Friday night, a SMUSA Elections Appeal Committee meeting attracted a small but opinionated crowd to the SMUSA board room. The topic at hand, a controversial docket provided by Ali Hamed, one of the candidates for the 2010 Board of Directors.

The candidate expressed concern with several elements of the SMUSA Elections Policy as well as with the actions of the Elections Chief Returning Officer(CRO) and Deputy Returning Officer(DRO). The docket consisted of ten motions, many of which were divided into many subsections, making for a lengthy, and at times confusing, meeting.

Before even looking at the motions being presented there was concern regarding the composition of the Elections Appeals Committee. Usually there are faculty members and students at large comprising the Appeals Committee but this meeting was called on short notice before such people could be recruited. As a result four members of the current SMUSA Board of Directors sat in as the Appeals Committee, based on a decision that had been made at an earlier Board of Directors meeting.

One of the most controversial motions requested the current CRO, Adrian Lake and DRO, Tim Rose, be removed from their positions due to a variety of violations. These violations ranged from complaints about a lack of advertising the call for nominations of candidates to complaints regarding a potential conflict of interest of the CRO as well as the allowance of campaign language being used in candidate bios that were published before the campaign officially began. There were also issues expressed by the complainant regarding a lack of transparency of CRO decisions and the potential result of certain decisions in giving candidates of the group “Students First” an unfair advantage.

The motion failed as the CRO informed the Appeals Committee of his resignation, effective immediately. The resignation was given, due to Adrian's concerns with how the complaints were being handled as the Election Policy clearly outlines a procedure far different from what occurred Friday night. The CRO was not given appropriate amount of time to deal with the issue as the official complaint was delivered to an independent third party (SMUSA) rather than to the CRO himself.

The CRO also expressed concern with the lack of a third party member on the Appeals Committee as it left room for bias, and conflicts of interest as Board of Directors members could have friends running in the election. The Board of Directors Chair Alwyn Gomez responded that all Board members are required to sign an oath of office to remain unbiased. Gomez also said that while the Board creates policy it is not bound by it as the Board is a “free thinking body and group that can override policy when necessary.”

The complainant stated that the complaint was not submitted directly to the CRO as it was an issue with policy that was above the CRO's position.

The Appeals Committee therefore did not vote on the issue of firing the CRO as the resignation had already been given. There was a vote regarding the DRO and the decision was made to allow him to remain in the position, or potentially move into the role of the CRO if desired. This decision was made as the issues were described as “not their judgement call as the DRO is merely an assistant.” In explaining what happened the DRO, Tim, called the past few weeks “f**king bulls**t” and said trying to follow the policies was extremely difficult.

Despite many differences of opinion on other issues the complainant, CRO and DRO all expressed serious objection to the current SMUSA Elections Policy, describing it as “corrupt.”Charles Touma, a member of the Appeals Committee, agreed the policy was corrupt as complaints were able to be handed to the Board of Directors which overrules both the CRO and DRO.

The second motion tabled regarded the candidate group “Students First,” and requested candidates not be allowed to run for office as part of a group as this amongst other reasons would “violate the spirit and purpose of SMUSA...to have a clique attaining office.” Individuals on both sides of the issue immediately objected to the word clique, and much of the point of the motion was briefly lost. There was also a concern regarding the potential lack of separation between the Office of President and the Board of Directors. The separation between the two is important as it is the duty of the Board to hold the President responsible for their actions.

Alwyn Gomez, Board of Directors Chair, said “If you run as a group with affiliation there is no opportunity for accountability” and that “the Board needs to be capable of holding the President accountable.” The problem with the “Students First” group, was that a Presidential Candidate, Jeff Mitchell was running with four Board of Directors candidates. The concern was that if all four were elected they may push another agenda.

The (former at this point) CRO, pointed out that nowhere in the Elections Policy does it say candidate groups cannot form, it only says that candidates cannot explicitly endorse each other. The CRO explained his decision for letting a group form around a similar agenda, as “it would have been almost discriminatory to exclude them.”

Members of the Appeals Committee all expressed concern over letting a group of candidates run under any banner. Kerry O'Rourke said, “No association is needed to retain the integrity of both [President and Board]” Charles Touma went on to say “The Board wouldn't fulfill its duties if working in co-operation with the President.”

It was determined that the motion needed to be re-worded as passing a motion against one group of individuals would be unfair. The motion was amended to read “Be it resolved that the Board of Directors will not permit candidates to run for office under any banner shared between multiple candidates and that the group should not have any mention, undue influence, or participation in the upcoming election.”The amended motion passed, and no members of Students First were removed as candidates or penalized as the problem was with policy.

Perhaps the largest issue tackled at the meeting was what to do about the current election. Candidates had already printed pictures and bios in The Journal and online and posters were already made as campaigning was set to start February 1st. Without a CRO, and with so many policy issues, the question was raised of how the election could go on.

One of the previous complaints made against the CRO had been that nominations had not been advertised long enough which raised concerns amongst Appeals Committee members about whether to extend the nomination period to allow more candidates to get involved. One of the candidates for the Board made argued that re-opening nominations was kind of like saying the first batch was not good enough.

In order to ensure enough time for the elections and appeals before the end of March, it was determined the election period should be postponed one week to allow a new CRO to be hired and the necessary policy changes to be made and approved. Campaigning will now start Monday February 8th , voting days will be February 17-18th. There will be a week for appeals immediately following Reading Week.

The DRO, Tim Rose, was offered the CRO position, but opted to remain in place as DRO and a new CRO would be hired to fill the void. It was decided things will start with a clean slate as candidates wearing “Students First” buttons were given the chance to have photos retaken, as were all other candidates. SMUSA also covered the costs of the initial poster printings as they could no longer be used and all campaigning materials have to be re-approved to ensure they follow the new guidelines.

Ultimately this meeting was to discuss policy issues that could have been brought to light in a different manner that did not implicate any group or individual in the problems as many of the problems were bigger than any one person. There was a lot of talk about the policy being corrupt but not a lot of specific examples. If those calling it “corrupt” evaluated the policy and provided SMUSA with a list of the most problematic aspects, situations like this could hopefully be prevented. Perhaps in the future there needs to be a clearer outline of how situations like this should be handled, so no one ends up feeling overruled, and to prevent policy issues from becoming personal.

All current issues with the Elections Policy appear to be fixed up, so be sure to pick up The Journal next week for revised candidate biographies and remember to vote!