"Sometimes I have to throw up before I do this," my fellow presenter told me, meaning to reassure.
"You've got three minutes left to go throw up, then," I said, trying to make light of something besides my stomach — which was flutteringly filled with butterflies. I'd spent the last hour pacing like a man waiting urgently for the sounds of flushing toilet and unlocking door. Every minute was spent oblivious of reality, trying to frame the speech in my mind. It was all wasted time in the end: I couldn't remember five sequential words of it. You may have noticed.
A few weeks ago, 13 FAU students on the Boca campus organized an informational rally aimed at raising awareness of Florida's budget crisis and its potential impact on our school. If you're a regular UP reader, you already know that much. What you don't know is how simultaneously thrilling and terrifying it is to be part of something like what happened out on the Free Speech Lawn Feb. 28. You also probably don't know that we're not done yet.
What started as an off-the-cuff idea in my civic engagement class became an enormous project, and a great responsibility — members of the state legislature and FAU administration turned out, along with more than 200 students. Of course UPTV covered it, but we were also in the Palm Beach Post and Sun-Sentinel — and my dad first found out about the rally by hearing a 15-second clip of my speech aired on the local NPR station.
On Monday, President Brogan sent out an e-mail to notify everyone of FAU's budget Q&A. Yesterday, we got his signature to headline hundreds of others on our petition to the legislature, which we're sending off this weekend.
Are we proud? Definitely, but by no means are we stopping to congratulate ourselves. We're planning a follow-up event in the style of a town hall meeting, slated for April 15 at the Boca campus Traditions Plaza (in front of the bookstore). We want to get more legislators down here to hear us out and to tell us what's going on with the higher education budget up in Tallahassee, where they make all the big decisions. We also want to air student questions and broaden the dialogue — it is our education, after all.
If you've got a question you think deserves an answer, send an e-mail to sosprojectfau@gmail.com; we'll try to get as many answered as possible, and we'll also send you event details as they're finalized.
Oh, and please tell your friends. I'm not very good at roping people in the Breezeway into giving me the 20 seconds I need to make them care.
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