TCUJ calls for new nominations meeting

The Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ) ruled last night that Elections Board (ELBO) must re-nominate presidential candidates for a third time and postpone Wednesday's scheduled election because one candidate had an unfair advantage at Thursday night's second nominations meeting.

The Senate originally nominated junior Randy Newsom and sophomore Joe Mead last Tuesday, but after Newsom announced that he was rescinding his nominations and called for new ones, the Senate overturned that vote. A second meeting selected Chike Aguh, a sophomore, and Mead as candidates over junior Julia Karol, but that vote was overturned by the TCUJ last night.

A third meeting, to be held tonight, will nominate a presidential candidate who will run against Mead in an election tentatively scheduled for Friday. While the TCUJ agreed, unanimously with a complaint that Aguh had an unfair advantage in Thursday's nomination meeting, it did not see fit to punish Mead for factors outside of his control.

Karol filed a complaint on Friday, claiming that the Senate's nomination of Aguh was illegitimate because he had prior knowledge of Newsom's resignation, which gave him an unfair advantage at the meeting. Karol said that that Aguh knew Newsom was withdrawing on Wednesday night and that the situation was set up so that Aguh could step in and take Newsom's place. This gave Aguh more time to prepare his platform, thus denying other senators "an equal opportunity to gain the votes of Senators for candidacy."

The TCUJ agreed with Karol in a 4-0-1 vote that Aguh had an unfair advantage in the election.

However, the TCUJ unanimously agreed that Aguh was not lying when he told the Senate that he did not decide to run for president until Thursday morning and that any unfair advantage was not necessarily his fault.

Aguh presented the same argument that his knowledge was innocent: he lives on the same floor as Newsom in South Hall, and Newsom confided in him as a friend. Newsom talked to him on Wednesday night, Aguh said, but he did not think about running for president until Thursday morning when Newsom told him of his decision to withdraw.

"Unless you're going to punish someone for knowing someone else really well, I don't know how you can call it unfair," he said.

According to Karol's complaint, however, "Abby Moffat... was notified on Wednesday night by Randy Newsom that Randy had, in fact, consulted with Chike, asked him to take up the candidacy, and that Chike had agreed."

While this sequence of events is a matter for debate, there is little doubt that Newsom made efforts not to inform other senators that he was dropping out. An e-mail from Newsom to ELBO requested that his decision to pull out of the race be kept quiet until the meeting, and an e-mail from ELBO calling an emergency meeting on Thursday night did not include the reason for the meeting. A second e-mail sent by Newsom to the Senate acknowledged his change of mind and promised clarification at the meeting. He says he did not intend for ELBO to keep what was happening quiet, only his reasons why.

Newsom acknowledges that he hand-picked Aguh as his successor, but he says that he acted with the best of intentions. He wanted to ensure that the student body had another good candidate to choose from, and he knew that Aguh has decided not to seek the presidential nomination in the first meeting because he did not want to run against him.

"I made a judgment call. I thought it was best for the student body to have two well-prepared presidential candidates," he said. "Chike shouldn't be blamed for any of this."

Aguh did not tell anyone else that Newsom was resigning because he felt it would have been betraying his friend's trust.

"Randy's reasons were highly personal. It would have been egregious of me to speak of these issues," he said.

For Karol, the issue is not which person to blame or even that she did not get to run for president.

"I trust the Senate entirely if they think Chike is a better choice. But I believe in the integrity of student government, and this violates it," she said. "I can't sit back and let this happen and not act."

Though the TCUJ found the second nominations meeting unfair, it did say that the process of re-nominating candidates was constitutional in its rejection of two other complaints filed by former Senate Parliamentarian Adam Koeppel. Koeppel challenged whether the Senate could overturn its first nominations meeting and whether ELBO could hear new nominations, but the TCUJ said both were legitimate courses of action.

The TCUJ's decision was based on the idea that it should give Elections Board wide authority to interpret the meaning of its constitutional charge to conduct "fair and impartial elections." The "spirit" of the constitution is that there are to be two candidates in the election for TCU President, the ruling stated. Therefore, ELBO and the Senate were upholding the constitution in holding new nominations.

Koeppel argued that the new nominations made at Thursday's meeting should never have been heard, since Newsom could not rescind his nomination, as he announced.

"Once the motion has been made and seconded, the motion becomes the body's motion," Koeppel said. There is no 'motion to ignore' in parliamentary procedure, as defined by Robert's Rules of Order."

But the TCUJ said that because the meeting was run by ELBO, rules of parliamentary procedure did not apply. "The situation at hand presented the possible solution that the Senate simply take a 'do-over,' and it was within the ability of the Senate to undertake such an action," the decision stated.

Koeppel has yet to decide whether he will appeal the decision to the Committee on Student Life.