CCSC Elections Board Finds Rules Violation

In a small victory for presidential contender Alidad Damooei’s camp, the Columbia College Student Council elections board ruled around 4:30 p.m. Saturday that Adil Ahmed, CC ’09 and candidate for vice president for policy on a competing ticket, violated elections rules against premature campaigning when he sent an email out to student leaders early Tuesday.

The board will deduct 10 percent of the 1,000 posters allotted to Ahmed’s Experience Columbia party because the points in the email “were in fact platform points,” according to Andrew Ness, CC ’08 and elections board chair.

“I agree with the decision,” said Damooei, CC ’09 and a candidate on the Connect Columbia party. “By sending this email out early, they effectively got a head start in the process. We plan to run a campaign that follows the rules in order to ensure a fair process. From now on, I hope they will as well.”

Ahmed said that his party, headed by George Krebs, CC ’09, will run a strong campaign, regardless of what he considered an unfair ruling.

“We presented a very strong case, and they made a decision without taking into account some of the things we said,” Ahmed said.

But on the bright side, he said half jokingly, “Since we’re printing less posters, we’ll have less of a carbon footprint.”

In an interview before the verdict, Ahmed called his letter “harmless.”

“I didn’t ask for endorsements, I didn’t ask people to vote for me,” Ahmed said. “I was just saying, ‘Hey, let’s talk about this more.’”

But the board decided that he did more than seek dialogue.

“The rule is that they’re allowed to reach out to student groups and the community in general to get ideas on issues that should be addressed,” Ness said. “But at no point should they be pushing their candidacy, expressing their own ideas.”

Ness went on to say, “We determined that plausible deniability was not applicable because they were at the interest meeting, where the rules were made clear that there can be no campaigning until after spring break.”

Ahmed said he is considering appealing to the judicial board, which he must do by 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

Senior council members comprise the judicial board, raising concerns of conflicts of interest because Damooei, the current vice president for policy, has closer ties than Ahmed.

Because of the bias he perceived in the judicial and the elections boards, Ahmed said he was not surprised by the outcome.

But Damooei countered that he was no closer to judicial board members than Krebs was, and accused Ahmed of shirking responsibility for the infraction.

Ness added, “I trust that they [the judicial board] would be able to make an impartial decision and if not, they would remove themselves from the voting.”

lien.hoang@columbiaspectator.com