To the Editor:
I just want to set the record straight on a couple points because I believe there were factual inaccuracies at the heart of Friday's "Verbum Ultimum" (April 2).
First of all, I think that Paul Heintz '06 most likely would not have been allowed to run for Student Body President if Palaeopitus were still in control of student elections because of the rules on college discipline that had been in place for many years. This was stated by at least one unhappy administrator when we made that decision. But we knew that Paul deserved to run and worked to make it happen. EPAC's decision to change its own rules to allow Paul to run was made after extensive review of the Student Assembly constitution, something that probably never would have happened if Palaeopitus were in charge. The new structure of EPAC, which aims for broader representation, ensured that someone on EPAC was familiar with Student Assembly's rules.
Secondly, it is a major exagerration to say that Student Assembly has assimilated EPAC. In years past, EPAC had no formal structure and was created on a completely ad hoc basis each year. That is no way to run elections, and so Student Assembly decided to formalize the structure last term. To borrow your analogy, that is why the Federal Election Commission is not just a random group of people chosen by the President's Chief of Staff. The formal structure has either the Student Body President, the Senior Class President, or someone else appointed as the non-voting chair, plus voting representatives from four other organizations, only one of which is SA. In other words, someone from SA controls only 25 percent of the votes on EPAC.
Also, doesn't it make sense to have someone who has actually run in a heated election sit on EPAC? No one knows better than Julia Hildreth '05, for example, the effect of EPAC sanctions on a campaign, and under the new rules she was the first choice to lead EPAC.
Finally, the entire membership of EPAC agrees that there need to be changes to the rules on blitzing put in place for next year. But the reasoning behind them is not as hard to understand as you suggest. Recipient lists are not supposed to be suppressed so that candidates from inside SA cannot simply use the SA blitz lists to blitz the entire campus, a huge advantage. The blitzes that led to the sanctions were negative personal attacks. We thought they were bad enough that we needed to act quickly to contain them under the rules we had laid out.
Ultimately, we recognize that putting the burden of controlling supporters on candidates makes sense in theory but is becoming more difficult on this campus. But it would have been unfair to the candidates who were working hardest to control the actions of their supporters to change the rules in the middle of the game. The rules have been in place since winter term, and were repeatedly emphasized to all of the candidates. With something like the Facebook now in place, is it really all that difficult to blitz people you know and the organizations you are a member of, and urge them not to say nasty things about the other candidates? Todd Golden '06, Mats Lemberger '06 and the ultimate winner, Noah Riner '06, who clearly had a wide base of support since he was able to win, never had a sanction issued against their campaigns, and the same goes for all three VP candidates.
Now that Noah and Jeff have been elected, we can hopefully put discussions of elections rules behind us. No one understands the difficulties encountered in running this election better than the members of EPAC. We are going to prepare a long list of recommendations for next year's EPAC, including fundamental changes to the way EPAC oversees elections. But your "Verbum Ultimum" propagated a number of unfair and false storylines against the hard-working people on the committee that needed to be corrected.
Sincerely,
David Hankins '05
