Eleventh-hour campaigning has resulted in two election procedure violations in the race for Student Body Vice President and '03 Class Council.
Lucas Nikkel '05, a campaign worker for vice-presidential candidate Julia Hildreth '05, circulated an email yesterday criticizing Hildreth's opponent, Stephanie Bonan '03 that was deemed to be in violation of negative campaigning rules by the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee.
"Essentially, the issue is that yes, candidates are allowed to criticize other peoples' ideas or platforms, but they aren't allowed to slander other people, and the information that was in that blitz was inaccurate and libelous," said Student Body President Molly Stutzman, the chairperson of EPAC.
The EPAC also determined that Dan Chang '03 and Vinny Ng '03, running as a coalition for President and Vice-President of the '03 Class Council, violated election rules when Michael Paul '03 endorsed them in the Weekend Update email service. The message violated an EPAC rule banning endorsement emails to recipients whom the sender does not know.
"I did ask him to spread the word to people he knew like his friends or his house or along that line, but I did not ask him to blitz Weekend Update," Chang said.
The EPAC, which is comprised of representatives from each organization holding elections today, will post its ruling on the Elections-Students BlitzMail bulletin today. Emails explaining the ruling were also sent to the recipients of Nikkel's email.
The message criticized Bonan's early departure from a recent "Meet the '05s" meeting.
"I thought that the candidate should have been there. I shouldn't have said that she has no commitment because that's not accurate," Nikkel said.
Nikkel said he also rescinded his comment in the email that the Assembly does not do anything.
Bonan said she was "extremely disappointed" with Nikkel's behavior.
"I'm very concerned with running a positive issue campaign, and I've made sure that everyone working for me has lived up to those standards," she said.
Nikkel said he sent the email in response to a positive campaign advertisement from Jacqueline Buros '03 and did not intend for it to be negative.
Molly Stutzman perceived Chang and Ng's violation less severe than the negative campaigning but said it was still "one that should be addressed."
This is the first year that EPAC has instituted rules governing negative campaigning and endorsement emails.
Hildreth was unavailable for comment.
