Amendment A campaign appeals outcome

Student supporters of Amendment A, the proposed Student Council Constitutional revision are appealing the results of this week's election and calling for the disqualification of Amendment B, the winning amendment. Supporters of Amendment A say their case was misrepresented repeatedly by the opposition over the course of what some people involved with the election process called a dirty race.

Amendment A's drafters, Eric Leslie, Stephen Goutman, April Land, Morgan MacDonald and Jenny Chiang, submitted their appeal to the Board of Elections (BoE) at 8:59 p.m. on Tuesday, less than an hour after the board announced Amendment B's 341 to 231-vote victory at this week's Student Council meeting. According to the BoE policy, appeals must be submitted within 24 hours after the polls close, which was 9 p.m. Monday night.

"We believe Amendment B should be disqualified because of their multiple and repeated misrepresentations of Amendment A during their campaigning. Their misrepresentation served to confuse and scare voters about the issues and tainted the decision-making process," wrote the appellants.

If B were disqualified, A, as the option with the second-highest number of votes, would then win.

During the course of the campaign, Goutman, Class of 2002 president, filed eight campaigning violation complaints with the BoE. Three were ruled in his favor.

At several points, Amendment B supporters stated that the Student Activities Commission (SAC) would be eliminated and student groups would not be able to operate under Amendment A, according to Goutman, who said they knew this was not true. SAC Chair Noel DeSantos made the offensive statement during the April 15 General Assembly meeting and again during an SAC Executive Board meeting while telling liaisons to vote against Amendment A, for example.

"I would call the behavior of the Amendment B people extremely unethical," said Goutman. "I think their McCarthy-like tactics -- their scare tactics -- are totally unnecessary for this campus. The behavior that they've illustrated shows that none of them deserve a spot on Student Council."

In addition, B, which was drafted by Gala and the Class of 2003 officers, was submitted after A, leading A proponents to call it a political ploy.

While acknowledging that Amendment B proponents misrepresented Amendment A at some points, student body President-elect Manish Gala said it was crucial to point out its flaws.

"I regret the misrepresentations but I don't think they were intentionally done," said Gala. "Their thing was that we should just campaign for Amendment B, and I don't think that's reasonable."

Amendment B proponents "equated dysfunctionality with non-existence," said Gala, which led to many of the complaints.

"I don't think many people appreciate today what would have happened if Amendment A passed. We would be royally screwed," said Gala.

Gala acknowledged that B was used as a tactic but said it represented ideas the drafters would have pushed for anyway.

"Things running unopposed tend to always be checked off," he said.

Amendment B took effect immediately after the BoE announced its win Tuesday night, at which point the Student Council bylaws, which dictate the existence of Class A groups including the SAC, Spring Fair, the Hopkins Organization for Programming, the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium (MSE) and the BoE, became null and void. Council rectified the situation by voting a "standing rule" on the bylaws, which grandfathers them back into existence and eliminates the brief period when they would not have existed.

B changes the means of succession when council members resign, eliminates the Committee on Leadership Appointment from the constitution and gives council authority over independent committees.

Because Amendment A called for major reorganizations in Student Council's structure, including the elimination of the Executive Board and class positions as well as a reduction in the number of members, the old bylaws would not be compatible, said Gala. In addition, current council members, such as class vice presidents, would no longer be on council and would have had to leave the meeting immediately.

While they were referred to as amendments, both in effect rewrote the entire council constitution, said BoE co-Chairman Fahad Khan.

Had A passed, "there would have had to be more changes made ... but the process wouldn't have been any different or taken any longer," said Leslie, who has interacted with council as 2000 MSE co-Chair and as a member of the Student Labor Action Committee.

"In actuality, the same thing happened that they were trying to scare people with. It turned out it wasn't difficult to correct," said Goutman.

While officially, the BoE didn't find Amendment B's campaign unethical to the point of disqualifying the amendment, several members said personally they were unhappy with the way the campaign was run.

"They were taking the truth and twisting it a little. They were jumping over that line they shouldn't have crossed," said BoE co-Chairman Erika Stoddard, who said she found it unethical.

"I personally felt that Manish took [Amendment A] as a personal issue" and a threat to his power, she added.

"They were ethical because they were addressing issues, but they walked a fine line," said BoE member Aaron Sacks. "They were a little too deceptive when they probably could have won without that stuff."

Other parties also expressed dismay with some aspects of the campaign.

"I was quite disappointed with how some of the campaigning manifested," said current student body President Anuj Mittal.

"B, if anything, is more of a strategy. I don't feel that it had much intellectual weight," he said, saying he agreed with the concept of A, although he thought it was flawed in its timing. "It's clear that Amendment B is a vote for the status quo."

While he said he was disappointed Gala wasn't more diplomatic over the course of the campaign, Mittal found problems with both sides: "Just as Manish would have alarmist e-mails, you had Steve [Goutman] oversimplifying things when in reality, it was something in between," Mittal said.

Over the past few years, "there have been problems with ethical behavior" in student elections, said Dr. Bill Smedick, Student Council advisor. If the appellants are not satisfied with the BoE's ruling, which will be decided tonight, they can re-appeal to Smedick. While he declined to name specific students, he said, "There was behavior in there that I thought was questionable.