CCSC Board Finds Ahmed Guilty of Election Violation

In a small victory for presidential contender Alidad Damooei’s camp, the Columbia College Student Council elections board ruled on Saturday that Adil Ahmed, CC ’09 and candidate for vice president for policy on a competing ticket, violated elections rules against premature campaigning.

The board will deduct 10 percent of the 1,000 posters allotted to Ahmed’s Experience Columbia party because Ahmed sent out an e-mail to student leaders early Tuesday including what Andrew Ness, CC ’08 and elections board chair called “platform points.”

“I agree with the decision,” said Damooei, CC ’09 and a candidate on the Connect Columbia party. “By sending this e-mail 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 didn’t appeal the decision to the judicial board because he didn’t want to blow the situation out of proportion.

“We’re gonna move on and it’s not a setback at all,” he said.

But a personal chat between Damooei and Krebs after Sunday night’s council meeting suggested that Experience Columbia hadn’t completely moved on.

“Alidad and I had an agreement that any part of the other person’s campaign that we thought was against the rules or we were uncomfortable with, we were going to bring it up to one another first, try to solve it,” Krebs said. “And then, if we weren’t able to work it out between us, we would use the elections board. Less than a week later, he bypassed our agreement. I told him I was disappointed.”

Krebs added, “I’m really not pleased with him. ... He completely disregards even the thought of talking to me and goes to the elections board.”

Damooei responded to Krebs’ accusation, saying, “He’s reinterpreting our agreement after the fact to make a narrative for himself.”

Damooei said the actual agreement was that “if there are weird things that we hear, weird rumors, if we’re unsure of what’s going on, can talk to each other before going to the board,” whereas Ahmed’s letter was a “flagrant disregard for election rules.”

“It doesn’t make sense to make an agreement that we’d go to each other for all things that look like a rules violation,” Damooei continued. “In general, that could encourage counter parties to do things against rules because they have more incentive to push the envelope if they understand that there might not be any consequence to that action.”

Krebs and Damooei both said that their talk ended ambiguously.

Damooei said that Krebs and Ahmed were simply trying to redirect attention from the rules violation.

lien.hoang@columbiaspectator.com