student government would be determined with these elections. Nevertheless, the number of policy victories Access could point to were limited: having a more accessible administration, lobbying for a yearlong college textbook sales tax, and cutting spending.
Swamp Party did not slate, with every Swamp senator expressing their support and intention to switch affiliation to Impact Party. After the second day of slating, two more Access senators defected to Impact Party. Access, seemingly desperate, publicly called for a debate with Impact Party, which fell through.
When the first day’s turnout numbers were released, the outlook seemed to dim for Access: 6,427. Despite being higher than the previous fall (when Swamp ran unopposed), the numbers were not encouraging for an Access victory. Defeat seemed imminent.
The second day of voting wrapped up, and both parties gathered outside the Reitz. After chants back and forth, they released the outcome: Access won 16 seats, losing 34 seats to Impact. The defeat was staggering. Despite a total turnout of 10,229, Impact swept all but one of the districts and ten of the thirteen on-campus residential seats. In the shadow of a terrible defeat, Access clung to the hope of another spring victory: “As you’ve seen all throughout history, change comes slowly, but it does come.”
Anger, however, was another reaction. In an opinion column on Access’s loss, Alec Carver described the Impact victory as a “counter revolution.” Rather than blaming Access’s lackluster campaigning or Impact’s political outmaneuvering, he instead indignantly ranted against the student body:
We, the Student Body, are ultimately responsible for this. We had one job: vote the last representatives of a corrupt, cynical and power-hungry machine out of office. Instead, we filled Senate with its replacements. Impact’s tactics weren’t particularly clever — all party members did was change the color scheme from orange to blue and sell us the virtues of one-party rule by fiat, wrapped in vaguely fascist yearnings for ‘unity.’ But then again, we’re the ones who fell for it.
Clinging to Hope
By January 2016, Access Party lost one of its founding members, Michael Christ, who graduated. The first day of slating, initially, appeared to be hopeful: 63 students slated, breaking records from last spring’s 37 students. However, by the final day, the numbers pointed to a fizzling of the enthusiasm from last spring. 560 students slated, in comparison to last spring’s over 800. Behind the scenes, the Senate slowly stacked seats in Impact’s favor. New senators, alleged to be sympathetic to Impact Party, were nominated for vacancies in District D and Murphree seats, which were some of the few seats won in the last election by Access. Despite fierce opposition, they were approved.
Meanwhile, both parties announced their executive tickets. The Access Student Body Presidential candidate, Kalyani Hawaldar, had no ties to Swamp Party. The Impact Student Body Presidential candidate, Susan Webster, ran with Swamp. She had lost her seat to Access in Spring 2015, but came back to the Senate through the Replacement and Agenda Committee. Importantly, Impact ran Brendon “BJ” Jonassaint as their Student Vice Presidential candidate and Kishan Patel as their Student Body Treasurer candidate. Both of them were former members of Access Party, with Patel the former treasurer of Access.
Access was bleeding; the communities were defecting back to the System.
At the executive ticket debate, tempers flared. As both sides desperately hurled insults against one another, the moderator pleaded: “I want to ask all sides to please continue the civility of the Gator tradition of this debate.” Despite the questions on Impact Party as a rebrand of Swamp, Webster carefully pointed out that Impact Party included former Access members. Even more damning, Webster starkly pointed to the huge number of Access defectors; of the thirty-four elected last spring, only eight remained.
During the debate, Access minimized the impact of the defectors: “It’s like 10 people or 20 people or whatever. It’s insignificant.” However, they went on to criticize the defectors as self-interested:
Look, BJ and Kishan left because they got sold out. Look, BJ’s the Student Body Vice President. Kishan’s the Student Body Treasurer. The bottom line is when they sell out, they’re all about the titles. They’re all about the position. The people that went Access to Impact, we respect that. But the bottom line is they’re doing it for their own self-interest. Every Impact person who was Access has gained something from it, whether it was a campaign position, a Student Body Vice President or Treasurer position, whatever it is, party president, party treasurer, they all gained something from it. And Access, we’re only a party that fights for the students. Thank you.
