An Interview with Charles Grapski: Florida Blue Key’s Greatest Threat
Charles Grapski is best known for his successful lawsuit against Florida Blue Key, proving that they operate a political machine that controls the University of Florida’s student government. For his lawsuit, he conducted extensive historical research, obtained damning testimony from Blue Key members, and eventually won a large sum of money, striking a heavy blow against the System. For this reason, the Bradshaw Papers describe him as “arguably the greatest threat to [Florida Blue Key’s] existence.” Following his lawsuit, he has engaged in anti-corruption activism throughout the country. We sat down with Grapski to discuss his lawsuit and the current efforts to oppose the System.
Editor’s Note: Some portions of the interviewer’s questions have been rephrased or redacted. Modified portions of the interview will be indicated with brackets.
Part 1: Florida Blue Key on Trial
Interviewer:
Can you start by introducing yourself and explain your defamation lawsuit against Florida Blue Key?
Grapski:
My name is Charlie Grapski. I was a long time student at University of Florida. I did several degrees there. I was working on my Ph.D. I taught political science classes and political theory classes there. And in the mid-eighties, I got involved with the student government and I was continuously involved until the early 2000s. Anything else?
Interviewer:
What was your lawsuit in the 1990s about, and how did that come about?
Grapski:
Beginning in 1989, I created the first coordinated independent organization to run in student government elections to try and take on the System. Originally, it was an informal coalition called the Independent Coalition, but about a year later it was transformed into the Independent Student Coalition. And over time, other parties, people wanted to create their own parties. So we would usually run the Senate campaigns and let people run for president.
I really never liked executive politics. I much more prefer legislative politics. But in 1995, I decided to run for Student Body President. And that flipped the System out because I had been pretty much a consistent critic that was very effective at my criticisms and my actions to try and hold them accountable. Winning was a different matter. Although we did win a large number of Senate seats a couple times, the norm was losing. The System is designed for you to lose. It’s almost impossible to win in the System as it is, except for the executive branch.
The executive branch — it depends on how much turnout you get. They have their house and group system that drives their turnout so high, and the apathy on campus keeps that relatively low, but usually within a couple percentage points of being able to beat them. So we decided that I would run. We were called the Independent Majority at the time. It was the successor to the — Independent Student Coalition still existed, but the Independent Majority took on the political party role. I actually preferred to call that a coalition than a party because I don’t believe in parties, and I don’t believe in party politics. I think parties cause self-interest to be the aim of government. Coalitions try to bring people together around the common good.
And so that was the quote, unquote platform I ran on. Although famously Brad Bondi, who was Pam Bondi’s brother — I guess you know who Pam Bondi is. But Brad was a young Blue Key member at the time, and he gave a big speech at the rock in Turlington making fun of the fact that I said “We have a statement of principles rather than a platform.” And he centered his speech on “We have a platform, we have no principles.” And I just died laughing. He’s a good friend of mine. He, in fact, was the star witness in the Blue Key trial.
So what happened was right at the beginning of campaigning, just before the elections, fliers were put up all around campus — I mean, like plastering campus, saying I was a convicted child molester and a number of other things. We immediately took them down. But I knew who was responsible. It was a guy named Peter Vlcek. He was their dirty tricks guy. And what I didn’t know all the details, but I eventually learned all the details of how the fliers got made and how they got put up, particularly through Brad Bondi, because Brad came to me very upset about two days after that, and said he knew some stuff and he was worried about what he should do.
And so he went to the Dean of Students at the time and who did nothing, absolutely nothing. Brad basically sat down and told them that Florida Blue Key — and named names, Peter Vlcek and John McGovern, later to become Student Body President partly because of his willingness to lie during the lawsuit. He was an independent, so he didn’t really have any backing, but because he made a deal with them in the lawsuit, they put him up as Student Body President. Brad basically said that he, Peter, and John McGovern were called to Peter’s house, called the Gray House, between the law school and Publix.
It was the big Blue Key house, big power players. And it was owned by a Blue Key alumni. But after my lawsuit, they stopped renting them to Blue Key members, and they stopped using the houses as that thing because of the reputation that I gave it. But they met at the Gray House and Peter then took them to the copy center where he got boxes and boxes of copies of yellow and black color fliers. This thing that purported to be my criminal history, which included convicted child molester and it basically said, “Do you want this convicted criminal as your Student Body President?”
I found out the next morning, we took them down. People were very upset. It didn’t really sink in to me how significant it was right away. I was just too busy. Brad went to the Dean of Students. They did nothing. Nothing to the students involved, nothing to Blue Key. They knew all the facts. It came to my bringing those facts out in the trial for them to become public. And Brad testified honestly and Brad — very ethical guy, unlike his sister.
