If you weren’t paying attention to the events leading up to the ASUO elections, now is the time to take notice. Unfortunately it’s not because there is some rock star of a candidate shaking up student government. It’s because the ASUO Constitution Court and the ASUO Elections Board have made a string of recent decisions about ASUO election rules that threaten to derail student government campaigns, while at the same time attempt to control what clothing you can wear on campus.
The elections rule could result in candidates’ names being removed from ballots if their campaign is active on campus on the same day that an advertisement in their favor runs in the Emerald, or any campus media. Campaign shirts qualify as campaigning and therefore could trigger punitive action against the candidate.
This obviously affects each student, as the elections board is trying to mandate what clothing you can and cannot wear on campus. The elections board has extended its reach well beyond its purview and is ready to become entangled in free speech issues that are much larger than the issues relating to administering a
fair election.
These actions by the elections board are predicated upon decisions passed down by the Constitution Court. At the center of the debate is ASUO Election Rule 6.12, which is meant to “ensure fair and equal access to University facilities and resources” by mandating that no elector – read fee-paying student – shall use any “University facility or resource to which other electors do not have equal access.”
The spirit of this rule seems to be to prevent a given organization or department from unfairly supporting a given candidate. Until this March, it had not applied to advertising in the Emerald. However, in March, Elections Coordinator Kendell Tylee interpreted rule 6.12 as barring campaigns from taking out ads in the Emerald. After forwarding this judgment to the Constitution Court for clarification, the court concurred.
It interpreted rule 6.12 to mean that campaigns could not take out ads because the Emerald is a “publication produced with student funds and as an independent paper has the right to run only the ads it wishes to, making it not necessarily accessible to all electorates.” For at least 17 years this has been a non-issue for one reason: That’s not how the
newspaper operates.
The advertising department operates on a policy of generating revenue, not one of basing ad selection on political positions. The opinions are left to the editorial section of the newspaper, which has no influence or connection with advertising and does not even operate out of the
same space.
Even when challenged by petitioners with these facts and with the question as to what would happen if a third party took out campaign ads, the Constitution Court refused to reverse its interpretation. Instead, the Con Court went a step further and decided that candidates are “held responsible for all election-related activities explicitly or implicitly authorized by
the campaign.”
What this means is that both executive candidate campaigns have likely violated current rules, as a third party paid for advertisements in the Emerald for both
campaigns this week.
Even more significant, however, is that all these decisions and punitive moves are a misdirected response to an issue that has not been directly addressed. Given the amount of ad space taken out by one campaign versus the other, there is a very real disproportionate level of spending going on, and rather than directly engaging the topic of campaign finance, the Con Court and elections board have tried to cut off one manifestation of the spending. Con Court should keep in mind that this will not cut off the money involved in the campaign, it will simply redirect the funds to another outlet.
Rule 6.12 will result only in a proliferation of petty rules that will continue to spiral out of control and drag the issue painfully into First Amendment territory. The court and the board have to either go back to the elections rules and place a spending cap on campaigns, or just let elections be free and open. Having more money does not necessarily mean winning the race.
All the attention given to creative rules and punishments on the fly shifts the focus from the candidates and issues to the ridiculous idea that an elections board can determine that a student cannot wear a shirt because of what is in the newspaper. It’s even more ridiculous to threaten candidates with making a forced public apology because of ads they did not place.
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