Despite the hostility from both sides in the debate, the numbers presented a sober outlook for Access. In the previous year, in Access’s suprise executive ticket victory, five hundred students attended the debate. This year, only two hundred students attended. Following the debate, another Access senator resigned. Things seemed bleak for Access; they would need a Hail Mary to secure another executive ticket victory.
Not My System: Hail Mary?
Two days before the Spring 2016 student government elections, their Hail Mary came. On Facebook, a page called “Not My System” released a video exposing the inner workings of the System. The video featured a former Swamp Senator for District A, Sabrina Philipp, discussing her experience within the System. Significantly, Philipp was not merely a cog in the System but held a powerful position: she was groomed to become political bloc leader.
The exact contents remain unavailable but her general claims remain in various news reports on the video. Philipp started the video by narrating how, in her freshman year, she got involved in Student Government and was promptly groomed for a position of power because of her place in a sorority. She discussed the bloc organization of the System and the marginal role that minority students play, lumped together as the communities.
Critically, she revealed her role in the founding of Impact Party. Following their Spring 2015 loss, Philipp claimed she received a phone call the next day and was told, “You’re in charge of the new party,” and that she had “complete and total control” of this rebrand. She conceded:
“I was them. I was The System.” After attempting to put together a coalition of Greek houses to stand against the System at the prompting of a Florida Blue Key member, she faced bullying and harassment that made her leave the rebranding efforts. On their end, Impact Party denied the video’s claims, stating that Philipp was not involved in Impact.
Nevertheless, the popular response was electrifying. In the span of a few days, the post received over 100,000 views, 1,200 likes, and 700 shares. The comments were overwhelmingly positive and Sabrina received interviews from Cosmopolitan and The Independent. The #NotMySystem campaign also crowdsourced stories from past and present UF students about the System, designing graphics and posting them on social media.
UF administration, too, reached out to Philipp to discuss the allegations of corruption. At their meeting with UF President Kent Fuchs, they provided a 350-page history of the System, dozens of letters from students, and action plans going forward. Around the state, people reached out to #NotMySystem to share that they were inspired to create similar movements and expose corruption within their own student government.
High-profile interviews, hundreds of thousands of views, administration’s attention, statewide outreach, and an exposé of the System seemed guaranteed to shake up the election. An amendment for online voting was on the ballot, and Philipp encouraged viewers to vote for it as the System opposed it for decades.
In addition to the video, #NotMySystem held a live-streamed town hall meeting where they invited then-UF President Kent Fuchs, the Vice President of Student Affairs, the Student Activity Involvement Director, and the Student Government Advisor to come and discuss the corruption of the System. None of them attended. The anticipation, however, was ripe.
An editorial in the Alligator captured the excitement of the coming election:
Perhaps the surprise viral sensation that is #NotMySystem will have enough of an effect on voter turnout to swing the election…All that said, The System’s counter-revolution isn’t finished. If Impact’s candidates win the executive seats, then last year’s rebellion will have been rooted out and destroyed within a year. Luckily, that story hasn’t been written yet.
Was this the Hail Mary that would save Access Party?
Bitter Defeat
On the first day of voting, 6,644 students cast their ballot compared to last year’s 8,903. The numbers were not good. By the second day of voting, polls closed. The numbers were in: Impact Party won by record-breaking margins. In the Senate, Impact won thirty-nine seats to Access’s eleven. The Impact Presidential candidate, Susan Webster, broke records for a System Presidential candidate by receiving 7,222 of the 10,694 votes cast — around 70 percent of the vote.
To twist the knife even further in Access’s back, Webster proclaimed: “The good always wins!”