We had a meeting, the Independent Student Coalition, that I got through the second in charge of the university at the time. We got a meeting through him with the president of the university, John Lombardi. About twelve of us met with the two of them, and we had a list of about ten or twelve things we wanted to have addressed by the administration. And this was a rare occasion because the administration always did everything it possibly could to avoid having to discuss these things and to deal with people outside of the System. They like the System the way it is because — I mean, you got to understand, just look at the A&S fee. That’s millions of dollars. If you actually analyze where the A&S fee goes, most of it is going to the administration and not to students activities and services.
And that’s what Blue Key does for the administration, along with a number of other things. The final thing that we had on our agenda was — I asked John Lombardi, I said, “What are you going to do about student government and the undemocratic control for one hundred years by a secret society hiding under the auspices of a semi-legitimate leadership honorary?” It’s more of a followership honorary than anything. Lombardi was very, very nervous about that. But he turned to me and he said “Well, why don’t you, you know, go to the courts?” I said, “Well, that’s actually the only place we haven’t gone to. We’ve gone every other route, including through you and the administration and through student government. We published a newspaper called The Independent Voice. I mean — we did everything. We ran for office. We served in office. We brought people to student government to speak even if they weren’t in office. We proposed legislation. We brought lawsuits in what was then called the Honor Court, which is now called the Supreme Court, the Board of Masters.
We exhausted every avenue there was except for the courts, but we had no ability to find a lawyer who would take the case. So John Lombardi said to me, he says, “Well, why don’t you go to the law school and talk to someone like Joe Little?” Now Joe Little, I knew by name because Joe Little was a very prominent law professor who took on cases of corruption and public misconduct in regular government.
And so I turned to him and I looked him in the face and I said, “Are you saying to me if I go to Joe Little, I can tell him that you sent me to him to sue Florida Blue Key and the University of Florida over student government?” And he had to pause for a second. He went kind of pale, and he said “Yes.”
So within about two hours, three of us — Piet Niederhausen was the other main guy with me, sort of my right hand man at that time in all of the political stuff. And we went to Joe Little’s office, and we talked. We convinced Joe, he was willing to take a civil rights case against the university and Florida Blue Key for denying democracy to the student body. But he was very clear that it was a very difficult case to bring. Courts don’t like politics, and they don’t like university stuff. They like to keep their hands off and let the universities do whatever they want. But then Piet did something that I wasn’t expecting. He pulled out one of the fliers, and he gave it to Professor Little and he said, “Look what they did to Charlie last week.”
And he looked at it and saw right away. He said, “You need to take this case to court because of your reputation. Being called a convicted child molester among other things, is certainly the kind of thing that can do harm to a person.” And so he also said to me, “Another side of that, it’s also probably the best case you can bring to address the issues in student government because it’s all about the dirty politics, which the court would have in other cases done its best to try and keep out of the record, whereas that was the center of the record in that case.” But he said to me, “Don’t have any hopes too high because a defamation case is a very hard case, especially when you’re a public figure. It’s a very hard case on the individual because it usually involves the process being an attack on the individual through the courts. And I had to be prepared for that.”
And he said to me, “Why don’t you go home and think about it and let me know, you know, in a day or two?” So we went home, and about an hour later I called Professor Little up and I said “We want to take the case.” And so that began the lawsuit.
It took a couple of years to get to court. It named Peter Vlcek, Florida Blue Key, John McGovern, and another guy named Tony Vu, who had also been involved in what we learned through discovery. He was involved in using the Blue Key computers to create the flier. But Tony Vu, at a mandatory arbitration hearing early on in the process, was represented by Gary Edinger. Gary Edinger also represented me in a number of cases, but that was the first I had met Gary, a very prominent First Amendment attorney in Gainesville. Gary pulled me aside and he said, “Will you be willing to talk to Tony? He wants out of this. He admits his involvement. He didn’t understand what he was doing. He doesn’t agree with what was done. And he’s willing to cooperate.” So for $1,000, I allowed Tony Vu to make an apology, become a witness in the case, and tell the truth of what his involvement was. And I dismissed him from the case. And so it was just McGovern, Vlcek, and Florida Blue Key that were at the trial.
And the trial took about two weeks and had some really interesting moments, including Peter Vlcek feigning a heart attack, which we had predicted would happen. And he got severed from the case. So we retried him and he didn’t even show up two years later. He thought he was out of it by feigning a heart attack. But this was the day after he went — and he represented himself — and he said to one witness, “Well, when we went and put up the fliers, did you — ?” That was a pretty bad mistake. So he got himself out of the case. But not forever.
So in the original trial, the two week trial, the jury went out after two weeks. The Court TV was originally covering it. But Court TV caught Blue Key’s attorneys coaching Kevin Mayeux, the Student Body President — who became Student Body President in that election — as a witness in a break. And they actually said to me that they witnessed that during the hearing. And so they got compromised and had to get out of it, unfortunately, otherwise the whole trial would have been recorded on TV for people to see.
