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By Cali Kees & Joel Vanner
The SGA executive board results that were planned to be released tonight have been postponed due to grievances filed against three candidates for executive board positions. A timeline of events, as we know them, is below.
April 4, 2018
Midnight: SGA Executive Board and class cabinet elections opened.
Around 12:45 PM: Mid-day election results were posted outside of the SGA Suite (SC200).
1:00 PM: A candidate in the executive board election filed a grievance.
Around 8:30 PM: SGA Vice President Jacqueline Schmedel sent an e-mail to candidates saying there is a slight delay, and to stay tuned for results.
9:30 PM: Vice President for Public Relations Victoria Johnson appeared on the Q30 Newscast and confirmed a grievance was filed, reviewed and appealed. They are waiting for the election committee to confirm and take action.
There is no time frame on this process. When asked if more than one grievance was filed and if only one of the executive board elections would be affected, Johnson responded, “More than one election, the three executive board positions. Vice President of the Student Government Association, Student Body President, as well as, the Vice President for Finance.”
This is not the first time a grievance has been filed during an election.
“There has been grievances filed in the past, but not to this extent where we haven’t submitted the election results,” Johnson said.
Johnson confirmed that Austin Calvo, who ran for Vice President for Student Experience, won his election.
Vice President for Public Relations, Victoria Johnson, comments on the grievances filed against 3 @QUSGA Executive Board candidates.
Part 1: @QUSGA Executive Board candidates. pic.twitter.com/UBZ5El7qTU— Q30 News (@Q30News) April 5, 2018
Part 2: pic.twitter.com/mgueH7goZT
— Q30 News (@Q30News) April 5, 2018
9:50 PM: Class cabinet results were released:
Class of 2019:
President: Matt Corso
Vice President: Allison Kuhn
Representatives: Undetermined, the Class of 2019 representatives will not be finalized until the rest of the Executive Board positions are filled.
Class of 2020:
President: Anna Nardelli
Vice President: Andy Stafa
Representatives: Undetermined, the Class of 2020 representatives will not be finalized until the rest of the Executive Board positions are filled.
Class of 2021:
President: Sophia Marshall
Vice President: Olamide Gbosho
Representatives: Glenn Adams, Max Mallinen, Meghan McNulty, Megan Lane, Kaye Paddyfote, Lille Grata, Esau Greene
10:09 PM: Class cabinet results for the Class of 2021 have been called in to question by Ryan Hicks. Megan Lane, who we listed above, received a call but was not printed on the election results listed.
10:09 PM: SGA released a press release outlining the days events to the student body.
10:11 PM: Ian Zeitlin confirms that Megan Lane is a part of the Class of 2021 cabinet.
April 5, 2018
6:30 PM Election Committee member Austin Solimine and SGA Presidential election candidates Joe Iasso and Ryan Hicks sat down with MJ Baird for a Q30 News Special Report.
It has been almost 24 hours since the election ended and there are still no results. No one on the election committee or SGA know who has won the positions in question (SGA President, Vice President and Vice President for Finance).
For those who aren’t aware of what a grievance is in an SGA election, it is when a student files a written report to the election committee that they feel that part of the election policy was violated. Once a grievance is filed, the election committee meets and they decide on a sanction for the party that the grievance was against and whether they need to act on it.
Since, in this election, multiple grievances were filed so close to the deadline, it ended up that the election results were put under review to finish out the grievance process.
Candidates are able to submit an appeal. In the event that a candidate does submit an appeal within 24 hours for either a flaw in the committee’s process or to submit new information, the committee makes a new ruling based on that appeal.
Solimine said that they are currently in the appeal hearing process for the multiple grievances.
When asked for who filed a grievance and who it was filed against, Solimine said, “The election committee is obviously aware of that, but that is not something that I can share.”
Solimine was not sure, at time of broadcast, when the results would be released.
Joe Iasso and Ryan Hicks, candidates for SGA President joined us in the studio to discuss their thoughts on the past 24 hours.
“I’m just going to trust them to do their due diligence, get this all done. I’d rather have an election that was correctly done than one that wasn’t,” said Iasso.
Hicks echoed Iasso’s point.
Both Hicks and Iasso stated that they both know the election policies and do not think they did anything that would warrant a review.
At the election committee meeting, the candidates were told that the results would not be released for quite a while.
