After two semesters of missing records, Florida Atlantic University’s Boca House of Representatives leadership uploaded its meeting minutes on Sept. 8, only after repeated inquiries from the University Press. The House’s meeting agendas, however, remain missing. 

The House’s failure to upload agendas and minutes for fall 2024 and spring 2025 violated both the FAU Student Government Constitution and Florida’s Sunshine Law, which require such records to be made public. Andrew Moreira, FAU’s assistant director of student government advising and operations, acknowledged the backlog of records in a Sept. 4 email, stating there was improper guidance or training regarding uploading documents in a timely manner. 

Moreira stated that he has recently updated the SG training courses to provide clearer guidance on uploading documentation and meeting management practices. Moreira added in his Sept. 4 email that the 2024-25 legislative folder would be updated by the following day. When the minutes still had not been posted, the University Press followed up with Moreira on Sept. 8, four days past the deadline he had set.

Boca House officials uploaded the documentation shortly after the request; one example is the minutes for the meeting on Oct. 11, 2024, posted nearly 11 months later. Under Florida’s Sunshine Law, public boards, including student government bodies at public universities, must make meeting records and official actions open and accessible to the public. The Sunshine law requires agendas to be posted at least seven days before each meeting, and the minutes are to be “promptly recorded.”

The FAU Student Government Constitution also upholds these standards of openness, and there is a requirement for officials to upload documents on platforms such as Owl Central. Butch Oxendine, founder and executive director of the American Student Government Association, told the University Press that posting the public documents is the bare minimum and leaves students in the dark about SG proceedings.

“Student Government should be transparent, whether it’s the law or not,” Oxendine said, explaining that posting the documents shows transparency to the public that no shenanigans are going on.

According to Oxendine, ASGA gave FAU’s SG a “C” grading overall and a “D+” for its website in June 2025. Oxendine explained that the “D+” is based on ASGA’s website content evaluation scoring template, which grades the web presence of every SG in the nation.

Oxendine stated that a score like that is “terrible for a school” and “should be much, much higher.” The 2025 grades marked a decline from 2022-23, when FAU’s SG received a “C+” overall and for its website. In a Sept. 15 email, Oxendine reported these grades and noted that ASGA aims to grade every SG annually but cannot always review all 4,301 institutions nationwide. 

The SG Administrative and General Statutes specify that the minutes of any meeting must be recorded and made available to the public. The Boca Raton Student Government Statutes state that the House Secretary, or a person chosen by the Speaker of the House, is responsible for recording the minutes at each meeting.

Speaker of the House Elijah Roberson said in an Aug. 29 email that the backlog of missing records fell to former Speaker Pro Tempore Alex Mojica, who had been tasked with handling minutes in the absence of a Secretary. In the email, Roberson said the minutes from the past will be uploaded under the “great new leadership of the House.” 

“I did not know I had to upload the minutes to Owl Central when I was Speaker Pro Tempore,” said Mojica, when asked about the missing records in an Aug. 30 email. In a Sept. 8 email, Speaker Pro Tempore Nick Special confirmed the records had been fixed based on what Mojica had submitted and were now available on Owl Central.  

According to Boca Raton Student Government Statutes, the Speaker is responsible for submitting electronic copies of approved meeting agendas to the Student Government Webmaster for inclusion on the SG website. The University Press emailed Roberson on Sept. 15 about the missing agendas, but he did not respond, and the agendas remained unavailable at the time of publication.

Oxendine emphasized that SG should operate openly in all their actions. He said posting agendas before upcoming meetings and meeting minutes after meetings is a matter of professionalism. 

“It says everybody can look and see that you’re not abusing your authority or wasting money. So they got to abide by the law; it’s just that simple,” Oxendine elaborated. “Post the information that’s required; back-post it, it doesn’t take long. The benefit of the web is that it doesn’t cost to add this stuff.”

Jada Strayer is the Political Reporter for the University Press. Email her at jstrayer2023@fau.edu or contact her on Instagram @jadastrayer for information regarding this or other stories.