And it was a pretty interesting trial. Now, originally Blue Key thought they were going to bring all of these famous Florida people and top university officials and all these people, and they were going to defend them. The problem was the first thing I did is I had moved to England, where I went to school at the time, and I had to fly back. And while I was flying back, the judge had a hearing and basically they called this in, and they delayed the trial for like six months.
But the first question they asked Blue Key, who had a motion to dismiss, they said, “He’s just trying to defame this prestigious honorary society because he’s jealous that he can’t get in” — of course, they offered me membership and I turned it down. The judge asked them “Have you deposed Mr. Grapski and find out what he knows?” And they said, “No.” He ordered them to depose me. So we had the deposition, and Professor Little and I walked in with about six bankers’ boxes worth of volumes of history that I had put together on Florida Blue Key and the System going back to those early days of — I’m glad you guys have followed up on this because it’s an important part of the story — The Beefsteak Club and and prior to it, how student government was arranged before it. But they created the modern student government as we know it.
And so I brought boxes going back to the 1920s every decade, and we just inserted document after document after document plus we had gotten affidavits from a lot of these famous people — prominent people and university officials who didn’t want to lie for Blue Key and so had to basically admit that Florida Blue Key has historically had control over the student government and student activities for a century through its house and group system — was the wording in the order that was published.
And so what we did with Professor Little’s brilliant lawyering was we basically had to use the Klux Klan strategy in court to prove that a secret society existed and was doing these things and that the individuals were doing it on behalf of that secret society. And so that eliminated their ability to argue in court against that history. So they had to argue that they didn’t do it. That’s all they could argue — that somebody else did this. That’s a terrible thing. They admitted that it was defamatory per se, and it was awful, but “We have no idea who did it and he’s just attacking Blue Key because of his jealousy and the antagonism that he has toward Florida Blue Key.”
And so the jury went out, and they were out for about four hours. And about four hours later, they came back — and we asked for a very low amount. We asked for $150,000 in damages. And we had to forgo punitive damages, which is where the real money would have come from. Otherwise, it would have delayed the case another year. It wasn’t about the money, it was about proving what was at issue — both proving the defamation and proving the corruption of student government through Florida Blue Key. And the jury came back and awarded $100,000 more than that, so $250,000.
Two years later, we tried Peter Vlcek and the jury was out for a half an hour, and we had punitive damages that time. They came back and they awarded $1,000,000 in compensatory damages and $5,000,000 in punitive damages when we only asked for $150,000 again.
So that’s probably one of the biggest political defamation judgments out there in history and a pretty strong statement. Does that help you with understanding the lawsuit?
Part 2: The System and How to Dismantle It
Interviewer:
I was going to say a lot of what we had jotted down, you ended up addressing through all of that. I noticed that you had brought up the System a lot, and that’s something that even now with student government people on public comment that they mention and they talk about and it’s still very it’s hush hush. The people who are in the System don’t go on public comment and address it. They’ll never admit that it’s the System.
So I’m wondering, one, how did you find out about that? But, two, do you know why they outright never seem to address it or accept the fact that it is the System?
Grapski:
Well, that’s part of that. That’s part of the aspect of it. It’s a secret society hiding under a semi-legitimate guise of a leadership honorary. But everybody knows — it’s not a very good secret, especially because my lawsuit proved forever that, in fact, they are such. They are the System. The System exists and has existed for one hundred years, well, a little bit more than that now. And sadly, after my lawsuit, the university took no steps to eliminate it, but took steps to protect it, including getting John McGovern admitted into law school — admitted into the bar. Because the Bar Association of Florida had basically banned him from admission because of his involvement in the case.
But John Lombardi personally went to the bar, which is basically run by Florida Blue Key people and got him into practicing law, which was a sad, sad day for law in the state of Florida. They do it because that’s what they’re taught to do. And like I said, this is not a leadership honorary. It is a followership honorary. And you become a member if you dutifully follow all of the commands on up each level and they’ll give you positions in student government or in Florida Blue Key or ODK or there have been times where the band was involved. There’s been times when Black Student Union has been involved. But they give positions out that give you — they used to call it majors and minors, and they had to stop calling it that, but they effectively still do that.
So if you have so many majors and so many minors, which are all controlled by Florida Blue Key’s political machine…inside, they had four groups at the time. Each group made up of different houses and groups and having different power within the System and jockeying for that power, for who gets to be Florida Blue Key president, who gets to be student government president.
