Election rules altered by SMU students' union

Move bans campaigning as a group, but some candidates call it arbitrary

Campaign posters will be hung in the hallways of Saint Mary's University next week as the elections to name a new student government begin. But some of those posters will look different from what the candidates originally had in mind, after the election appeals board ruled last week to prohibit students from campaigning as a group.

The decision was made last Friday after a complaint by the one of the candidates running for board of directors of the SMU Students' Association about other candidates running under the banner of Students First. Ali Hamed says the fact that the candidates were endorsing one another gave them an unfair advantage and such a voting bloc would overwhelm the other members of the board.

"It's an exclusive group ... this is discrimination based on political ideology," said Hamad. "It would have introduced a big margin of internal corruption."

The students' union appeals board agreed. In an unanimous decision, it passed an amendment to the SMUSA election policy, prohibiting candidates from endorsing one another or identifying themselves as a group. Instead, they must run only as individual candidates.

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One of the posters that will have to be altered before being approved - the Students First logo and button are now prohibited

Related Websites

 

• Letter published on SMUSA website and in the Journal
• SMUSA Election Policy (PDF)
• SMU student union elections postponed

 

 

"[The 'Students First' group] was something that we decided wasn't in the spirit of the election," said Alwyn Gomez, one of the members of the appeals board.

One of the major reasons the coalition was a concern, he says, was because the board of directors is meant to be a check on the power of the association's president. The fact that one of the presidential candidates was also a member of Students First was also a problem, said Gomez.

"The idea is that you get a diverse array of viewpoints. If you have a group of students that are already decided on one side of the fence ... you're not getting that variety of viewpoints," he said.

Gomez stressed that the students' union did not penalize candidates running using the Students First slogan at all, as they weren't breaking an existing ruling. All are allowed to continue running for the positions. But they have to get any of their campaign materials re-approved, as some did display the group's logo. The board also pushed back the start of election campaigning from Feb. 1 to Feb. 2, to give candidates time to remake their materials. The students' union published a letter on the SMUSA's website and in the campus newspaper, the Journal, to explain to students why the election date was moved and the new rule created.

Jeff Mitchell, SMUSA presidential candidate and the creator of the group, says both the decision and the process were flawed. Mitchell says the label isn't a political ideology or a voting bloc, it's just a promise by some of the candidates to listen closely to the wishes of the student body.

"I don't see how creating a banner to run under constitutes discrimination," Mitchell said during the hearing. "These are just values. Nothing ... prevents a group from forming based on the values they hold."

Mitchell says students's union formed the appeals board in an improper way. The SMUSA's elections policy states that the appeals board must be made up of students, board of directors members, and faculty. But the board of directors took over the task of hearing appeals for the Friday meeting, saying it could not find enough students or staff willing to take on the job. Mitchell says the board shouldn't get to choose when it follows its policy and when it doesn't.

"The board stated that it's above its own laws ... that just speaks to how corrupted the whole situation has become," he said.

Others took issue with the timing of the decision. Russell Prime, a part-time sociology instructor at SMU, observed the meeting at the request of one of his students, Adrian Lake, who was in-charge of overseeing the elections.
(Hamad presented a motion to dismiss Lake from his position for, among other reasons, not prohibiting the Students First slate. Lake resigned his position before the appeals committee voted on that motion.)

Prime, who also has experience with policies created by non-profit groups, says the board should have anticipated the possibility that candidates would run as a group. It's something that should have been decided when the elections policy was first made, and not on the eve of when the election was scheduled to start.

"it just seemed for me to be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction," said Prime. "You're in the midst of an election going on right away ... this should have been dealt with before."

Gomez says the rule should have been in place earlier, but the board didn't know that prospect of a coalition would become an issue.

"We can't see the future. The fact that we didn't cover it before ... is a shortcoming, I admit that. But we can only predict so much."

The final vote on the members of SMUSA, which oversees an operating budget of nearly $1.4 million, will take place on Feb. 17-18.

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