Student government’s Elections Board has found the Todd Mann and Jontae Grace campaign guilty of violating elections rules after campaign officers sold T-shirts in the residence halls.
As punishment, volunteers and campaign officers – including Mann and Grace – were ordered to remove their hot pink campaign T-shirts at 2:15 p.m. Thursday afternoon until the end of the general elections.
Voting for next year’s ASUO president and vice president ends today at 5 p.m. A second grievance filed against the Mann-Grace ticket alleging that the campaign broke election rules when it reserved a room in a residence hall for an official event was dismissed by the Elections Board. For the T-shirt grievance, the Elections Board, citing the University’s housing policy, stated that “though Mann said that receiving a penny for each shirt did not Mann-Grace ticket T-shirts banned result in a profit, his campaign received money in exchange for the shirts.”
The Mann-Grace campaign made $27.29 from T-shirt sales, according to campaign expenditures and contributions forms.
Mann said in response that the majority of the revenue was from only two or three people giving $5 for the shirts, and that others gave 25 cents when they didn’t have a penny.
Standing at the Heart of Campus in a white shirt and pink tie, with seven grievance forms in his hand, Mann said he plans to appeal the grievance.
“The assertion has been made that the exchange of a shirt for a penny constitutes a commercial transaction resulting in a profit. Our campaign was not benefited by the pennies. Nor was their campaign hurt by the pennies,” Mann said.
Mann said he believes that Ian Tacquard, who filed the grievance, was involved in the Jared Axelrod-Juliana Guzman campaign.
“These campaign tactics are petty and symbolize that (the Axelrod-Guzman) campaign is afraid,” Mann said in a prepared statement.
“Why would he file this grievance if he wasn’t directly affiliated with his campaign. Was he grieved?” Mann asked.
Tacquard, who is an ASUO multicultural advocate, said he knows Axelrod from the ASUO office, but said he isn’t associated with Axelrod’s campaign. He filed the grievance personally, not as a representative of the ASUO, he said.
“I just saw somebody breaking the rules … so I filed a grievance,” Tacquard said.
Tacquard is friends with Axelrod on Facebook, but he’s also friends with at least 17 other officers in student government. He is not a member of Axelrod’s Facebook campaign group.
The second grievance filed against the Mann-Grace campaign was dismissed after the Elections Board discovered that the room reserved by Mann for a campaign kickoff party was available to any candidate.
The Elections Board added, though, that the room in which the kickoff party was held “was not reserved like it should have been and that in the future all candidates and campaigns should go about reserving a room in the appropriate manner.”
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