And so that System rewards silence about the System, and it punishes people who go up and speak out about it. You won’t get into Florida Blue Key. And that’s the ultimate goal of these people, because as the Palm Beach Post once wrote in the eighties, “This is the key to the power in the state of Florida.” Not in University of Florida Student Government, but in Florida politics. I mean, you name a key Florida politician and they are either a person who was a member as a student or became an honorary member after that. That’s how they bring in these other people that they didn’t have as students.
But did I answer every part of that question?
Interviewer:
Yeah, you did. I’m wondering from your experience and what you’ve seen and how everything is now today — I guess the best way to put it is if what you went through at the time and that lawsuit didn’t internally fully deconstruct it, what is something that you feel like would have to happen for it to come to that? For people to just more publicly know about this and therefore, for there to either be some sort of reform or for the System itself to just start losing power?
Grapski:
Two things have to happen. One, at the university level, the university administration is negligent, criminally negligent because the students are being harmed. The whole student body is being harmed and they know it and they are fully cooperative in that System and keeping it alive. They need to stand up and say no more. They should remove Florida Blue Key from a student organization.
They should not have half the floor of the Reitz Union, third floor — which they’re not even legally entitled to have, by the way, because they are a hundred person-exclusive organization and only organizations open to the whole student body are allowed to get A&S fee benefits. But everything doesn’t count when it comes to Florida Blue Key. That would be one of one way of putting an end to the System. It wouldn’t necessarily put a total end to it, but it would put a serious damper on it.
But — and this is really, really important if people want to understand how you can beat the System, because you can, but you can’t until the System is changed in terms of student government. If you look at the history of the challenges to Florida Blue Key, the first real challenge came in the 1930s by an organization called the Primary Progressive Party. And what they were doing is they were taking the reform issues of national politics of the day and claiming if they applied that to student government — having primaries as part of the process was their thing — it would fix the System. And the same thing happened in the mid-sixties when Charles Shepherd was a very unique Student Body President — independent and two-time president, the only two-time president in student government history.
But they argued that — Baker v. Carr was prominent at the time in terms of Supreme Court election fairness cases and it was all about districting and how districting can create monopolies. And so they created the student government that we have today in the modern Constitution in, I think 1968. And what they changed was before that all of the seats were elected in multi-member districts at large. So whoever got the largest number of votes won every single seat.
And so they thought creating the single member and dual member seats like Liberal Arts and Sciences, Engineering, things like that, they thought that was going to solve the problem. Now, it certainly has been one area where independents and non-System challengers have had more success because of the nature of that dynamic.
But the one thing that would eliminate the System for good is if you created electoral reform in which you use what’s known as the single transferable vote or preferential voting, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that. It’s not single member districts, it is multi-member districts. But what you do is you vote, you get one vote and you get the rank order, the vote according to which candidate you like the best, you know, down to second best, third best. And that voting system guarantees that minorities will have a proportional voice in the Senate that they have in the voting public.
And that would eliminate these 80%, 90% victories every spring and fall. And that would take away the Senate from them, not necessarily the presidency, but it would take away the Senate. And they would lose control over the student government and they wouldn’t be able to guarantee to future Blue Key members, “We’ll give you this position, we’ll give you that position, we’ll give you a Senate seat, we’ll give you a committee chair, we’ll give you a committee seat, we’ll give you a cabinet directorship or assistant directorship.” They wouldn’t be able to do that anymore and the whole system would break down.
So if anything could happen — I tried back in the eighties to enact it and some of my students in the 2000s tried to bring that up again but Blue Key will have none of it. But that should be mandated by the university or even by the courts that a system like that be in place. I even won a case in the quote-unquote Supreme Court — which was then called Board of Masters — proving the dynamic that creates with only a small percentage more turnout. It looks like they have a huge turnout, you know, deficit — Blue Key versus the independents.
It’s not, it’s just the non-System people are competing with each other and so they’re diluting their voice. And with just a few percentage points greater, Florida Blue Key was getting 60%, 70%, 80% of the seats with 45% to 55% of the vote and the court ruled that they had to come up with a system of elections like when I was referring to. They didn’t mandate that specific one, unfortunately. They just said you have to come up with one that will do that. Then basically the court got shut down. And for a year, nothing was happening. And then the university stepped in and said, “We’re going to make it happen in the favor of Blue Key and turn the whole System back on again.”
But that reform would eliminate the System if you could get preferential voting for the Senate. You could even use it from the presidency, it’s just a little different system because it creates a majority as opposed to a proportional representation. But if you had that, the student body voices would be represented in the Senate and the monopoly control would be lost and the System would be effectively over, at least in terms of student government.
Interviewer:
Yeah, that’s really interesting — about the districting history you mentioned about Charles Sheppard. I wasn’t aware of that. This year actually, the System redrew the fall maps — the district maps — so that they got rid of District A, B, C, D, and just did one at large off campus district to gerrymander their way back to power because they’ve sort of been on the decline and have lost two elections in a row. To see the connection to the 1960s when their work to reform the election maps that it’s —
Grapski:
That’s how they used to run the System. And it was specifically changed to get rid of that effect. And yet if they put that back into effect, you know, beating them becomes even less likely electorally.
