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:

• 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

If only we had someone running for US senate with a similar platform! Perhaps someday you or somebody else reading this blog will…

Voting is on Tuesday and Wednesday, so if you attend the University of Florida or know people who do, I personally would encourage you to get out the vote for Gavin, even though FreeCulture.org cannot officially endorse candidates.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.