Diego De Jesus
The College Republicans and the James Madison Institute held a celebration of the Bill of Rights with Florida Senator Kelli Stargel on Nov. 19.
Stargel shared her many experiences within legislation and her progression from becoming a housewife to a senator. A friend suggested that she run to become a senator and she won; she took on this role and passed all of her proposed bills within her first term in the position.
After Stargel’s introduction, she opened the floor to questions about today’s issues. The main issue that came up was school shootings, in which she mentioned the school shooting that occurred recently in California at Saugus High School.
The issue had a serving secretary from the College Democrats and other members of the audience of students offering some bipartisan opinions on the issue.
“I’m a sixth generation Floridian and I wanted my kids to get a good education and I want college students to be advocates and more involved,” Stagel said. “This is my district and I like to speak to college students to get them more involved.”
The next issue that was brought up was the legalization of marijuana in the state of Florida. Stargel mentioned that medical marijuana is already being administered statewide.
She couldn’t offer any insight on the issue because of the lack of sufficient research that backs up the claim or support to completely legalize as it is still a class second narcotic and the amount of THC within the possibly administered mariuana could exceed a healthy level.
Florida Southern College Representative for the James Madison Institute, Brayden Lacefield, organized the event under the approval of the Tallahassee James Madison Institute.
Instead of celebrating Bill of Rights Day on Dec. 15, he decided to celebrate it on Nov. 21 since students would be on winter break and it would be too costly to plan two events.
“To spread the mission statement of the institute and to celebrate the Bill of Rights Day before the actual day itself,” Lacefield said. “Who better to celebrate that with than Senator Kelli Stargel.”
