Pissed about the election? E-mail the Election Commission and your GUSA Senator!
Posted by: Juliana Brint in News, Vox Populi, tags: GUSA, GUSA Election
Don’t riot, write!
Upset about this year’s election fiasco but unsure what you can do about it besides leaving angry comments on Vox posts? Well, in addition to that (seriously, keep it up!) you can also make your displeasure known to the Election Commission and your GUSA Senator, who will be voting whether or not to certify the election.
For your convenience, Vox has written up some form letters. They’re expletive and ad-hominem free, but you’re free to add those in as you like.
For the election commission (send to electioncommission@georgetown.edu):
Hello,
My name is YOUR NAME and I’m writing to express my concern over the disqualification of Jeff Lamb and Molly Breen and Peter Dagher and Elias Ibrahim from the GUSA presidential election. Although the candidates violated residence hall posting policies, it does not seem that they have violated the Election Commission’s bylaws. Furthermore, it seems candidates were not made aware of the repercussions of flyering in residence halls. While the flyering may not of have been appropriate, it is a minor offense and does not merit disqualification, especially without prior notification.
I urge the election commission to reverse its decision and hold a new election with Lamb-Breen and Dagher-Ibrahim included on the ballot.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
SCHOOL, YEAR
E-mail for your GUSA Senator after the jump!
You can find your GUSA representative on this list and you can find their email by using the Georgetown directory. If you live in Village A (A-E), Henle 22-30, the townhouses on 36th and 37th Streets or off-campus, I regret to inform that you’re currently Senator-less – you can send your missive to GUSA Speaker of the Senate Reggie Greer.
Hello,
My name is YOUR NAME and I live in RESIDENCE. I’m writing to express my concern over the disqualification of Jeff Lamb and Molly Breen and Peter Dagher and Elias Ibrahim from the GUSA presidential election. Although the candidates violated residence hall posting policies, it does not seem that they have violated the Election Commission’s bylaws. Furthermore, it seems candidates were not made aware of the repercussions of flyering in residence halls. While the flyering may not of have been appropriate, it is a minor offense and does not merit disqualification, especially without prior notification.
When the issue comes before the GUSA Senate, I urge you to vote not to certify this election. I also ask you to lobby the election commission on my behalf to reverse its decision and hold a new election with Lamb-Breen and Dagher-Ibrahim included on the ballot.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
SCHOOL, YEAR
Photo from Flickr user philippe leroyer used under a Creative Commons license
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Eeek, “flyering may not of” in the first paragraph of both letters should be “flyering may not have.”
Noted and changed – thanks!
Hello, my name is OFF-CAMPUS RESIDENT and I don’t have a GUSA representative because they were all too lazy to show up.
Someone (Troiano) should give us a rough breakdown of where the senators stand on invalidating the results.
While I don’t know about the rest of the Senators, I spoke with a lot of the members of the so-called ‘Bro’ clique and they are definitely against this — so I’d imagine as Bro goes, so goes the Senate.
I mean, it’s a pretty indefensible argument the Election Commission has put up in any case, so I can’t see many people supporting it, let alone Senators.
[...] « Pissed about the election? E-mail the Election Commission and your GUSA Senator! Feb 24 2009 [...]
Can you make this into a Mad Lib?
From what I gather, the Senate leadership concurs that the EC’s ruling violates the bylaws by enforcing regulations not contained within them. What’s worse is that the EC gave insufficient notice for this issue to be resolved before the ballots were sent out.
A Constitutional Council, prescribed by the same bylaws, needs to be established to hear an appeal from the candidates who were disqualified, and then make a recommendation to the Senate before it votes on whether to certify the results next week.
At that point, we will vote whether to hold another election, which seems likely.
oh man, just when you thought it was going to be a boring election season…WHAM!
Thanks, GUSA.
You’re welcome, Hunter.
Since I mean this is soooooo much fun for people like me who just want the dang thing to go down fairly!
I would also like to point out that the Election Commission (EC) is independent from the rest of GUSA, and that currently BOTH the Senate leadership and the Executive leadership (Pat Dowd himself) have taken serious issue with this. We stayed up until 4:30 yesterday morning trying to fix this, to no avail.
This election will not be certified, and as Nick mentioned, nobody basing their judgment on the GUSA bylaws and constitution would uphold the EC’s decision. it simply overstepped its bounds, and that is very very VERY clear-cut.
But at least there’s exciting stuff to write about right???
“But at least there’s exciting stuff to write about right???”
Yeah! Slip a little norovirus in and we’ll be set for the rest of the semester.
yeah, you’re right Matt – I should have thanked the EC.
by the way, does anyone know how you become a member of this oligarchy, ’cause Im pretty sure I never voted for them…
You didn’t, but that makes sense–who would monitor the election commission’s elections? Sophia Behnia is on the EC, as Molly pointed out, because she’s on the Senior Class Committee. The others I don’t know about.
According to our GUSA election reform article (http://www.georgetownvoice.com/2009/01/29/gusa-election-reform/) the other two were appointed by Pat Dowd and confirmed by the Senate at the end of January.
In light of the recent events I think we should just revert to picking a leader like the Ancient Greeks – we draw lots, then exile the GUSA president after his/her term…thoughts?
The exile part basically happens anyway.
No… riot!!
Seriously.. our generation needs to get up off this whole idea that a torrent of emails can change anything. Sometimes you gotta do things in person.
I graduated last year, so alas, I’m left with posting stuff on the blog (yes.. ironic, I know).
But as a student, I was out there with lots of others getting restricted from Healy Hall, parts of New South and various other meetings by lines of DPS officers when the admins were stalling us on various issues.
That’s what you have to do. Forget the whole GUSA thing.. let them have their word party. We need to spend our efforts on getting students mobilized and active against a university administration that is giving us the scraps year after year. Sure, we all need to go sit on a committee, but that’s not how you leverage power. Your weight on the committee is only a function of how much actual student power you have behind you, and to do that, you have to make the administration scared of you. Call me crazy, but I know that for a fact, these admins are a bunch of suits that will do anything to keep things the way they are.
Right now, they’re probably laughing at all this. And while the ants scurry around every which way, getting lost in a never-ending clusterfck about irrelevant bylaws, the big boys are just gonna keep on chugging away.