Another candidate has filed to run for ASUO president, but elections officials have already accused his apparently tongue-in-cheek campaign of violating the rules for the student government race.
The officials criticized junior Pete Lesiak after Oregon Commentator publisher Dane Carbaugh posted posters for his campaign on the magazine’s Web site, saying by doing so he had campaigned prematurely. However, after deliberations Thursday night, the Elections Board decided against sanctioning Lesiak unless a student formally files a complaint against him.
“Yarr,” Lesiak wrote in his candidate statement when he filed to run. “What campus needs now is fiscal conservatism in that all (student) fee money should be turned into dabloons and buried in a hidden island location. Furthermore, campus safety is an issue. Campus is wide open to a Kraken attack. A portion of our gold dabloons should be used to create an armada to stop the beast once and for all.”
Carbaugh posted the statement from Lesiak, a contributor to the Commentator, on the on the publication’s blog Monday, along with a poster depicting Lesiak in a pirate’s hat and jacket alongside a treasure chest and a shipwrecked galleon flying the Jolly Roger.
Upon seeing the poster, an Elections Board member e-mailed the Commentator, asking the poster be removed by the next morning “to prevent further actions being taken against Peter” and sparking a testy e-mail exchange between the board and the publication, which Carbaugh also posted, alongside another poster depicting a shirtless Lesiak making a suggestive gesture.
“By posting the campaign poster on your Web site, we believe you are giving an unfair advantage to Peter, which is unacceptable,” the board wrote in one e-mail.
The Elections Board’s rules bar candidates from campaigning before the beginning of spring term, but Carbaugh argued that the post was no different from the Emerald’s Feb. 26 article revealing plans by four others to run.
“Of course, you can use your rules however you want,” Carbaugh wrote. “We don’t really care. The elections board is out of its mind and its jurisdiction. The posters will not come down from the Web site.”
Lesiak also wrote an e-mail to the board, in which he said: “In all fairness I will comply with your demands to remove my ‘Intention To Run’ image from the Oregon Commentator Web site as soon as you remove all issues of the Oregon Daily Emerald featuring the other candidates from campus or arrange for my own front cover photo and interview in the Oregon Daily Emerald. Their names are already out there in a student-funded publication, and students were able to read their names and what they are all about. Highly unfair to those students who were not included, don’t you think?”
The Commentator’s staff then posted fliers depicting each of the other prospective candidates on its Web site. The e-mails between the board and the magazine stopped, leading to the decision Thursday night.
[email protected]