‘Corruption, Bias and Sabotage’ at SDSU?

A student will remain in the running for San Diego State University’s student government president, despite the elections committee’s recommendation to disqualify him, SDSU’s newspaper reported.

The elections committee recommended presidential hopeful Tyler Boden be removed from the race, as he had already accumulated the maximum number of reprimands allowed of a candidate. His fate in the race was ultimately a decision of the Associated Students council. The A.S. council voted to keep Boden in the race, despite the election's code section 6.06 that states, “Any candidate who accumulates three or more reprimands…shall be disqualified from the election.”

Some presidential candidates cited bias within the council as the reason for the council ignoring the committee’s recommendation.

“What happened in there was pathetic,” candidate Megan McCoy told the paper. “It has impacted the university in a negative way. There’s corruption, bias (and) sabotage. It’s unfortunate that students have to be a part of it.”

Although the elections committee is a body intended to maintain ethical campaigning on campus, they cannot actually enforce any policy. They only have the power to make a recommendation, a recommendation that the council can choose to ignore if it wishes to.

“A.S. Council reserves the right to treat board and committee recommendations as recommendations,” the executive director of A.S. Dan Cornthwaite told The Daily Aztec.

The council did vote in what the paper described as a “landslide” for a third reprimand, but the decision to remove Boden was shy of four votes.