Last night, M.J. Baird sat down with former candidate for Student Government Association President, Joe Iasso, who disclosed his side of the events that took place during the SGA election.
Iasso explained that the purpose of his interview with Q30 News was so the student body would know the full extent of what happened on election day to the time that the election results were posted.
Today, it has been six days since the SGA election and yesterday, the results were finally disclosed. Nothing like this has occurred in SGA election history and will be something that will set a precedent for future elections.
Iasso goes into further details of the said Facebook “post” that was discussed during a past Q30 live stream with Jacqueline Schmedel, Vice President of SGA and Election Committee Chair, and Victoria Johnson, Vice President for Public Relations, that made grounds for one of the grievances filed.
“There was a post made in a Facebook group called “Spring Break 2019!” it’s managed by a company that is trying to encourage students to go to Punta Cana for spring break next year,” Iasso said.
As said in a section of the “UPDATED: Student Government election results” while it is not unusual and it is actually encouraged that SGA members use Facebook and Facebook groups to campaign. It was the context of this page that caused an issue.
“One of the administrators in the group, Matt Corso, who is now the President-Elect of the senior class had posted in it to vote for Ryan Hicks, who is now the SGA President-Elect, Luke Ahearn, the Vice President-Elect and John Khillah, who is now the VP for Finance-Elect,” Iasso said.
Once students voted they were told to comment “done” on that same post. Other posts prior to this one students were encouraged to book their spring break trip to comment “I’m booked” on certain posts to be entered in a raffle to win a booze cruise.
“Because of other posts that were made in that group, people were under the impression that if they were to vote for those three candidates they would be entered into a chance to win a free booze cruise,” Iasso explained.
In response to this Facebook post, Iasso explained that multiple people came up to him recommending that he file a grievance on the grounds of this post and at 1:00PM on election day Iasso officially filed his grievance.
“Bribery with alcohol is not something we should ever tolerate in a student government election and that’s just a new low,” Iasso explained.
Once Iasso filed the grievance, the election committee reviewed it for several hours that day. Once a grievance is filed the election committee meets to discuss what was violated in the election policy and what their response will be.
At 9:30 PM the night of the election when SGA candidates would normally be notified the results of the election Iasso was called and asked to meet with the election committee to discuss their findings of his filed grievance.
“At the time they had ruled that they were going to do a complete re-vote for the SGA President, SGA Vice President and SGA Vice President for Finance races on that Friday,” Iasso said.
When this decision was made the election committee did not know the results of the election and they told each candidate that if they decided to file an appeal this could push back the re-vote.
The afternoon after the election, Iasso filed an appeal.
“I appealed the decision…asking that if a number of votes be taken off any candidate who had been a part of that post who could have gotten more votes because they were potentially involved in what was kind of a bribery issue,” Iasso explained.
Once appeals were filed on Thursday, then the re-vote for Friday was canceled until the appeals were reviewed and the appeal meetings were held.
The end result was SGA advisor, Erin Twomey, and a member of the election committee, Velvet Chestnut, cross referenced the votes that were cast in the time period in which Corso’s Facebook post was live. This was in an attempt to see how many members of the “Spring Break 2019!” Facebook group voted at this time.
Iasso, was told later by the SGA advisor that the vote difference between him and Hicks was about 125 votes.
“They were able to find about 65 people that voted in that time period that were also in that Facebook group and that was what made them come to the conclusion that mathematically it wouldn’t have affected the race,” Iasso said.
Iasso explained with the ruling of the election committee and the final results of the election he is reconsidering his involvement in SGA for the future, although, he is right now a senior class representative-elect.
“I don’t know if I want to be a part of this anymore if that’s what this has come to,” Iasso said.
Last night, M.J. Baird, also, spoke over FaceTime with Senior Class President-Elect, Matthew Corso, who disclosed in full all the events that happened during the SGA election to his knowledge.
Corso begins by explaining why he decided to make a post in the “Spring Break 2019!” Facebook group.
“I was set out to campaign for a couple people and the main one, Ryan Hicks, for President of Student Government Association, so I felt what better way to kind of grab the attention of students that may not be voting than posting in a Facebook group,” Corso said.
Before posting, Corso got the post approved by a couple of people and he still does not believe that he did anything wrong.
“I obviously didn’t mean any intent on the post, I still to this day stand on the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a fine way to grab use of attention,” Corso said.
In prior Facebook posts in this group, when members of the group commented “done” it signified that they had completed the tasks in the post and would be entered to win a booze cruise. Corso explained that this was not his intention of the aforementioned Facebook post.
“To me it was just one of the marketing techniques to get students who would not normally vote, you know if they saw a friend who, would kind of get the word out and vote,” Corso explained.
When asked if his intentions were ever to give students any free prizes, Corso said, “Not at all, so the first post when students were booking that trip they had to comment “I’m booked.” That was to enter into a raffle to win a give-away.”
Corso’s thought process behind having people comment “done” after voting was to keep track of who voted and show the names of people who had voted so that their friends would vote as well.
When asked about the first few comments that were deleted on this post, Corso explained, “I deleted the first two comments related to giveaways just because I didn’t want to associate the post and student government with free giveaways for spring break.”
Later Corso put up a comment to explain that there was no relation to the post and spring break. Once the grievance was filed he took down the post entirely in the Facebook group.
Once the grievance was filed, Corso filed an appeal under “procedural error” and “new information.” In his opinion, Iasso should have never filed an appeal.
“I’m not really sure why he would ever really file an appeal as there was nothing he could even have a grievance on,” Corso said.
Corso confirmed that his own appeal, and the appeals of others, over-turned the original decision to do a re-vote because of this the original votes remained.
For more on the SGA election, check out Q30 Television’s comprehensive timeline of the election and the grievance process.
