At 6 p.m. on a Tuesday, thirty students make their way to Room 0021, an unassuming classroom on the ground floor of the University of Florida’s Weil Hall. While the club meetings take place in the classroom, the club’s efforts extend much further—in just three years, the students of Florida Student Policy Forum are directly responsible for multiple policies creating beneficial change for our community.

In this classroom, students, separated into policy interest groups, talk amongst one another to share ideas for change. Sometimes, the idea sticks.

That was the case last year, when members Graham Bernstein and Konstantin Nakov grew curious about how to help prison reform in the local Alachua County area.

After researching, Bernstein discovered how integral familial telephone contact was. With telephone calls, inmates’ connections to the outside world are strengthened, and their support systems remain intact. While enhancing an inmate’s quality of life, it also increases the likelihood of finding housing and employment opportunities after release— a key factor in reducing recidivism rates.

However, in Alachua County, phone calls are not free. After talking with local families with incarcerated members, Bernstein and Nakov discovered the financial burden the costs can incur. One woman, Karen Stuckey, noted she spent thousands of dollars to communicate with her incarcerated husband. While financially feasible to her, Stuckey noted that low-income individuals do not have the same luxury and often must decide between buying food or medicine or having contact with incarcerated family members, both unacceptable options to the Florida Student Policy Forum. While the problem was clear, the solution was not.

Bernstein and Nakov spent months formulating a policy measure that would help ease the financial burden faced by families and receive bipartisan support. In the end, the Florida Student Policy Forum was able to provide free phone calls for inmates in the Alachua County Jail. Additionally, the efforts expanded to become state-wide, with $1,000,000 appropriated to a pilot program to provide free telephone calls for all Florida prisoners in exchange for good behavior. This year, the appropriation was doubled due to the pilot program’s success.

In this legislative session, the Florida Student Policy Forum has set its sights on a new problem: corporal punishment against students with disabilities in K-12 schools. At this point in time, there are no restrictions on corporal punishment being used against students with disabilities, even those with registered IEPs. Oftentimes, parents are not aware that corporal punishment can be used against their children and are not notified to give consent when it occurs.

The Florida Student Policy Forum’s creation of a bill, HB 439/SB 1318, outlawing this very practice is already making fast progress through the Legislature. Recently, the bill, already with bipartisan cosponsors, passed the Education Quality Subcommittee unanimously, a typical preemptive sign of legislative success.

At first glance, the policies created by the Florida Student Policy Forum seem small. Yet, that is the Florida Student Policy Forum’s exact plan. In the midst of extreme political polarization, the Florida Student Policy Forum seeks to create viable initiatives that can gain bipartisan support. Considering the Forum’s stellar track record in creating effective change, it seems this plan pays off.