Two days into campaign week, one of the Associated Students presidential campaign teams has been penalized for putting up flyers in a no-posting zone. Junior Evan McGee and sophomore Laura Daronatsy, running for president and vice president, respectively, were ordered to take down six posters around campus in recompense after an elections committee member found the team’s flyers in the Student Union Building.
This is not the first time an AS candidate has run into issues during their campaign. In 2012, two pairs of candidates were disqualified before the race began because of mistaken understandings of the rules.
Campaign rules, while strict, have been modified even more this year to ensure fairness through all stages of the election. After a too-close-to-call election last year that led to the senate having to vote to break a tie, AS gathered a constitutional committee in the fall to reexamine and amend the constitution.
On Thursday night, elections committee member and senior Patrick Gillespie found approximately 20 flyers lying on various tables around the SUB, a location which the AS handbook deems off limits for campaigning.
“I collected all of them [the flyers] and contacted the committee,” Gillespie said. “We went and discarded all of them and made a ruling.”
The elections committee, of which Gillespie is a member, ruled that the six laminated posters attached to stakes around campus should be taken down. The remaining posters will be allowed to remain up.
“There’s not exactly one penalty that corresponds to the infraction, but before the campaigns started, we told the candidates the rules,” said senior Megan Beatty, another committee member.
Both McGee and Daronatsy were notified of the matter by AS office manager Kylie Tyndall. Neither had prior knowledge of the flyers, according to McGee.
“I suppose it was my mistake, in a certain way. I should have been a little more clear in expressing the rules to my team,” McGee said. “It was an accident, it was miscommunication on both sides. … It is [the committee’s] decision and we’re going to roll with that.”
