GSSC Elections Commission Resigns After Controversy

The entire General Studies Student Council Elections Commission resigned Monday night after what members described as “being asked to legitimize what we believe to be an unconstitutional and illegitimate election.”

EC Commissioner and last year’s GSSC president Susannah Karlsson, along with EC members Ken Barnes and H. Andrew Chi, resigned in an email addressed to GSSC president Niko Cunningham.

Karlsson, Barnes, and Chi claimed that while they had set an absolute deadline for candidates to file intents to run, the GSSC Judicial Committee overruled this deadline and accepted filings up to three hours late for some candidates, while turning away other candidates after the official 15-minute grace period.

Much of the controversy centers on current Vice President of Finance Keith Hightower’s candidacy declaration for the council presidency, which allegedly arrived after the deadline. Hightower said that while he sent his submission on time, the Elections Commission did not receive it until later.

Hightower also said that he had met with elections officials earlier in the semester to discuss his intent to run for president.

“It’s odd how they could say that I didn’t declare to any of them that I was running for president,” Hightower said. “I’d obviously been laying the groundwork and doing a lot of work to run for president all semester long.”

But Workers Representative and VP of Policy candidate Allen Settle expressed concern about the interests of the Judicial Committee, on which Cunningham and Senior Class President Chikodi Chima hold positions. Settle also said GSSC would make a motion at Tuesday’s meeting to suspend the rules and take away Cunningham’s power to appoint the Judicial Committee.

“Without an election committee, there’s no election,” Settle said.

Karlsson, Barnes, and Cunningham could not be reached for comment.

alix.pianin@columbiaspectator.com