Coping from the loss, opponents of Impact consoled themselves in online voting’s passage, which received 6,047 votes in support and 2,751 votes against it. Philipp expressed happiness at online voting’s passage but continued to caution against the System. An editorial in the Alligator, however, expressed despair at Access’s loss:
I’ve been writing about Student Government for a long time, and I’ve always believed if only everyone knew about The System and its sickening legacy, it would be finished forever. Now I realize my naiveté — plenty of us know. Hell, one of them came forward Monday night and spilled her guts. The System’s success is not due to a lack of information — we just can’t be bothered to give a shit.
More level-headed responses to Access’s loss, however, pointed out the unnecessary partisanship of the election:
To make matters worse, on platform the parties do not actually disagree on anything. Both agree on many issues, like sustainability initiatives and on-campus mental health access. It seems, then, both parties are equally guilty of perpetuating shameless nepotistic practices and ideologies for the sake of nothing more than resume-building.
Philipp, the leader of #NotMySystem, eventually faced complaints from Impact claiming she was an affiliate with Access. The Elections Commission ruled she violated election codes but did not ask her to take down the video. She would continue her efforts against the System by hosting an online Q&A in the fall.
When the dust settled from the devastating Spring 2016 loss, Access could not survive. After running in only three elections, Access announced they would not run candidates for the Fall 2016 election. Many members of the communities returned to the System, in a better position than they were a year ago. As an Access member recalled:
Before 2015, you basically never saw a member of the communities as the president, as UF president. That was just never an option. It was like, oh, maybe once every two or three years you might get a treasure or a VP slot. And that was how it went. And so then post-Access…the world is just entirely different where you cannot have an all-white slate anymore.
The communities, it seemed, left Access better off than before, while the independents received nothing.
To add insult to injury, the constitutional amendment in favor of online voting was eventually struck down by the UF Supreme Court. In the face of bitter defeat, the Access Party President stated:
As long as there is a systematic effort to disenfranchise 80 percent of students from Student Government, there will always be an independent movement.
Learning from History
Access Party, in some ways, reflected the average life of independent parties. Data analysis of indie parties confirms a general trend of early success and poorer performance with age. Indeed, this article began briefly touching on the demise of the Students Party, which experienced a similar decline following their 2012 near-victory of the executive ticket.
What made Access Party unique, however, was that it succeeded where most independent parties did not; they made history with an executive ticket victory, record-breaking turnout, and broke the System’s monopoly in power for the first time in a decade. In many ways, its legacy looms over student government as the memory of that moment of triumph passes down to the heirs of the independent movement. Access deserves deeper analysis because its successes provide insight for the independent movement as a whole. An examination of the internal and external politics that drove Access’s success and failure is necessary to learn from history.
The Internal Conditions: A Fragile Coalition
The internal conditions of Access Party were decisive. Access’s fundamental problem was that the factors that led to its sudden success also led to its agonizing demise. From the beginning, Access was a fragile coalition of the communities and independents. Such a coalition exploded with victory as the defection of eighteen Swamp senators produced a coordinated schism within the System — a weakness that contributed to Access’s Spring 2015 victory.
However, such a coalition of indies and former-System members made an unstable party as each side mutually suspected the other. Suspicion at times exploded into outright confrontation as Access indies refused to approve nominees from their own Student Body President because of their fraternity affiliation.
On their end, Access’s formerly System-affiliated members were unreliable allies. They were quick to defect for personal benefit, providing Swamp Party space to rebrand under Impact Party. Impact had a real claim to not being a simple rebrand as they secured the defections of Access senators. Although Access downplayed the importance of these defections, the dwindling of their caucus from thirty-four to eight over the course of a year could not have been anything but utterly demoralizing.
The internal makeup of Access also reveals the dubious dichotomy of “indie” and “System.” Was the Access Party truly an independent party or was it merely a defection of parts of the System with independents obscuring its roots? At least one member of Access Party stated that in their personal experience, “Almost everyone that I met in Access Party was relatively or at least like pretty genuine about their desires for being kind of anti-System.”
However, in a telling comment, the Stop UF Impact Party Facebook page claimed: “The founders of Access that broke away from Swamp and the System did not set out to undo the Greek monopoly on power — they broke away because they were being discriminated against internally.”
