Thu 9 Feb 2006
Leading with the Unite Party
I’m proud to be a part of the Unite family. We have an incredibly diverse slate of candidates: we are truly uniting UF. All of our candidates are truly thoughtful, qualified, and concerned about the future of this campus.
Unite has strong ideas on how to improve campus and student life. We are committed to a Student Government that is accessible, open, and transparent. We are committed to fiscal responsibility and ensuring that student programs take precedent over perks for SG insiders. We are committed to social responsibility and fulfilling our promise to the community. And we are committed to representing students’ best interests in the university administration, local, and state government.
Leading for student rights
My experience as a leader in the international free culture movement recommends me as a leader for UF. Since I arrived at UF, I have been intensely involved locally promoting wise technology and information policies. When UF eliminated students’ ability to forward their GatorLink email accounts without any student representation at the table, I worked to create student seats — and I was successful. I have visisted other universities and worked with students from around the world to advocate for free culture. My endorsements page includes comments from some of the great people I have worked with.
Here are some of the policies I pledge to personally support as a Student Senator:
- Give students a voice. I will ensure students always have a voice in deciding information and technology policy at UF.
- Investigate ICARUS, the Department of Housing’s anti-filesharing software, and invite students into a public debate for the first time
- Work with the university to establish guidelines for the use of specialized proprietary software in classes, so students won’t be stung by expensive class software that they can’t re-sell
- Openness. I will advocate to use technology to make SG and UF more open and transparent, making it easier for students to find out what officials are doing.
- Make the Student Government Web site more informative and useful
- Work with SG and UF to make more public records, information, and services available online, to make students’ lives easier
- Sustainable technology. I will promote responsible technology purchasing and fight for sustainable tech policies.
- Expand the use of free and open source software on campus to improve sustainability and cost-effectiveness, including Firefox in all computer labs
- Advocate for open file formats to prevent against vendor lock-in
- Support open standards for UF Web sites, so students can use the software and operating system of their choice
- Commitment to the community. I will challenge UF to live up to our commitment to the public interest by promoting access to knowledge.
- Advocate to make the results and data of all research conducted at UF and all journals published at UF open access and freely available online
- Work to expand digitization efforts of public domain materials in UF’s libraries so that content can be free online
- Promote adoption of the Equitable Access License to ensure medical research conducted at UF serves the public good
- Encourage UF to make its course materials freely available online, following the model of MIT’s OpenCourseWare
I am not afraid to stand up for what’s right. I will fight to make UF a world leader in technology and access to information. We will foster an environment of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship that ensures students get the best educational and professional opportunities.
February 23rd, 2006 at 6:31 am
Vote Gavin Baker for U Florida Student Senate!…
Gavin sez, “I’m running for Student Senate at the University of Florida. I’ve developed a personal platform of free culture issues — which might make the first candidate anywhere to run on a free culture platform. Besides advocating for a student v…
February 23rd, 2006 at 6:26 pm
[…] Vote Gavin Baker for UFlorida Student Senate: candidate at my alma mater, UFlorida, who’s running on a platform of “free culture issues”. Who says Gators are apolitical (well, they were when I wuz there) avin sez, “I’m running for Student Senate at the University of Florida. I’ve developed a personal platform of free culture issues — which might make the first candidate anywhere to run on a free culture platform. Besides advocating for a student voice in university tech policy, I’ll fight the anti-filesharing software deployed in campus housing, advocate for open access to university research and journals, promote free/open source software and open file formats — you get the drift.” […]
February 27th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
[…] This could be a sign of greater things to come: Gavin Baker, one of our board members and co-founder of Florida Free Culture, is running for student government at the University of Florida, on a platform of free culture issues. This is almost certainly a first, in student government or in government at large, at least in the United States (although I’m not sure about more enlightened nations such as Brazil). This election is especially interesting because the University of Florida is the fourth-largest university in the United States, with over 48,000 students (according to Wikipedia), and the student government controls over $12 million of student fees. A position in student government there is at least as important as a government position in a small town, so this is no laughing matter. Keeping that in mind, take a look at Gavin’s platform, which I will reproduce in full here: […]
February 27th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]