Voting for Student Assembly president and vice president will begin this morning at 9 a.m., with Molly Bode '09 and Lee Cooper '09 on the ballot for president and Nafeesa Remtilla '09, Miesha Smith '09, Tay Stevenson '10 and Chuck Zodda '09 on the ballot for vice president. The online vote is conducted by the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee.
Students will also elect the presidents and vice presidents of the Classes of 2009 and 2011 and members of the Committee on Standards, the Organizational Adjudication Committee and the Green Key Society as voting takes place over the next two days.
The EPAC-sponsored vote is completely unrelated to the poll being conducted by Open-Vote.com about the elections.
Open-Vote.com is a polling website that began at Dartmouth but is now open to all college students, Jason Freedman Tu '08, the site's co-creator, said. It has recently added an application to the social-networking site Facebook.com. Currently, the poll contains two questions regarding the Assembly, one asking which presidential candidate students support and the other asking "Does the Student Assembly matter?" At press time, 26 people had voted on which candidate should be president, with 80 percent supporting Bode, 23 percent supporting Cooper and 3 percent undecided. Nine students had voted on whether or not the Assembly matters, with 44 percent voting that it does and 33 percent voting that it does not
The candidates have also used Facebook in their campaigns through the creation of groups for supporters of their candidacies. As of press time, Bode and Remtilla's Facebook groups contained the greatest number of members, with 223 and 232 members, respectively.
"It's really the first year that Facebook groups have taken off," Sara del Nido '08, non-voting chair of EPAC said.
Del Nido also informed The Dartmouth of three sanctions EPAC has issued to the students over the course of the campaigns -- one to Stevenson's campaign, one to Rembert Browne '09, who is running uncontested for the Class of 2009 vice president and one to Smith's campaign.
The sanction on Smith's campaign resulted in the suspension of any new campaigning efforts by Smith, although she is allowed to leave her current posters up and was allowed to participate in Sunday night's debate. The suspension, issued by EPAC on Sunday afternoon, was the result of posters hung by her campaign that, according to Del Nido, "didn't appear to be printed at the College Copy Center."
This is a violation because all candidates must submit receipts to EPAC delineating all of their expenses, and going through the College Copy Center is the best way to get a receipt for printing posters, Del Nido said.
EPAC decided to suspend her campaign for the remainder of the campaign period because "it's already very late in the campaign period," Del Nido said.
Smith, who is currently off campus on a Foreign Study Program in Washington D.C. has two campaign managers that have never been involved with the Assembly nor campaigned in an EPAC election before. Smith said she does not blame them for the problems that prompted the sanction.
"There are things that I think just got lost in translation, but I would never fault one of my campaign members at all," she said.
Smith said that being off-campus has made campaigning more difficult because her commitments in Washington D.C. have made communicating with people on campus impossible at times.
"I've been in hallways in the Capitol crouched down participating in an [Assembly] debate," she said.
Del Nido said that EPAC took the fact that Smith is off campus into consideration, but said that, though EPAC understands that Smith is in a difficult position, it would be unfair to the other candidates not to punish her.
"It's a unique situation. Miesha took the challenge on when she decided to run off campus," Del Nido said. "I have a lot of admiration for Miesha for taking that on."
Despite the difficulties she has faced, Smith said she is proud of her decision to run even if it simply paves the way for future candidates to run for an Assembly position while off campus.
"My ultimate concern is that the student body gets what it needs, and that's why I decided to run," she said.
Stevenson received a tier-one sanction, the equivalent of a warning, because he collected only half the number of petition signatures he needed to run, but the matter was resolved.
Browne also received a tier-one sanction for joining the Facebook group that supports Smith, because as a candidate in an EPAC-sanctioned race, he is not allowed to endorse other candidates by EPAC regulations. EPAC only gave Browne a warning because they are still working out how to deal with Facebook "endorsements," according to Del Nido.
