The names of individuals, other than the candidates, in attendance of the meeting who spoke during the hearing have been omitted, in accordance with the terms that allowed the Wheel to attend the meeting.
College junior and current SGA Representative-at-Large Raj Patel was elected to the position of SGA President last night after facing multiple allegations of campaign procedure violations from his opponent, Goizueta Business School junior and SGA Chief of Staff Matthew Willis.
Although Patel won the election, the SGA Student Elections Board assigned 20 community service hours to Patel to account for the campaign violations.
This decision came following controversy over the SGA Elections Board's decision not to announce the winner of the SGA presidential race due to these allegations. The confirmation of Patel's victory came late last night following a deliberation meeting, in which the Elections Board convened, discussed and weighed arguments that were made in a two-and-a-half-hour hearing held with both candidates earlier in the day.
Both the meeting and hearing were closed to the public, but the Wheel was granted access to the hearing.
During the meeting, Willis presented four main pieces of evidence and testimony that pointed to Patel's alleged breach of SGA constitutional guidelines that say candidates cannot campaign on Election Day.
Of the four allegations, the Student Elections Board determined two were considered violations for which Patel would serve 20 community service hours.
Campaign Allegations
The first violation was based on three screenshots of a Facebook conversation obtained by the Wheel and then passed along to Willis. The image was a picture taken off a computer screen that showed Patel in a Facebook conversation with an Emory student discussing voting on election day. In the conversation, Patel linked the individual to his platform. "I always say my ideas are just starting points," Patel wrote in the chat.
The second violation was a "blatant" act of campaigning that Patel made, said Matthew Kuhn, the chairman of the SGA Elections Board, in an interview with the Wheel following the meeting. Patel posted in a Facebook group "Ask Dean Moon" and introduced himself. He then asked eligible voters to go online and "make their voices heard." The group had approximately 560 members by press time. However, the post was only up for 10 to 20 minutes.
Because the post was only up for a short amount of time and the group was not large enough to have made a significant change in the election results, the SGA Elections Board agreed that the violation would not have ultimately altered the results of the campaign.
Willis also pointed to an email that Patel sent to 1,400 recipients on the day of the election.
Of the addresses, according to Patel, most – but not all – were current Clairmont Residents. In the email, Patel introduced himself as a member of the "Residence Hall Association: Clairmont Residential Campus Council" and urged recipients to vote "for your next student leaders." He attached a link to vote in the email.
The Elections Board ultimately decided that this was within the restrictions of the rule and did not break campaign laws.
Willis argued that by attaching the link to vote within the email as well as his credentials as a part of his email signature could be considered campaigning.
Patel rejected Willis' argument by stating that he had received approval for the email by the Elections Board before sending it out. The member on the Student Elections Board that approved the email agreed that he did indeed give Patel permission but he said he believed, in hindsight, that he should not have.
Patel also argued that it was his duty to send out the email as an RHA publicity chair and that the emails in no way asked students to vote for him.
The last piece of evidence Willis presented was testimony from a witness who claimed that Patel had approached her and her friend in Cox Hall. In the original testimony, the witness said that when Patel confronted her friend, he asked that she vote for him.
However, during a cross examination in which Patel asked the witness whether he had asked if she did not vote for Patel specifically or did not vote in general, the witness was unable to recall.
The testimony was thrown out because of the inconsistencies in the witnesses' statements, Kuhn said after the meeting.
Candidates React
"[The Elections Board] gave me a call and explained how they decided how to tackle each allegation, and it seems extremely reasonable," Willis said. "The reason they have an elections board in place is so that they can make these kinds of decisions. So I wouldn't say I'm jumping with joy, but I completely understand and definitely respect their decisions."
Patel expressed that he does not believe the controversy will affect his term as SGA President.
"I was really happy that I won," Patel said. "I was very confident. It took a while to settle in because it has been so long. I'm very happy with the way the Elections Board did the procedure."
Managing Editor Lane Billings and Asst. News Editor Karishma Mehrotra contributed reporting.
Editor's Note: Although the Wheel was well within its legal right to share the evidence brought against Patel with Willis, we recognize that we did not utilize the proper channels due to a conflict of interest with a member of our staff. Albeit, a nuanced distinction, yet still one worth noting in the interest of transparency.
– By Dustin Slade
