Rules for slates vaguely defined

The Student Government Board’s elections have rules: They’re spelled out in the elections… The Student Government Board’s elections have rules: They’re spelled out in the elections code on the Board’s website. But what those rules mean — and what constitutes breaking them — is left up to one person: the elections committee chair.

So when the Pitt Blue slate, which consists of presidential candidate James Landreneau and Board candidates Alex Murdoch and Zoe Samudzi, and the Pitt Gold slate, which consists of Board candidates Gordon Louderback, Olivia Armstrong and Natalie Rothenberger, held a “Meet the Candidates” event in Market Central on Tuesday, it isn’t clear whether or not the candidates broke the code.

The elections code states that only those candidates who run together on the same three-candidate slate may campaign together. But what “campaigning together” officially means is not specific and is left up to the elections committee chair, Kari Rosenkaimer.

Rosenkaimer originally said that she had no comment on whether the Pitt Blue and Pitt Gold slates violated the elections code at the event.

But she then said that throughout the days leading up the election, “None of the slates have done anything wrong in campaigning.”

After the elections, she said she is going to figure out what technically counts as campaigning together, but “for now, it’s to my discretion.”

The other slates and individual candidates were invited, but said they did not find out about the event until they received an email at 3:30 p.m., a little more than an hour before the event began, so they weren’t able to make it.

Susan Fukushima, a spokeswoman for Sodexo, said that the two slates, Blue and Gold, approached Sodexo and asked if they could hold an event at Market Central on Tuesday night.

Landreneau said that Sodexo wanted to host the event. Landreneau has worked with Sodexo through the food committee this semester.

Rosenkaimer said that she got a call on Tuesday from a Sodexo public relations employee saying that the Pitt Blue slate had set up a campaigning opportunity in Market Central, and she wanted to offer the opportunity to all of the candidates over the next few days.

Rosenkaimer said she then immediately contacted all of the other candidates via email to notify them of the event in case they wanted to attend.

Pooja Patel, a candidate running for Board on the Pitt First slate, said she found out about the event too late, but Market Central was holding another event Wednesday night so she opted to not attend the Tuesday event.

“I think I would have an issue with it if I couldn’t go tomorrow,” she said, referring to the meet and greet held Wednesday at Market Central.

Presidential candidate John Hasley, who is running on the Panther Pride slate, said he didn’t find out about the event until two hours before it happened.

“I would have wanted to know about it sooner so I could have added my slate,” he said.

The event included the slates talking to students in the dining hall, which was decorated with each slate’s signs, and a blue and gold cake, provided by Sodexo.

“We do desserts anyway, so we usually put cake out at night,” Fukushima said. “We didn’t do anything above what we would normally do, we just allowed students to serve the food.”

Rosenkaimer said that the candidates do their own campaigning and set up their own meetings, and she doesn’t have any say regarding those meetings. She said she had no say in the Market Central event and assumed that Landreneau and Sodexo set it up.

Rosenkaimer said that before elections began, she tried to define the elections code more thoroughly to include what counts as campaigning together and what counts as slates endorsing each other. But she said the Board disapproved her plan.

“I did not change the elections code because it didn’t get approved,” Rosenkaimer said.

Assistant News Editor Tegan Hanlon contributed to this report.