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RON MATUSAs universities struggle to diversify enrollments, student leaders assemble winning coalitions.
Fifteen years ago, Sean Pittman walked across the Florida State University campus in triumph. He had just been elected student body president, an especially satisfying win since he was only the second African-American ever to hold the position.
In an instant, pride turned to horror.
"Sean Pittman is a monkey," read the words spray-painted on a wall.
Such a racist attack on a black student leader would be hard to imagine today. Minority students now run student governments on most Florida campuses, marking a sea change in racial attitudes.
Five of the state's six largest universities, including the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida, have student body presidents who are minority or of minority descent. All but two of Florida's 11 public universities have elected a minority president since 2002.
FSU offers the most dramatic change: Three of the past five student body presidents are African-American, as are two of the past five vice presidents and four of the past five student senate presidents.
This on a campus with 12 percent African-American enrollment.
Today's students "see beyond color," said Jarrett Eady, FSU's current student body president.
What amounts to a revolution in diversity has happened quickly, and with nary a peep of protest.
Minority students say times have changed.
There are more opportunities to lead and more talent and desire to get to the top. And minority students have not been squeamish about employing the same bare-knuckle tactics that propelled many of their white predecessors to victory.
The trend says a lot about white students, too.
At Sarasota's New College, which is nearly 90 percent white, students elected a Hispanic woman president last year and voted in an African-American female president in 2000.
It's not that today's students are colorblind, said Brian Cody, who is white and the current student body president.
Today's students like color, he said.
Florida isn't alone.
Of 360 student governments that have responded to an ongoing survey by the Gainesville-based American Student Government Association, 11 percent have African-American student body presidents and 5 percent have Hispanic presidents, said Butch Oxendine, the group's founder and publisher of the student magazine, Florida Leader.
He said the percentages are likely even higher at junior colleges.
At a recent meeting of Florida community college student leaders in Tampa, Oxendine said that other than the group's president, "I don't think there were any other white, non-Hispanic students in the room."
Florida's hodgepodge of cultures puts it ahead of the national curve. Here, the melting pot is so hot it can be hard to figure out which racial or ethnic box a student leader belongs in.
At Florida Atlantic University, student body president Alvira Khan is French and British by nationality. Her father is from England; her mother, from Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Khan's definition for herself: "world citizen."
At Florida International University in Miami, student body president Jorge Rosario is of Cuban and Guamanian heritage. With a campus that is 80 percent minority, the minority and majority labels aren't easy fits.
And they don't seem to matter: Last year's student body president was "Anglo."
With Jewish roots.
There's more to this story than just who's who on Florida campuses.
Student governments are incubators for Florida leaders. The late Gov. Lawton Chiles was one of several UF student body presidents who went on to power and prestige. Former Gov. Reubin Askew, dubbed by Harvard University as one of the 10 greatest governors of the 20th century, was FSU student body president in 1950.
"Thirty years from now, students serving now are certainly going to be officials in our government," Oxendine said.
If minority students are more politically driven, history helps explain why.
In the early 1970s, Jamal Sowell's father was one of the first African-Americans to attend UF's law school. In March, Sowell became UF's first African-American student body president in 18 years.
Extra motivation comes with "being a generation removed from the civil rights movement," said Sowell, who was student body president at his high school in Orlando.
The diversity trend comes with an interesting twist: Even as minority student leaders thrive, some schools still struggle with diversity in their enrollment.
At UF, which has the highest admissions standards among state schools, African-American enrollment was 7.5 percent last fall, up less than 2 percentage points in 15 years.
For the system as a whole, African-American students have jumped from 8.6 percent in 1989 to 15 percent last year.
Given higher admissions standards, those students are more talented and ambitious than their predecessors, some say.
"When I came in, it was hard enough to be at FSU, and to get there, than to be thinking about extracurricular things like student government," said former FSU student body president Pittman, now a lawyer and campaign consultant in Tallahassee.
"Now you're getting the best and the brightest at all levels."
Student governments are serious business. And a hoot.
Student leaders use millions of dollars in student fees ($15-million annually at UF alone) to stage concerts, help with homecoming and run radio stations. Student governments shuttle drunken students home from bars, raise awareness about date rape and fund dozens of other important programs.
At the same time, they often devolve into Banana Republics.
UF has a KEG Party. A recent USF president advocated streaking. In the early 1990s, FSU's Monarchy Party sliced watermelons with a guillotine and, on election day, offered Krispy Kreme doughnuts under a banner that said, "BRIBES."
Meanwhile, at the center of power, young politicians sometimes give jobs to cronies and funnel money to pet causes. Recall elections and impeachment hearings are not uncommon.
Sometimes, the shenanigans are downright vicious: In 1998, an Alachua County jury said UF's influential Blue Key honor society defamed a candidate for student body president when it posted fliers falsely accusing him of being a child molester.
To succeed in this environment, some minority students plug into established political circles or build bases with natural constituencies. The idea is to combine block voting with low turnout.
"Much of it is flat-out strategy and turnout," said Susan MacManus, a USF government professor and longtime observer of campus politics. "Minority students are very, very organized and very cohesive."
At FSU, the winning formula for years has been an alliance between the Black Student Union and white fraternities and sororities, said Justin Rucki, editor of the student newspaper, the FSView and Florida Flambeau. Mounting a serious challenge to the ruling party is "virtually impossible," he said.
But minority candidates lead insurgencies, too.
At UF, Sowell built contacts during a one-year stint as student body treasurer and parlayed those connections into a successful new coalition.
At USF, current president Bijal Chhadva, who is of Indian descent, trumped the ruling fraternity clique by cultivating a grass roots network heavy with minorities and international students. Turnout reached record levels.
"We were pretty much the underdogs," Chhadva said.
Now the underdogs rule.
Minority student politicians still endure the occasional slight.
Before Sowell threw his hat in the ring for president, some student power brokers told him he wasn't the "traditional candidate."
They didn't elaborate, but Sowell suspected they were referring to race.
At FSU, Eady encountered similar comments when he and another African-American ran for the senate leadership on the heels of two other African-Americans. Somebody told him FSU "isn't ready for two African-American males to run the senate again."
"Moments like that make you stronger," Eady said. "It fuels the fire."
At the same time, minority student leaders insist race has little to do with their success and does not define their tenure.
"It's not, "He's student body president with an asterisk: He's African-American,"' Eady said.
At FSU 15 years ago, Pittman thought two things after stumbling across the spray-painted message.
"There was obviously some people that didn't want me there," he said.
On the other hand, many more obviously did.
Ron Matus can be reached at 727 893-8873 or matus@sptimes.com