Part 3: Uncovering the System
Interviewer:
Yeah. And so I have a question relating to how you discovered the System. So when I came to UF, I learned about the System through this underground thesis called the Bradshaw Papers, and it explains a lot about the blocs and the group dynamics and Florida Blue Key and it even talks about you a little bit —
Grapski:
Well, that’s where he got all that information to put that together from the lawsuit. Like I said, we put that together and proved that in court. But nobody other than people who at the time could still get the transcript — the 11 volume transcript of the trial — and he had access to that. I don’t think I ever talked to him, but I did talk to some people that he had spoken to. But that analysis is spot on. That’s how the System works and how the System controls things and everybody knows it.
Now, they didn’t used to know it. Even the people in the System, most of them didn’t know it, until I went and I explained to them Duverger’s law and electoral dynamics and things like that in the nineties. And so what they’ve done is they’ve tinkered with the System since then since they’ve been having some successful challenges in recent years, obviously to get rid of any opposition. And the fact that they’ve done that in broad daylight with the university watching again is that university administration negligence criminal negligence — and they should not allow it to happen.
It is a blight on the university’s reputation and character. It is a harm to students and the student body. And instead of teaching the future leaders of America and Florida who could actually bring about reforms to the country and the state, we are teaching corruption at the University of Florida and condoning it.
Interviewer:
So you didn’t have your own version of the Bradshaw Papers back in the eighties. What was your first encounter with the System, how did you learn they exist, and how did you dig up all this history?
Grapski:
Well, the first thing is I had decided after my first bachelor’s degree that I got from another university — but I had come to the University of Florida before I had gotten it. And I knew what everybody knew: the Greeks control student government. It’s not quite that, it’s a little more complicated than that. But I tried to run for Senate and a friend of mine in a fraternity, a very low-level fraternity, said, “Go meet at the fraternity house with a guy named Pat Siracusa, who was the group leader of that group of fraternities and sororities and organizations. And a friend of mine and I, we both went there, and I immediately decided this was not for me, this was pretty corrupt. And they didn’t offer me a seat, but they did offer me to participate in their party and put out fliers and things like that. And I said, “No, thank you.”
And then in 1989, I was involved with Tiananmen Square, and I got in contact with the person who was the independent leader of the Senate and a Florida Blue Key member through the Internet in its early days and before the World Wide Web, by making contact with people around the world and around the country. And ironically, meeting a person who was in my own backyard. And that was Juan Vitali. And Juan asked me to get involved in the student government. The student government people, you know, they wouldn’t give us money, but they did pass around the hat and gave us some money for our events during — you know what Tiananmen Square was right?
Okay, because a lot of people don’t, they don’t remember that. But I had helped the leaders of Tiananmen Square escape China and come to America and then brought them around Congress and the helped put a bill through Congress called the Pelosi Bill — at the time, Nancy Pelosi was like a freshman congresswoman — but it was to protect students and scholars who were on a J-1 visa, who had participated in protest events and China wanted them back to put them in reeducation camps or in jail.
And so during that exposure to student government, I learned for the first time about replacement seats. And so I went to get a replacement seat and they kept turning me down, but I kept going back. And so eventually I got a replacement seat. And then in the fall, I attempted to run with the party that Blue Key was running and they turned me down and they turned a number of people down who were in student government and in Senate seats. And so that’s when we created the Independent Coalition, the first one, the informal one that later became formalized.
And so that was how I first learned about the System. Now, when I was in the Senate, I became the independent minority leader. I also became friends with a lot of the people in Blue Key, both good and bad people. But a lot of them would openly talk to me about it. I mean, they wouldn’t lie to me. I knew what I was talking about, they knew I knew what I was talking about. So they would tell me things, and some more than others, like Chris Tompkins who becomes Student Body President in ‘94.
Chris was a really good guy. He and I rewrote the rules and procedures at the time. But Chris did a lot. Even though he was a Machine/System candidate, they didn’t like him very much because he did things his way and he played the game minimally — only enough to get what he needed to become the positions he wanted.
Right around Thanksgiving, I guess it was in 1990, I went to the university archives and I started with The Alligator and I went through all the microfilms and I read as far back as I could get. I even got myself locked in the library when the Thanksgiving break began because I was sitting there in the microfilm room and they didn’t know I was there and they turned off the lights and I didn’t notice. And they left and they locked me in the library doing the research.
