To the Editor:
Throughout this past week, candidates for Student Assembly president have plastered walls and distributed all sorts of propaganda on campus. I was extremely disturbed by one such pamphlet which appeared at my door on Monday afternoon.
Phil Ferrera '96 and Kelii Opulauoho '96, in their joint campaigning, decided to create this pamphlet which contained their goals and experience. The part which perturbed me personally was the presentation of a slate of candidates for the At-Large Student Assembly positions. I was bothered by this for two main reasons.
First and foremost, it is unethical and inappropriate to run a slate of candidates for the Student Assembly positions. The basic purpose of having the Assembly at all is to represent the student body.
The current organization of the Assembly allows it to tackle a variety of issues, due to the different backgrounds of individual members. By having an Assembly which consists entirely of people with the same ideological beliefs and interests, it is impossible for the SA to serve this purpose. The students running on a slate would be required to deal with the issues which are important to those leading that particular group, and thus the majority of student interests and concerns would not be addressed by this group.
My other concern involves the process in which this list of candidates was created. The previous night, I received a message from Ferrera that my name, along with several others, was accidentally placed on their slate of candidates. I replied that I wanted my name taken off or some effort made to remove my relation from the group. I said that this was a misrepresentation of myself as well as the other candidates who did not want to appear on this slate. I had never given them permission to use my name as a person in support of their agenda and, in fact, I do not wish to be associated with the plans they outlined. I received no reply and, as it is obvious from the flyer, he made no effort to correct the situation.
I ask everyone to take this situation into consideration when viewing these candidates.
