In an unexpected move by the A.S. Elections Committee, the entire Students First! slate was disqualified from the 2003 election moments before the disclosure of the election results on April 11. The committee’s ruling, made in response to a grievance case heard by the committee earlier the same day, was delivered in front of a crowd of shocked candidates and their supporters gathered at the Price Center.
Guardian
The grievance filed accused Students First! of displaying several campaign posters on April 10, violating the decision previously imposed by the elections committee in an earlier grievance case. The slate was to remove all posters by the deadline of 11:59 p.m. on April 9.
As a result of the disqualifications, five commissioner positions, two senatorial positions and the office of vice president external remain vacant.
Both candidates and supporters of the slate responded strongly to the decision, with booing and yelling directed at the elections committee being heard for much of the remainder of Election Manager Robin Shelton’s announcements. The disqualified positions included Kevin Shawn Hsu for president, Moneek Bhati for vice president internal, Rigo Marquez for vice president external, Harish Nandagopal for vice president finance, five commissioner candidates running unopposed and five senatorial positions.
Guardian
“”We all feel horrible about the decision, but it is a decision that the elections committee decided was right in accordance with the elections bylaws,”” Shelton said.
The election committee’s vote on the case was split 4-3, with Shelton, as manager, having no vote. With the goal of disclosing the election’s results without delay, the committee deliberated for about an hour following the last of the day’s two hearings and decided to announce the results immediately. No explanation for the decision was given because it will be included in the postponed regular written report, which the committee will present within two academic days.
“”This is the first time ever at UCSD that an elections committee has abused power in this way,”” said Students First! presidential candidate Kevin Shawn Hsu. “”Three thousand students decided who they wanted in office; the elections committee decided otherwise. They basically threw out the voice of the students.””
The grievance leading up to the slate’s disqualification was filed by vice president internal candidate Steve York of the New Students First of the Unity Action Parking Wave Slate slate. York was accompanied by the slate’s presidential candidate Brian Uiga and student advocate Robert Fourazandeh.
The defense was presented by Students First! commissioner of student advocacy candidate Viviane Pourazary and witnesses, commissioner of communications candidate Frances Galvon and commissioner of diversity affairs candidate Stephanie Aguon.
Fourazandeh had argued several cases opposing Students First! throughout the election period, including Uiga v. Students First!, the first case brought against the slate, for which the committee ruled that Students First! had violated bylaws by using the materials of A.S.-funded organizations to craft posters that would hold space for Students First! posters. Fourazandeh also successfully defended independent presidential candidate Kevin Hsu against Students First! vice president of finance candidate Harish Nandagopal and served as prosecution in the second hearing held on April 11, in which Students First! candidate for Thurgood Marshall College Senior Senator Jonathan Abeye was accused of campaigning in the classroom. In both cases heard April 11, Fourazandeh asked the elections committee to disqualify the entire slate.
“”[The decision] is a very drastic thing,”” Fourazandeh said following the announcement. “”It’s something that’s probably never been seen. It’s brand new. And I have to be optimistic about the job that I did, about the job that people on my team did, but it’s something that still came as a shock to me.””
Fourazandeh said he has volunteered his services to help change the bylaws.
“”This is not a good thing, but I feel that it was something that needed to be done to make the system different because the system is flawed,”” Fourazandeh said. “”The bylaws are flawed. Whether we look at them strictly, free-spiritedly, however we look at them, they are flawed and we need to fix them, and I think this is going to do that. Nobody wants this to happen again.””
Students First! Revelle College senior senator candidate Ted McCombs felt the decision was a mistake.
“”One of the things I noticed about the election committee this year is that they had very severe attachment to the absolute letter of the bylaw as opposed to the spirit of the bylaws,”” McCombs said. “”What we have here was a chance to overthrow the Students First! political machine, it was taken, and it succeeded brilliantly. But I think it was a huge mistake because even as a political machine, it supplies an invaluable source of power for underrepresented minorities.””
Uiga, who brought the first case against the Students First! slate, agreed with the decision.
“”I wanted to be lenient with them the first time, but they went completely against the ruling and they tried to get it out on a loophole, and so I feel that the punishment was fair,”” Uiga said.
During the hearing, York presented evidence in the form of a video he filmed of Students First! posters on the morning of April 10, showing posters at the Student Center endorsing Students First! candidates marked “”APSA endorses”” or “”Endorsed by APSA”” as well as posters with no endorsement. Which instances were found by the elections committee to violate the bylaws or their previous ruling has not yet been disclosed; the grievance was filed in response to the posters with no endorsement and the hearing focused on these, with no Asian and Pacific-Islander Student Alliance members present for questioning.
Photographs of a non-endorsed poster at the Price Center were also presented as evidence.
Galvon and Aguon explained that they had gathered with other members of their slate on the night of April 9, splitting up into different areas to take down every slate poster on campus. Galvon and Aguon were responsible for the area of the Student Center shown in the video, and claimed repeatedly that all posters had been taken down, crumpled up and thrown away.
“”After we cut all the posters in our area … we walked around the Students Center several times to make sure there were no posters,”” Galvon said.
The defense gave no explanation for the posters on the video.
“”All we can we can tell you here today is what we know,”” Pourazary said. “”We know that we took down every single poster. While these posters on the tape look like our posters they could have easily been duplicated by some means or they could have been our own. We can’t tell you that because we’re not the ones who put those back up there.””
York also claimed that he was approached during the filming of his video by Students First! slate members asking him to consider that the consequences of his actions could have the slate disqualified. This claim was supported by witnesses present.
During questioning, Shelton said that he himself, along with other members of the elections committee, had seen posters still hanging on the morning of April 10 with Students First! slate members campaigning nearby, and questioned why the members would not have taken down the posters at this time.
Debate also surrounded the difference between a poster and a billboard, with the Students First! defense claiming that a large sign held by slate members on Library Walk on the days after the deadline constituted the latter and was therefore not an infringement of the previous penalty. Members of the elections committee who were working at a voting booth nearby on the same day witnessed the display.
According to Shelton, disqualifying the entire slate was the only possible sanction left at that point in the elections.
Members of the Students First! slate, including current A.S. president Jenn Brown, spent the afternoon of April 12 discussing the disqualification at the Cross Cultural Center.
Brown refused to comment.
“”[The decision] is completely inconsistent with precedent set in this election by the elections committee, it’s completely inconsistent with precedence set by other elections committees throughout the history of UCSD and that decision needs to be appealed,”” Kevin Shawn Hsu said. “”I’d like to see a council next year that actually represents the students and represents what the students voted for.””
Slate members declined to discuss any plans of appealing the decision.
