SGB campaigns spawn controversy

Some student leaders attempted yesterday to have today’s Student Government Board elections… Some student leaders attempted yesterday to have today’s Student Government Board elections postponed after learning about what they described as election infractions.

About a week ago, the SGB elections committee pulled and confiscated all of the Black Action Society’s campaign endorsement flyers, after student Jim Wright filed a complaint about them, according to Elections Chair Andrew Powers. The flyers, some of which BAS received back yesterday, featured the members of the Results Matter and Actions Matter slates, as well as presidential candidate Todd Brandon Morris.

Morris said he did not support postponing the election, and at about 6 p.m. yesterday, he was making calls to be sure it hadn’t been rescheduled.

Powers said the infraction was directed not toward BAS, but toward the candidates who had violated the rules. And though he had encouraged groups to get involved, he said he had also told the candidates early in the campaign that they were responsible for whatever campaign paraphernalia appeared bearing their names. With the candidates gathering for a photo, they knew they were breaking a rule that prohibits more than one slate from advertising together, Powers said, adding that that same issue becomes a point of contention every year.

As an organization, BAS Vice President Charis Jones said, BAS should be able to endorse whomever it wants, in whatever manner it would like. Jones added that she believes the elections committee needed to be more consistent. She said that she had found flyers hanging in the Cathedral of Learning without proper approval stamps, but that no action was taken against the candidates responsible.

Kelly said he had had two complaints filed against him. The first complaint, filed because Kelly was storing campaign shirts in his office, was thrown out because his opponent, Morris, had a similar complaint filed against him. The second complaint stated that Kelly created his campaign flyers on his SGB computer, but since no computer in the SGB office has Microsoft Publisher — the program used to create the flyers — the complaint was found to be unwarranted.

The elections committee decided that the flyers indeed showed the various slates running together and found Morris and the slates involved guilty of the charges. As a result, each slate received back only 225 of the flyers.

After the initial flyers were pulled on Tuesday, Nov. 9, BAS began to spread word that it was being silenced, by sending an e-mail to the Pitt Pathfinders, among other things. Pathfinder and Kelly slatemate Jennifer Anukem responded to the e-mail, writing that the “‘silencing’ of BAS candidates is untrue.” The confiscation resulted from the election code violations, she wrote.

“Not only is this a violation of the elections code of conduct,” Anukem wrote, “it also contradicts what Todd Brandon Morris claimed to be his platform, which (if you remember him correctly from the meeting) was ‘not campaigning with a slate’ to avoid the infighting that occurs in SGB.”

At the bottom of her e-mail, Anukem wrote, “Vote Proven/Driven for SGB,” then listed the names of the members of those slates: Kelly, Anukem and Jarrod Baker, of Proven; and current board members and candidates Liz Blasi, Joe Pasqualichio and Zachary Ransom, of Driven.

BAS steering committee member Christine McLaurin took issue with Anukem’s multiple slate-endorsing e-mail, saying that Anukem should be disqualified as a candidate.

Kelly said that, as an individual student, Anukem could “endorse” whomever she liked. Powers agreed with this assessment, saying it was a privacy issue. He rhetorically questioned whether he would next be asked to monitor phone calls.

When asked about the elections guide that appeared in yesterday’s Pitt News, in which Anukem, Baker and Kelly’s profiles ended with “Please vote DRIVEN and PROVEN student leaders…” Kelly maintained that the two slates were not being advertised together. He described it as “creative marketing,” adding that he would call himself a “driven” and “proven” student leader.

Asked whether this qualified as advertising together, Powers said he had not thought about it before he sent it out. If someone filed a charge, he said, he and his committee would look into it. McLaurin said she was filing a complaint to SGB’s judicial committee for further review of the situation, in hopes of postponing the election.

Anukem also serves on BAS’s steering committee, but the organization did not endorse her. According to McLaurin, Anukem has not attended many of their meetings. BAS leaders consider what candidates can do for the group when choosing ones to endorse, she said, and Anukem did not live up to their standards.

Anukem, who is black, later said that BAS made the campaign racial, though she said the SGB election has nothing to do with race.

In a meeting with The Pitt News Tuesday evening, BAS President Lauren Evette Williams said Anukem was fired from the steering committee for not talking first to BAS about her problems with the organization.

But despite not receiving BAS’s endorsement, Anukem said she was confident she would get the black vote.

“I know that my people will stand by me,” she said, adding that the “BAS mentality” did not match hers.

At about 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Powers said he had not yet made his own decision about whom to vote for — each candidate had done something to annoy him, he said.

“I have no interest in who wins this,” he continued, adding that, while two of his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers are running, they do not travel in the same social circles.

Instead of focusing on issues such as flyers, Powers suggested that the candidates spend more time mobilizing their support bases.