Max Jensen (right), a member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, hands out flyers during a 2022 GTFF protest on campus. Jensen is running for ASUO president in the 2024 presidential election on the UO Student Power slate. (Will Geschke/Emerald)
Hours after the Associated Students of the University of Oregon presidential runoff election was announced April 8, UO Student Power presidential candidate Max Jensen abruptly dropped out and ceded the race to the OurUO presidential candidate Mariam Hassan.
At the time, “personal reasons” were cited as to why Jensen dropped out of the race.
However, Jensen had a verbal altercation with UO Students for Justice in Palestine co-leader Salem Khoury that same day regarding an April 5 grievance filed by Hassan and her running mate, Kikachi Akpakwu.
In a conversation with the Daily Emerald, Jensen admitted to having a verbal altercation with Khoury as a result of the grievance.
The grievance alleged that the UOSP campaign had been harassing both Khoury and another leader for SJP’s endorsement, though Jensen disagreed with the claims.
It was this reaction toward the grievances and verbal altercation which led to Jensen’s withdrawal from the runoff ballot between him and Hassan, according to an email ASUO Elections Board Chair Grigorii Malakhov received from Jensen. Hassan and Akpakwu won by default.
“I don’t want a president who is going to talk like that to people”
At around 3 p.m. on April 8, Khoury walked into the Radical Organizing & Activism Resource Center, where Jensen is a co-director. Khoury was allegedly met with a temper from Jensen and accusations that Khoury was falsifying claims in the grievance.
“[Jensen] kept shaking his head at me and yelling and yelling and yelling, and saying really horrible stuff like ‘Get out of here.’ ‘You’re no longer welcome here.’’Get the f—k out,” Khoury said.
According to Khoury, they attempted to have a conversation with Jensen to deescalate the situation, but Jensen continued, allegedly telling Khoury to “shut the f—k up” and that they “don’t get to talk.”
The altercation allegedly escalated to the point where two student leaders attempted to intervene and physically block Jensen from Khoury. Jensen allegedly continued to use verbal aggression.
While he technically still remains a co-director, Jensen confirmed he is “taking a step back” from the ROAR Center.
The ROAR Center declined to comment about the situation.
UOSP campaign manager Ian Finn, who heard about the altercation through phone calls with Jensen, described the situation between Khoury and Jensen as “unfortunate” and said he wished it did not occur.
“That is not the Max Jensen I’ve ever known. It’s not the Max Jensen anyone has ever known. He’s always just been a quiet, sweet guy,” Finn said. “ I would have loved to have him as ASUO president, but I don’t want a president who is going to talk like that to people or treat people like that.”
According to Finn, Jensen took the grievances of UOSP’s harassment “personally” as Jensen was under the “interpretation that the allegations were directed to him.”
How did the election end up with nine grievances?
A total of 9 grievances were filed, with at least one filed by each running slate —, UOSP, OurUO and Flock Forward. The majority were filed by Finn.
One grievance, filed on April 2, alleged animal cruelty against a candidate of the Flock Forward slate who brought a rabbit to campus during campaigning. The grievance was dismissed on April 4. Two other grievances claimed that members of the OurUO slate failed to follow rules on prepackaged foods and campaign finance disclosures.
After speculations on OurUO’s source of funding, one grievance, filed by a member of the Flock Forward slate on April 4, alleged that OurUO was receiving funding from Campus Victory Project, an affiliation with Turning Point USA, an alt-right organization. The claims were dismissed by the Elections Board.
An April 4 grievance filed by OurUO campaign manager Sophia Olivares that UOSP violated the rules of posting flyers posters in unauthorized areas on campus, after concerns were raised by other slate members. From April 5 to April 6, UOSP was temporarily suspended from campaigning.
Despite the amount of grievances filed against UOSP, UOSP candidates won the majority of seats on the ASUO Senate, with 13 of the 26 races won.
The grievance filed by OurUO on April 5 alleging harassment was due to Khoury relaying their sentiment to Hassan and Akpakwu about receiving “passive-aggressive” messages, “baseless” in-person conversations and feeling treated like a“commodity” by the campaign.
According to Khoury, Jensen would actively mention his campaign with conversations alluding to an endorsement, but failed in trying to build a partnership with SJP.
“It was in my belief that not only did they want the logo, the name, the relevance, but also just to get our endorsement at a base level,” they said.
SJP leaders felt sense of “coercion” from Jensen, others Khoury said that they would constantly receive messages and meeting requests from UOSP slate members with the intention to get them to endorse UOSP, which Khoury cited as to why they felt “coerced.”
“Although I appreciate the intent to meet, I knew that it was going to be persuasion and it was going to be something upon the grounds of trying to get something from me instead of offering something for me, and that hurt,” they said.
Khoury did accept UOSP’s request for an endorsement on April 2, but Khoury cites these exceptions as “stressed out texts” as “coercion.”
An April 4 crosspost between SJP and UOSP, which has since been taken down, claimed that UOSP had received SJP’s endorsement. But behind the scenes, there was miscommunication.
Earlier that day, SJP co-director Salem Younes had sent UOSP a “neutrality” message in an attempt for the post to not be published, while Khoury had allegedly sent an approval message to UOSP for the post, according to Finn.
The Elections Board was then approached with screenshots of the messages, which was used as evidence to the claim that SJP did not enforce UOSP. This led the Elections Board to temporarily suspend UOSP from campaigning.
UOSP’s suspension was partially lifted after Finn provided the Board with information indicating the messages had been edited. Finn then filed a separate grievance against Hassan and Akpakwu.
“The core of the grievance was again, altered texts. And again, they [text messages] were altered six minutes before the grievance was decided upon,” Jensen said. “So there’s really no other way to interpret that… in ways than someone lying about things that happen.”
Finn said he felt that Khoury’s actions had no malicious intent.
For UOSP slate member Tiera Garrety, the conversations involving UOSP and SJP made her and UOSP slate member Marisol Peters question their alignment with UOSP. Garrety and Peters are both co-directors of UO’s Native American Student Union, and won their runoff elections on April 11.
“As an indigenous person and having this constant discussion around [UOSP]’s relationship with SJP, it was for lack of a more descriptive word ‘concerning,’ and made some uncomfortability at some points,” Garrety said. “There was a point in time where [Peters] and I seriously considered disaffiliat[ing] from [UO] Student Power more towards the end of the campaign.”
Garrety’s experience with Jensen was described as “professional” and “pretty positive throughout the elections process.”
UOSP slate member Ian Mohr described their relationship with Jensen as “pretty nonchalant.”
Both Garrety and Mohr agreed that the multiple grievances against UOSP affected the turnout of the elections.
According to Malakhov, Hassan and Akpakwu’s grievance is still awaiting a ruling by the ASUO Elections Board; however, since Hassan and Akpakwu declared a violation of the Student Conduct Code against Finn, any ruling the Board makes would not be effective.
“We will issue a decision, but I can tell you that there will be nothing that we can do because it’s not our call to make with the Student [Conduct] Code,” Malakhov said.
Finn’s counter grievance against Hassan and Akpakwu is still under consideration.
“I did not want anything to do with this and I did not want to endorse any campaign to begin with because it’s not our place because we are focused on liberating Palestine, not an undergraduate student body president election,” Khoury said.
Both Mariam Hassan and Kikachi Akpakwu declined to comment for this article.