April 9, 2018
11:00 AM: In a press release to the University community, Vice President for Public Relations Victoria Johnson announced the three remaining Executive Board position election results. The results are:
President Elect: Ryan Hicks
Vice President Elect: Luke Ahearn
Vice President for Finance Elect: John Khillah
The Class of 2019 Representatives, which were undetermined before, are:
Joe Iasso
Finn Barcheski
Baily Hersh
Luke Lograno
Rebecca Hassell
The Class of 2020 Representatives, which were undetermined before, are:
Chidi Nwuneli
Hope Estrella
Brooke Reilly
Julia Schade
Helen Dong
Johnson confirmed that grievances were filed on the day of the election which prompted an investigation into potential voter influence. The Election Committee, according to the press release, verified mathematically that the outcome of each position reviewed could not have been impacted by any influence. “Information currently available has not shown conclusive evidence that this played a significant part in the election results,” Johnson said in the release.
1:40 PM: SGA Vice President and Election Committee Chair Jacqueline Schmedel, SGA Vice President for Public Relations Victoria Johnson and SGA President-Elect Ryan Hicks were interviewed live in a special breaking news report.
Head of the Election Committee, Jacqueline Schmedel, confirms the grounds of the reported grievances.
“There was a post made in a Facebook group and essentially was just saying “hey vote for these candidates,” and once you’re done comment done and we’re good to go,” Schmedel said.
While it is not unusual and it is actually encouraged that Student Government Association members use Facebook and Facebook groups to campaign, the context of this particular page lead voters to believe they would receive a prize if they voted in a specific way.
“The election committee wasn’t really willing to turn a blind eye to potential bribing and swayed voting,” Schmedel said.
There is not a specific line in the SGA by-laws or constitution that says that bribing is against SGA policy, however, the election committee’s goal is to reinforce a fair and clean election.
Schmedel explained that the appeal was filed under “new evidence” and a “procedural error” and both of those existed. So from there, the appeal was granted and those who filed it was heard before the committee.
Before the appeal was heard a different decision was made.
“The original decision was to have a re-run, we felt that this was the best way to have a [fair] and clean election,” Schmedel said.
After hearing the appeal the committee decided that was no longer necessary.
Schemdel explained that the SGA advisor, Erin Twomey, and Velvet Chesnut, a member of the election committee, went through every vote during the time that said “post” was up on the Facebook group. Twomey and Chesnut cross-referenced who had voted at the time and who was in the group and decided that there were not enough votes cast by those people in that group to swing any results.
Based on these findings they decided to release the election results as is.
Johnson expressed how she feels that this shows how dedicated SGA is to make sure that the election is fair.
“We were ready to do a re-vote if that’s kind of what was necessary…we wanted to make sure whoever was elected was elected fairly and justly,” Johnson said.
When asked if Twomey and Chesnut also reviewed the votes of the elections for the Vice President and Vice President for Finance, Schmedel said, “those margins were a lot wider than the President votes so they didn’t have to go into as much depth.”
Schmedel expressed her content for how the election committee handled this situation and the result of the SGA election.
“I want to emphasize that there is no reason to question their new positions they all deserve it, they all worked hard,” Schmedel said.
Baird sat down with President-Elect, Ryan Hicks, to hear from him about what he thinks about the election results and what his plans are as he enters his term as SGA President.
It has been six days since the SGA election polls have closed. When asked how he was feeling, Hicks said, “I feel fantastic, I’m happy that the election committee did their due diligence to ensure the election was fair.”
Hicks explained his side of what happened with the Facebook “post.”
“The Facebook post is pretty clean and simple it just said to vote for the candidates, it was then misinterpreted based on some people and that’s kind of how the grievance got filed,” Hicks said.
Hicks confirmed that he went through the appeal process to appeal the re-vote.
He believes that the election was fair and the results were fair.
“I can confidently say if I had lost an election and it was a fair election, I would have been okay with that and whatever decision [the committee] made I would have been comfortable with that because that was them doing their due diligence,” Hicks said.
Hicks is now getting ready to transition into his position as President and will be helping to transition John Khillah into his position as Vice President for Finance. He also explained how he is ready to foster a relationship with incoming Quinnipiac President, Judy Olian.
“I think that it would be foolish for the new executive board not to jump on this opportunity to meet a new President…I think it’s an opportunity for us to really re-center Quinnipaic to the students,” Hicks said.
Hicks said, looking forward, he wants to make a culture in SGA that is based around a team.
“I want to re-focus the student government so that we are one group of people with the student body’s agenda…hopefully I can bring change to this community and hopefully I can bring change to the student government association,” Hicks said.
Updated 12:23 AM April 10, 2018. This article will be updated as new information is released.