But from there, I continued that on for a pretty good period. So I learned about the university archives and the student government archives, and later the Blue Key archives and the oral histories and I did a lot of investigative work like getting The Seminoles — the yearbook at the time — and being able to glean what little tidbits of information were there if you could connect the dots. But if you’re reading The Alligator, particularly in late 1925, when Angus Laird was the editor, Angus was exposing the System and he actually wrote a book — it’s in the university archives — which when I found that it confirmed a lot of the stuff that I had uncovered historically, and it added a lot more.
And so just going out there and doing the research. And then I used public record requests of student government and got, especially from the Dan Lobeck years, which was in the early seventies. Dan Lobeck was a Blue Key member who was Student Body President who tried to put an end to the System. Dan Lobeck was Chris Tompkins’ mentor, by the way.
Chris unfortunately passed away after he was in the state legislature for a little while. He was a great guy. So it was just pretty much putting pieces together and plus having my own inside sources, people telling me what was going on and people telling me the truth and not trying to bullshit me. You know, they knew they couldn’t do that. So I was able to put that history together. And if I hadn’t done that, I never would have won my lawsuit. It would never have gotten into court.
Part 4: After the Lawsuit and the System’s Grift
Interviewer:
I’m very sorry about that. I do want to ask, though, after everything how has your life been? What have you been up to after that lawsuit, your time at UF, being involved trying to beat the System?
Grapski:
Well, I did a lot of that kind of stuff out in the real world as well. And I paid a hard price for that, especially in the mid-2000s — well, 2007 to 2009, I took on the city of Alachua, which is corruption writ large. Particularly your outgoing sheriff, Clovis Watson, who has no business being sheriff or any public official. I mean, the guy is a fraud and a criminal. And I was exposing all that and they started arresting me. They even burned down their city hall, too, to stop me getting records.
Funny thing is, when they got their insurance claim for the fire, the first two items — this was Clovis — the first two items on the insurance claim were for two industrial strength shredders. Now, no shredder was involved in the fire nor destroyed in the fire because the city had no shredders. So this was insurance fraud. But they got two industrial shredders because Clovis’s job was to destroy about 100-years worth of records of the city of Alachua and its corruption, which I was exposing. And on the third arrest of me, they arrested me — the video’s online — they arrested me at City Hall, at the police station for trying to file a complaint.
And they knocked me into unconsciousness. And then the next day, when I appeared before the judge, instead of releasing me on my own recognizance, which they had done all the times before, they had published a dossier saying I was a terrorist. And that’s online on document cloud, by the way. I can get you the address if you want to find it.
They beat and tortured me in the Alachua County jail. And then Ron DuPont of the High Springs Herald, which you won’t find around anymore because the university has eliminated it from its archives and the county library — threw the records in the trash. Luckily someone saved them, but it was the only newspaper that was exposing the corruption in Alachua. They did a jailhouse interview with me after the initial torture, and I was in pretty bad shape.
But Ron DuPont published that and published photos of me and hell broke loose inside the jail and a lot of the things changed around and they agreed to put me in the infirmary, which they had refused to do for a week. But they moved me into the infirmary on Friday and on Saturday I was force-fed an overdose of Baclofen, woken up Sunday morning at 5 AM. I was like jello, and I couldn’t move, and I literally lay in a pool of vomit face down from 5 AM to midnight with everybody in the jail having orders not to call the EMTs. And then at midnight, a different person came into the infirmary as the officers were on duty and he called the paramedics, and they got me to the hospital within minutes of my life.
I was in a coma for a few days, and I suffered a traumatic brain injury. So that’s kind of what my life has been like since about then. But between the student government years and then, I was active around the country in exposing police corruption and police brutality and police murders. I was very involved with Occupy in New York, things like that.
But in recent years, I stopped much of my activism because my father had a spinal cord injury and I took care of him for ten years. He passed away in March. And so I really didn’t have the time and plus it was probably good for my health to take a break from it. I do things here and there, and I help people. But I’m not as publicly out there as I had been.
Editor’s Note: Following the interview, Grapski added the following regarding his activities after the lawsuit:
“Thanks for the conversation. I realized when you asked what I’ve done since I described in detail the injuries and what happened to me in 2007–9. But I didn’t really give much detail on what I had done — so not being as encouraging as I could/should have been.
I spent a number of years building knowledge in communities on how to effectively use public records laws against corruption. A good example is with PINAC especially in Florida (Photography is not a Crime) which I was an early member of the core group. Or in Albuquerque — the Police Murder capital of the country. Ferguson is a good example as I was the one who forced the City to admit it had and release a police report regarding the murder of Michael Brown. Or in the Trayvon Martin case where I proved Sanford was violating the records laws.
Another infamous action of mine was during Occupy Wall Street where I exposed and proved the abusive behavior of Officer Tony Balongi who notoriously pepper sprayed a group of kettled women — but I proved he was on a larger rampage and had my work featured on things like The Daily Show in a famous skit and broke the media blackout on the protests when I had work published in The NY Times and Guardian.
