Stipulation keeps student from Senate seat

More than two weeks after elections, the Student Senate remains three seats short of a full Senate. The Student Government Association delayed announcing official Senate election results because of complaints filed Oct. 6 with the elections committee. Election polls closed the following day.

One senator was disqualified for violation of rules, said Tim Reed, senior adviser to the Monroe Park Campus SGA and director of University Student Commons and Activities. “The next three senators were tied. And it just so happened that we had three open seats. So the Senate voted to just move those three people in.”

These three candidates, however, must wait for any possible appeals from disqualified candidate Pratik Jain, a first-year student, before being sworn in.

“Jain had one calendar week to appeal to the steering committee from the time he was served with the election (committee’s) notice,” said Sen. Ali Faruk, chair of the elections committee. This one-week period passed without Jain contacting the SGA, said Faruk, but his seat still remains empty.

Newly elected Sen. Jessica Lee and fellow student Thomas Durst met with Faruk after most Senate candidates were sworn in Oct. 11.

Lee and Durst reported campaign guideline violations they said they witnessed in the West Grace Street Student Housing.

“On Oct. 6, Ms. Lee said she saw you campaigning and passing out fliers in the honors lounge within 30 feet of the honors computer lab,” Faruk wrote in his letter to the alleged violator that he released Wednesday, Oct. 20. “On the evening of Oct. 6, Ms. Lee said she witnessed you campaigning inside a friend’s room… in plain sight of her computer with handbills.”

SGA election bylaws stipulate that campaign material cannot be distributed or placed within 30 feet of a voting booth. Not only does the student government’s Web election system consider every computer as a possible voting booth, but its bylaws also prohibit candidates from soliciting votes during online voting periods.

“The campaigning rules were pretty stupid considering there are computers everywhere,” said Jain, a biomedical engineering major. “Basically, they (SGA’s Election Committee) are telling you to go campaign in the streets to people who don’t even know you, and who will probably throw (campaign fliers) away.”

After the first meeting with complainants, Faruk contacted Jain to schedule a hearing based around Jain’s schedule.

“When they (the elections committee) received this complaint, they considered it serious enough to go forward with it,” Reed said. “So, they asked for formal documentation from the person who was complaining. There was a letter drafted to the individual. Then there was a hearing.”

Reed said every complaint receives a due process via a committee hearing. Members of the elections committee and the complainants met Friday, Oct. 15, for the hearing, but Jain did not attend.

“He (Jain) didn’t let me know beforehand (that he was going to be absent from the hearing),” Faruk said. “We had to go ahead (with the hearing).”

Jain said he was too busy to attend the hearing.

“I didn’t have time,” he said. “I had a huge engineering lab to make up.”

Jain said he has not attempted to call Faruk to reschedule this hearing.

Aside from the two complaints against Jain from the students, the committee discovered an additional violation during its hearing.

In his letter to Jain, Faruk wrote the candidate saying Jain “(failed) to have election-campaign material approved by the director of elections prior to campaigning.” In other words, the violating candidate failed to go through the proper channel before distributing fliers.

The committee disqualified Jain for campaigning near the honors computer lab and issued him a letter of reprimand for his later offenses.

“There was no reason a candidate should not have known what the campaign rules were,” Reed said, adding that Faruk had sent e-mails and conducted meetings with candidates to discuss campaign rules.

Recently elected Sen. Ginger Myers representing the School of Education agreed with Reed.

“I don’t know the specifics on the election rule-breaking,” she said, “but I do think that the rules were clearly stated.”

Jain admitted he had violated some of the guidelines but said he had not been informed of what these rules were.

“I admit that I campaigned in the dorms,” he said. “I think it’s really unfair (I was disqualified) because I saw other people doing it.”

Jain has not brought complaints against any of the other Senate candidates.

The new constitution, awaiting approval by the University Council, VCU’s administration and its Board of Visitors, calls for 25 senators to be elected per election, Reed said. With 23 senators in office before elections and 24 senators sworn in because of the campaign violation, three of the 50 seats remained open.

“Spring 2003 or late fall 2002 we got 50 senators with appointments and within a week one had dropped out. We’ll see how long it lasts,” he said.

The three remaining seats could be filled at the Monday, Nov. 8 Senate meeting.