To the Editor:
Since 1865, Grand Marshal Week has been a Rensselaer tradition focusing on getting outside, taking a short break from classes, and electing the next year’s student government officials. In order to provide a fair election process for all candidates involved, the Rules and Elections Committee was developed along with the GM Week Elections Handbook. Included in this handbook is a set of rules that must be strictly adhered to by each candidate or party. For example, in order for a potential GM candidate to make it to the ballot, he or she must acquire 600 nominations, thus requiring a show of determination and willingness to meet fellow students. When a candidate breaks one of the rules in the GM Week Elections Handbook, such as using duct tape on a non-red brick surface, RNE holds that candidate in violation and sanctions a punishment based on the severity of the infringement. Small sanctions include reducing a candidate’s spending limit by 5 percent, or requiring an hour of service for the Rensselaer Union. More significant sanctions include revoking a student’s or party’s postering rights from a specific area on campus. Throughout past years’ elections, RNE has provided a great service to the student body by facilitating a fair election process; however, during this past election, RNE went overboard, stepped out of bounds, and failed at administering a proper election.
Over these past few weeks, GM candidate Ben Hunt ’10 ran an energetic campaign. He ran events such as Pie the GM Candidate and put up a variety of posters throughout campus. On April 2, election day, all of Hunt’s campaign privileges were removed, including all forms of active and passive campaigning, which included posters, e-mails, and all actions that drew attention to him. On top of that, Hunt was sanctioned to do 16 hours of service for the Union and was fined $18.50. This crippling sanction resulted from the fact that Hunt had multiple signs located near the poll site located in the Darrin Communications Center, along with signs on bulletin boards located throughout the Union, and was found campaigning in the Union after 10 pm the night before the election. Whereas other candidates, who were also violating the rule that “No campaigning is allowed within a 100-foot distance of any polling location on any election days,” were only fined a measly 1–2 hours of service to the Union. RNE was supposed to provide a fair election process; however, through sanctioning Hunt and crippling his campaign effort, the election was nothing shy of biased.
Furthermore, throughout the election process, RNE gradually crippled the efforts of the Helios Party. Beginning on Saturday, March 28, the Helios Party was sanctioned against campaigning anywhere in the Center for Industrial Innovation plaza, as a result of the Helios Party spending $142.50 outside of limited party campaigning, while their limit was $127.00. RNE works with a strong basis on ex post facto, after the fact, or the idea that all sanctions are retroactive. Therefore, the banner and numerous posters throughout the CII plaza, while acceptable on Friday, became a target for more sanctions on Sunday. A few days later, when not all of these posters were taken down throughout the CII, the next sanction was sent out and Hunt had all of his campaigning privileges revoked in and on the CII, the CII plaza, the Darrin Communications Center, and the Jonsson Engineering Center. The Helios Party’s campaign privileges were also revoked from all of the academic side of campus. Therefore, all posters advertising Hunt and the Helios Party were required to be taken down. One day the posters were acceptable, but then after the sanction, they were a source for further sanctions. It would have been more responsible of RNE to say that any additional advertising was restricted. To top it off, while all of this has happened to the Helios Party and Hunt specifically, GM candidate Michael Zwack ’11 only ended up receiving a total of an hour and a half of service to the Union. RNE failed to provide a fair election, and did a disservice to the student population by severely restricting the campaigning rights of Hunt and the Helios Party. RNE also likes to give out superfluous violations. For example, when candidate Andrew Stevens ’12 had a multiple-poster banner that read “STEVENS–FOR–VP,” and only the last poster had the contact information on it, they sanctioned him for not having contact information on all posters.
Teddy Tablante
MECL ’10
