Appeals panel invalidates SGA vote, calls for re-election
By Stephanie Delman · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · May 24, 2008
After an appeals panel disqualified all nine candidates from the first round of Student Council Executive elections, the Council announced that a re-election will begin Friday.
The Panel's hearings were closed and they did not release the specific reasons for each disqualification. The candidates were allegedly disqualified for infractions ranging from late campaign finance reports to soliciting votes during the voting period. The appeals process took place following last week's election, and the alleged infractions were reported by people closely linked to the election itself.
According to an anonymous member of Student Council, hardly anyone is privy to the information surrounding the disqualifications.
"The worst part of this whole ordeal isn't the actual decisions that [the Appeals Panel] reached, but that nobody on the council ever knows what's going on, except for maybe people at the very top," said the source.
Dan Teran, freshman candidate for President, said he had no idea why he was disqualified last week.
Tyler Krus, chair of the Committee on Student Elections which oversees the elections, said that he would have told each candidate why they had been disqualified if only they had approached him.
"If any candidates had contacted me, they could have been notified of the rationale for their disqualification. It's possible that some of them didn't know they could do that," Krus said.
According to current Student Council President Scott Bierbryer, the vagueness surrounding rules and procedures such as these is a poor reflection on the way elections are currently run.
"The Committee on Student Elections should do everything they can in their power to inform candidates whether they have committed infractions, as more of a courtesy to student body than to the individual candidates," Bierbryer said.
According to Bierbryer, a disservice is done to the student body when a candidate they have elected is later disqualified.
Teran said that he does not believe every disqualified candidate should be given a second chance.
"To be honest, I'm pretty frustrated that some of these candidates got a clean slate," he said.
Krus said that he is not convinced that the current structure of elections can lead to a fair or easy outcome.
"We wanted an easy election and a clear victory, but as soon as we got into these issues, we were constrained. We couldn't always necessarily guarantee best candidates, because at some point we just had to make sure that we have a student government next year," Krus said. "Whoever wins may or may not deserve to be in office, there are obviously issues of justification, but we have to look at the bigger picture."
Bierbryer said that ideally, he would want to open the re-elections to new candidates.
"It would be in the interest of the student body to have the option of new candidates who haven't yet shown that they would violate the rules, but obviously there is a time crunch," he said.
According to a different anonymous source within the Council, and corroborated by several other sources, presidential candidate Sonny Chandrasekhar was disqualified for sending an e-mail to his fraternity brothers asking them to vote for him during the voting period, which is against the CSE rules. He also allegedly asked each of the pledges to get more votes for him. The anonymous source also alleged that Chandrasekhar sent an amended version of the e-mail to the CSE and a fellow candidate in an attempt to cover up the violation.
Various sources have reported that Teran attempted to gain votes during the election process by telling people that he was only a few votes behind.
Teran said that he never specifically said he knew the vote counts.
"You are more motivated to vote when it counts. I never told anyone who to vote for, but I told people it was close and that they should vote," Teran said.
According to the first anonymous source, this is not the first year that candidates have committed significant violations, but it is the first year that those involved in the elections have drawn so much attention to the controversy.
"CSE has a lot of rules that they think are in effect, but that they never revised to reflect the actual election procedures. That's why experienced candidates have sometimes done things in which CSE has just looked the other way," the source said.
According to Krus, CSE will only pursue a violation if a third party has reported it.
"We're not police officers that go out and look for people who break the rules. We want people to come to us. When we become aware of issues, we go through a process, but sometimes people interpret rules in different ways and we're ultimately the ruling body," Krus said. "I'm sure these things have happened before but because everything was so close this year, and there was a high level of competition, some candidates were definitely spurred to try to get an extra advantage."
Adding to the complications of the appeals process, a third member of the appeals panel had to be selected once the process had already begun.
CSE rules mandate that the president of Student Council and the director of Student Involvement serve on the panel, but the director was not available. Ralph Johnson, the Council's advisor, took his place. The CSE rules require a third member to be appointed by the Council. Through an e-mail to the entire Student Council last week, Bierbryer proposed Joseph Colon, the assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, as an "available and objective" third member.
It is in Bierbryer's jurisdiction as Student Council president to appoint a third member without any input from the general Student Council, but he offered a by e-mail election regardless, in which 18 votes in favor and one opposed to Colon were ultimately submitted.
Despite this majority vote, various Council members aired their concerns about panel members' potential biases in a series of e-mails.
Councilmember Marc Perkins, sophomore, proposed that either an emergency meeting be held in order to officially elect a third member, or that the appeals process should be postponed.
In his e-mail, Perkins accused Bierbryer of following his own agenda.
"By writing StuCo an e-mail at 10:30 at night, by only including one candidate's name and by coming out strongly in favor of that candidate, you are not leaving room for a fair appointment or open discussion ... You may be the president of the Student Council, but you are not the Student Council," Perkins wrote. "You're being more than a little shady with regard to these executive elections."
Bierbryer replied by reminding Perkins that he opened the vote to the entire Student Council when he could have appointed Johnson himself and that Perkins's allegations were unfounded.
"What you consider 'shady' regarding these executive elections is my refusal to release information that is confidential and to discuss any part of the election that I was not personally involved in," Bierbryer wrote.
Councilmember Andrew Gerba responded on the e-mail thread and aired his concern that Perkins was attempting to prolong the debate over the third appeals panel member in order to further his own agenda.
"It is my concern that Marc is attempting to delay the naming of the third panelist as a means of creating a discrepancy in the adhering to CSE mandate. CSE requires the panel meet and reach judgments before the passing of two academic days from when CSE files its decisions. Waiting until Tuesday is unacceptable," Gerba wrote. "It is the responsibility of student council to represent the interests of the students as a whole, not their individual ones. With this in mind, I hope Marc, Scott, nor anyone else, is acting with any specific person's interests in mind."
According to the anonymous source, there have been further speculations that certain alliances within Student Council could have motivated Perkins to look for a reason to postpone the appeals process.
Bierbryer said that this inter-Council dispute did not help the appeals process in its attempt to come to a fair decision about the re-elections.
Further, Bierbryer said that in order to prevent election complications like these from happening in the future, the CSE rules and regulations will need to be reviewed and reformed.
"I hope [CSE] really goes through the entire Constitution bylaws and sees that there are no conflicts and no rules that are difficult to enforce. I would also hope that they would focus on being a proactive rather than a reactive group," he said.
Krus said that the CSE has plans to begin this review during the summer.