I could list a number of positive and effective efforts both before and after Alachua — but I don’t tend to do much self promotion. But people should know you can be an effective citizen standing up to corruption at even the highest levels. Something I think people need to hear. Even with what happened to me in Alachua and with people like Clovis Watson — I continued until my father suffered a spinal cord injury in 2015 — when I had to take on his care 24/7. But even with that I was exposing Medicare fraud in certain hospitals — a case still not gone to trial. December was the last estimate.
I just want to make sure I give enough of a positive encouragement to others despite what happened in Alachua.”
Interviewer:
Thank you so much for sharing that. And I’m sorry about everything you’ve had to go through. It sounds really, really awful and just thank you for sharing that.
Grapski:
Yeah, no problem.
Interviewer:
One thing on our end that UF_Politics has been investigating has been the finances —
Grapski:
Oh yeah. ACCENT, SGP. I saw your ACCENT article. It was excellent.
Interviewer:
Thank you. So last week we covered a very serious financial conflict of interest within ACCENT and in Student Government Productions, actually, I read a column where you were discussing how student government was funneling money directly into Gator Growl. I’ve done more research and the article will be dropping soon. But what I found is that in the last ten years, since 2011, over $1,000,000 of Student Government Productions money has been spent bringing artists to Gator Growl with Florida —
Grapski:
And that’s illegal.
Interviewer:
— With Florida Blue Key just pocketing all their revenue.
Grapski:
It’s illegal for them to get any A&S fee money. It’s a violation of the A&S fee law.
Interviewer:
Would you characterize the System as financially motivated, is it just like grifting? It’s just always been a graft of taking people’s money and personally enriching themselves?
Grapski:
All the way back to the 1920s. The Alligator, the F Book, which was like a freshman book of songs and things that you had to do and where you’re capped and stuff like that. The Seminole, all of those were money-generating positions and all of them, especially if you go look at Angus Laird’s book, he’ll tell you how he became editor of The Alligator and was expected to be happy being it because he could pocket all the money.
And, you know, there were stories from back then, I mean, about them buying a car and driving down South Florida in it and all that. But it’s gone to a level of absurdity in the modern era when we’re talking millions and millions of dollars. And the university knows it. The university is fully aware of it. I documented it to the university administration several times. And I think you’re referring to when I sued Bernie Machen. Bernie had allowed the beginning of student government overtly funding Gator Growl and Blue Key. And so I asked for all the records, and Bernie had no love for the public records law. So he actually was destroying all the records and openly said it to his underlings.
But so he wasn’t providing me with records, but I also got records from other people. And one of the people I got records was from one of the assistant of the union. And in an attachment to an email I got in that public record request was an email to and from Bernie Machen from the top gator booster saying “Let Blue Key have the money.”
And I actually had two ways of proving that Bernie Machen destroyed that record and refused to produce it on the public records law. Unfortunately, I had one of the most corrupt judges in town have that case. He actually let Bernie Machen not appear as the witness in his own defense. And actually allowed a Vice President of Student Affairs to come in and testify as if he was Bernie Machen, which is just absurd as it comes. So we lost that lawsuit, even though I had proof that the administration was basically destroying public records and refusing to provide and follow the law. That’s Judge Robert Roundtree, who actually also had all of the cases I brought against the city of Alachua that led to all those arrests of me.
I brought like five cases against the city of Alachua, starting with election rigging, which was done by Clovis Watson as the front man. The outgoing sheriff.
Interviewer:
[Question concerning Florida Blue Key’s response to the ACCENT expose where they claim to be separate from Greater Talent Network with no investments in the company]
Grapski:
Except that they put people into the positions as chair of ACCENT and chair of SGP as part of the election deals with the group system of who’s going to get what position divvied out as what. And that’s why you see with ACCENT, AEPi and TEP as well — in the past — and SGP…is that Sig Ep? I can’t remember which fraternity has the lock on that position.
Every once in a while, like I said, the internal politics inside Blue Key change and someone outside of that legacy house gets it, but it usually returns within an election cycle or two to that same house. Over time they would create the business entity that they would do business with from the students to the alumni. I mean, it’s a very, very, very corrupt system. Again, and the university knows full well about it and does nothing.
Interviewer:
So I just find it very interesting, like the parallels between your lawsuits. Your first lawsuit against Florida Blue Key for defamation exposed their dirty tricks. But then your second lawsuit against Bernie Machen for his failure to comply with Sunshine laws — which was about the finances of the System — then that suddenly got stonewalled. Do you think the finances is what Blue Key wants to keep hidden and it’s okay with its corruption being exposed, but the money is where the real issue lies?