Regardless of Access’s status as indie or System, it was the product of the communities splitting from the System. When the System consolidated itself, winning back the communities, Access could do nothing but collapse under the weight of its own fragile coalition.
The External Conditions: Throw Everything You’ve Got
The most enlightening aspect of the Access saga was the revelation of the lengths by which the System will go to protect its power. After losing the executive ticket, the System moved desperately to throw everything it had against Access. Gridlock, defection, rebrand, and every other underhanded method was employed to ensure that the surprise insurgence of Access Party would not be repeated in the future.
The 105-day stand-off between the Access-controlled Presidency and Swamp-dominated Senate over her agency head nominations remains the most famous aspect of the System’s counterinsurgency. The real counterinsurgency, however, lay in the backroom deals whose documentation remains sketchier. The Stop UF Impact Party page claimed that after the announcement of Impact Party at the SAE fraternity house, Swamp Party held a caucus meeting. At this meeting, they specifically told members that Impact was a rebrand and urged members to change their party affiliation from Swamp to Impact but not all at once.
Details on the backroom dealings of the defections, too, are sparse. During the executive ticket debate, Access hinted that deals were made to secure defections:
Every Impact person who was Access has gained something from it, whether it was a campaign position, a Student Body Vice President or Treasurer position, whatever it is, party president, party treasurer, they all gained something from it.
Regardless, the existence of some form of deal cannot be doubted — the coordinated defections and rebrand efforts provide sufficient evidence. The System, however, was not above using other underhanded methods. Sabrina Philipp, the founder of #NotMySystem, reported fear of retaliation. In her video, she explained that when she was a Swamp candidate the System worked overtime to silence anyone who spoke poorly of her:
Any time anyone would say something negative about me, [members of the System] would go on the offensive and do immediate damage control instead of just letting students gossip. There was this sort of urgency to protect my image and to make sure I remained as untouchable as possible.
The independent movement also went on the offensive with The UF Stop Impact Party Facebook page, which exposed screenshots of Greek sticker collection and analyzed the Greek makeup of Impact Party. In response, Impact accused the Access minority leader Michael Christ of running the page.
The external pressure of the System — gridlock, rebrand, backroom deals, and underhanded retaliation — was enough to make the fragile internal politics within Access buckle. After their single semester of success, the System consolidated itself in the face of Access weakness, isolating the Access Student Body President.
#NotMySystem: The Backfire Effect
The #NotMySystem movement in the waning days of Access also deserves further analysis. Why, for example, did Access Party’s rise in Spring 2015 and #NotMySystem in Spring 2016, despite both representing schisms within the System, have markedly different results?
Three possible explanations include a lack of coordination, the video’s antagonistic tone, and its overemphasis on dramatization. #NotMySystem began the Friday before elections, when Sabrina Philipp approached Tyler Richards and Elle Beecher, a founder of Access, to create a video exposing the System. Within forty-eight hours, the video was conceived, filmed, edited, and posted on Facebook. Although the response to the video was overwhelming (hundreds of thousands of views, international media coverage, the emergence of parallel movements in other universities), #NotMySystem did not represent the same level of coordination as the emergence of Access did a year earlier.
Access’s ascent was marked by a defection of a large faction from the System: the communities. Their split produced eighteen Swamp senators defections and three former Swamp senators slating for their executive ticket. In contrast, #NotMySystem was a Facebook page which, while becoming a viral sensation, was not backed by the careful coordination of last year’s Swamp defections. In essence, #NotMySystem was the result of a small team who managed to find online success, which did not immediately translate to electoral success.
The lack of coordination, however, is not a sufficient explanation for Access’s bitter defeat in Spring 2016. Susan Webster, the Impact Presidential candidate, broke System records with 7,222 votes cast for her. Rather than merely failing to translate viral success to electoral success, the data suggests #NotMySystem may have backfired.
