Late Monday night the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee issued its harshest sanction of the campaign period, effectively silencing the campaign of Student Body Presidential candidate Paul Heintz '06.
Just two hours later, the committee suspended the BlitzMail privileges of Brian Martin 06's campaign early Tuesday morning.
Heintz received EPAC's most severe sanction short of disqualification in response to two campaign violations stemming from a negative BlitzMail message sent by a supporter.
According to the EPAC BlitzMail bulletin released at 11:39 Monday night, Heintz and his supporters will only be allowed to campaign verbally.
"I'm trying extremely hard to make this as fair as possible but EPAC is being completely ridiculous when it comes to these campaign violations," Heintz said.
EPAC Chair David Hankins '05 said the offense was considered in conjunction with previous violations committed by Heintz's supporters and EPAC issued the sanction as a matter of fairness.
"We really draw the line at negative campaiging," Hankins said. "The blitz that was sent out last night by one of Paul's supporters included a very negative statement against another candidate in violation of one of the rules we have emphasized most strongly and consistently."
Heintz's opponents Martin and Noah Riner '06 both said they would continue focusing on their campaigns and communicating with their teams to avoid similar violations.
"In a race where there's a lot of important issues to discuss, this is an interesting assessment of how someone wants to campaign," Martin said before EPAC released a statement on his violation at 1:45 a.m.
Martin's campaign will be prohibited from sending BlitzMail messages for the remainder of the campaign period as a result of a supporter's BlitzMail message that contained negative campaigning.
"It was an unsanctioned Blitz," Martin said,"[it] was not one that I had seen before or would have approved by any means."
He added, "It's very frustrating."