Grapski:
I mean, they love to get rid of the knowledge of the corruption per say and in general. But that’s just common knowledge now. But what people don’t know are all the details. Like I said, the university also has an arrangement like that. If you look at where the majority of A&S fee money goes, the university is taking it and it’s being given to them by the Blue Key-appointed student government leaders.
They use it for health and human sciences, the department that — you know, all the gyms on campus. The student government doesn’t control them, the academic department does, but student government pays for it. The Reitz Union is a huge money-making element on campus, but it doesn’t — I mean, with the Reitz Union, if students got the profits from the entities in the Reitz Union, you wouldn’t need an A&S fee. You’d have bigger money than that to fund student activities and services. But the university is taking that. So you have the SGP kind of stuff, the ACCENT stuff, but you also have the university stuff.
Everybody’s in on it. It’s a huge cloud of money and it grows every year. I mean, the amount of millions in the A&S fee now is absolutely absurd. But it’s allowed to happen because of these entities knowing that they’re going to get most of that money and they turn a blind eye to the kids in the System also making money or or getting a career boost for when they graduate. You know, they go right, right from SGP to that firm and they get a job.
Interviewer:
[Question concerning how to access documents Grapski referenced]
Grapski:
Unfortunately, when all that stuff was happening to me in Alachua, I lost all my possessions. And before I could give all those documents to the university archives, they were thrown out. And so I still have a few things here and there, but just like copies of random things from The Alligator research and stuff like that. I wish I still had all those documents and all that. I had boxes and boxes of it. And the lawsuit itself, all the behind the scenes, all the affidavits like from the former Dean of Students, Art Sandeen, who basically testified instead of being called as a witness, we submitted his affidavit. And in his affidavit, he said, “Yes, Florida Blue Key has historically been in control of student government and student activities through its house and group system. And the University of Florida has been associated with enabling and allowing that to happen.”
So we had all of those documents, unfortunately, and some of them should be in the archives of the city clerk. But I learned recently that they’ve been getting rid of a lot of those things. But I think the 11-volume transcript of the trial should be there, and I know some parts of that transcript have been copied and are fluttering around in public somewhere. One possibility is the appellate court — because John McGovern appealed his conviction or finding of liability — the appellate court was sent all of those documents and the 11-volumes plus a lot of those supplemental materials. I don’t know if those archives — they should be digitized, but I don’t know with the state of Florida, what they’re doing. But I would give a call to them to see if any of that still survives from the lawsuit.
Interviewer:
Over the summer, I definitely did try to find records related to the lawsuit and went to the county of the clerk — or whatever, try to find records. I didn’t find any. But I’ll probably try again. I also read through the Angus Laird volume you’ve been referencing. I was actually reaching for my bag. I thought I had it in my bag. I don’t have it. It’s very funny, so this past summer, I personally have been doing a lot of research in the archives, like digging through a lot of Alligator articles. And I ran into people who knew you, like if you remember Carl Van Ness.
Grapski:
Oh yeah, I know Carl.
Interviewer:
I spoke with him and he was telling me about how you would spend, like, all day digging through Alligator volumes for your discovery for the trial. I was like, my God.
And I know it’s just very, very interesting to talk to you in person because you definitely changed UF student government. After your lawsuit, the bloc system realigned very significantly into a three bloc system, and it’s been very stable since and it’s been stronger since. I think they’ve only lost the executive twice since the 21st century. Your lawsuit has fundamentally shifted how the System operates and made history.
Grapski:
Well, one thing I’ve learned is the sad part is a lot of times the work that gets done twenty years before takes twenty years to really rear its head full force with another generation or two picking back up on that and taking from that and adding their own and adding time that went in between. I know some of the people like [inaudible] and things like that who are involved and you know a lot of people are learning how to take on the System. The only unfortunate part is that Duverger’s law aspect of elections with winner-take-all elections you’re going to get — the largest voting bloc is going to get disproportionately more seats than the second largest. And if you can change the electoral system in student government to the one that I described, you would take away the power of Blue Key to control student government.
Interviewer:
Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we conclude the interview?
Grapski:
I’m glad you guys are doing what you’re doing. I read — I’m going to go back and reread it a little more closely. I read your stuff on the Beefsteak Club. I read your stuff on ACCENT. It’s great, great stuff. I’m glad someone’s on it and keep doing it and put the pressure on and stick it in front of the administrators, you know, put it in their face, make them make them answer publicly. Why is this being allowed to happen? Because they’ve known for a hundred years it’s been happening.
Interviewer:
And all this stuff I do on Beefsteak Club is thanks to you. I stumbled on your 2006 interview and you mentioned the club and I like what is this, went to the archive, started reading. I was like, “Oh my God, this is crazy.” Yeah, thanks to you, Grapski.
Grapski:
That sounds great. Yeah. Send me a link to anything you guys put together.
Interviewer:
Okay. Thank you.