A possible explanation for such a backfiring effect is that the antagonistic exposé effort of #NotMySystem may have driven the System to be far stricter in its voting outreach efforts. The 2010 Unite Tapes reveal that the System whips its members when it perceives itself to be in a losing situation:
And more importantly, uh, I’m pretty fucking pissed off…I’ve been walking from corner to corner to corner to corner of this campus and seeing each and every person wearing a Unite Party [the 2010 iteration of the System] shirt outnumbered by two….You wanna be a student leader? Be one! I’m tired of people thinking that this is an excuse. It’s not! The excuse is you all. You all are not trying hard enough.
Based on our team’s speculation, it is possible that #NotMySystem drove Impact Party into a corner, engaging in damage control mode, energizing aggressive voter outreach, and producing the backfire effect evident in the data.
Another tentative explanation is that #NotMySystem’s dramatization of its exposure turned off the general student body. Elle Beecher acknowledged that the video was intentionally dramatic:
From a strategy perspective, I intentionally wanted the video to be over-dramatic and theatrical — while still providing fully accurate information about SG corruption…No matter if [students] thought it was inspiring, over-dramatic, pointless, or motivating — if people were talking about the video (and therefore talking about SG corruption) the video was a success.
However, the drama of the video and the wider personalization of the Spring 2016 election may have turned off regular voters. A highly critical column in The Alligator argued #NotMySystem “took somewhat accurate claims about our political landscape and exaggerated them to the point of unfamiliarity bordering on the realm of conspiracy…the video is irresponsible in its Watergate-esque and journalistically bombastic approach.”
The mudslinging driven by the personal feelings attached to defections may have also added to the dramatization of the election. As each side hurled insults and attacks against one another, voters may have written off the election as ego-driven student government drama.
Regardless of #NotMySystem, Tyler Richards, a producer of the original video and a member of Access Party, stated that Access’s 2016 loss would have happened anyway. As he said, “I think it is pretty unlikely that #NotMySystem is the deciding factor in the spring of 2016. I think it is disappointing that more people didn’t really care about it, but I don’t think it’s that surprising.”
The Present
Taking a step back from history to the present, what does the Access saga mean for those involved in Student Government today — almost a decade out from that moment of triumph? While the internal and external conditions have certainly changed, the lessons gleaned from the Access experience are illuminating.
First, Access provides careful warning on coalition-building. While the participation of disgruntled members of the System may provide short-term benefits, it is also a long-term risk. Former members of the System are susceptible to being brought back with the promise of better benefits, disrupting an independent party. While former members of the System have historically played an important role in independent parties, Access illuminates that the independent movement should be principally constituted of indies.
Second, Access contextualizes the titanic resistance of the System when it finds itself in a losing position. After losing a senate majority, the current System party, Gator Party, delayed Senate elections through filibusters, quorum-busts, and resurrecting retired caucuses. The months of Senate gridlock bears an eerie resemblance to Impact’s resistance against any move by the Access Student Body President. The tactics employed by the System against Access reveal how far the System will go to destroy its opposition.
The Access saga, importantly, provides a case study in rebrands. After their devastating loss in Spring 2015, Swamp Party successfully rebranded to Impact Party. The principal reason for their success was their ability to pull defectors from Access. Today, in the fall of 2023, we see history repeat itself. Gator Party, after two devastating senate losses in a row, is undergoing the same rebrand strategy of pulling defectors from Change Party and claiming to be a new party. The same rhetoric of “overcoming partisanship” employed by Impact is already being utilized by Vision Party.
Third, and most importantly, history shows the unique position of Change Party. Access Party and Students Party obtained success through the participation of disgruntled members of the System. Change Party, in contrast, has no significant former-System presence. Change Party is a principally independent party, succeeding even without a schism in the System. In addition, rather than declining over time, Change has been securing win after win. The growing momentum of Change is an astonishing trend that contrasts the pattern of independent success and decline. The election of an independent senate president, too, will go down in student government history — a feat Access was never able to obtain.
As the drama surrounding Change unfolds, Access looms as a quiet presence in the background.
