Student Government Association (SGA) presidential candidate, current SGA Chief of Staff and Goizueta Business School junior Matthew Willis raised claims of cheating against his opponent in the election, College junior and SGA Representative-at-Large Raj Patel. Willis’ claims included allegations of campaigning via social media, email exchanges and personal conversations with students on the day of the election, which according to the SGA elections bylaws, violates the rules. After the SGA Elections Board held a meeting to hear both sides and concluded that Patel did, in fact, violate some campaign rules, he was still awarded the position of SGA president. The Elections Board found that Patel’s actions, which included a short-lived post on a Facebook group and an email to the Clairmont Campus on behalf of the Hall Council, were not influential enough to have swayed the outcome of the election, and Patel was assigned 20 hours of community service as punishment for his actions. We at the Wheel are troubled by the Elections Board’s decision to award the election to Patel in spite of his violations and believe that the situation raises several issues regarding campaign procedures.
We are disappointed that Patel cheated in the first place. Regardless of the Election Board’s ultimate conclusion, Patel’s actions were a violation of the campaign procedure rules and exhibit a concerning lack of integrity. The rule prohibiting campaigning on election day is intended to ensure a fair election for all candidates and incentivizes candidates to campaign in advance of election day. While it was determined that Patel’s actions did not affect the outcome of the election, the fact remains that he broke the rules. In general, cheating should be impermissible, regardless of the extent to which it was successful.
Furthermore, we feel that the Elections Board’s punishment of 20 community service hours assigned to Patel is insufficient to deter similar cheating in the future. Such a punishment is a minor inconvenience and appears to be more cursory than disciplinary in nature. We believe the Elections Board should take a “no tolerance” stance on cheating of this sort in the future.
We also feel this incident exposes a serious flaw in the rules and procedures of student government elections. It is clear that there is an essential misunderstanding in what constitutes “campaigning,” especially when it comes to campaigning via social networking sites like Facebook. Section Three of the elections bylaws states, “On the date of the election, no candidate, campaign staffer, nor any other individual excluding the Elections Board will be allowed to encourage individuals to vote by standing near or in any way providing eligible students computers on which to vote.” While the rule gives examples of ways in which candidates might engage in cheating on election day, we feel that this rule is inadequate because it does not explicitly state all of the mediums through which candidates might campaign on election day, namely social media sites. While some methods of campaigning are more obvious – flyers, speeches, etc. – others, such as posting on Facebook, are not as obvious. The bylaws should also determine what types of online posts constitute cheating.
Ultimately, we believe that the Elections Board should have disqualified Patel for his violations. However, it is clear that the issue at hand comes from within the elections bylaws, not the procedure by which the Elections Board reached its conclusion. While the bylaws list possibilities for punishment, the rules do not provide for specific punishments to particular crimes that would deter cheating in the future. We recommend that the Elections Board revise the election bylaws to fix these discrepancies and prevent issues such as this one in the future. Twenty hours of community service does not make up for cheating in any way.
Moving forward, we hope that the Elections Board and all future candidates will learn a lesson from this incident. Furthermore, in the name of efficiency, efficacy and cooperation, we ask that the members of the SGA move past this incident and forgive Patel for his violations. It is more important that campus issues be solved than a grudge held, and we wish the new SGA the best of luck for the coming year.
The above staff editorial represents the majority opinion of the Wheel‘s editorial board.
Correction: The above editorial initially included a partial quote rather than a full quote from Section Three of the SGA elections bylaws, which may have made it appear as though information was taken out of context. The editorial above has been revised to reflect a change in which the quote is used in its entirety as well as additional clarification as to the Wheel‘s purpose in including the bylaws in its staff editorial. The Wheel regrets the error.
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.
I cheated and I won! I cheated and I won! I knew that I could get away with it. Suck my cock haters! You’re all just jealous because I’m going to get into a better law school now that I was elected SGA president.
Seems legit.
The elections are a farce anyway. Most voters knew nothing about the candidates and arbitrarily chose women, minorities, or–. Whatever. I’m sleepy. The elections were a farce.
Eww…
You seem bitter.
TL; DR: “We at the Wheel were gunning for Matt Willis from the get-go and engaged in unethical behavior that wasn’t at all disclosed to the student body beyond two unclear sentences at the end of an article towards the end of our elections coverage. Obfuscating and disregarding our unethical indiscretion, we are going to get all huffy about election rules we’ve never bothered to read because the guy who got the most votes won the election. It’s just SOOOO unfair!!!!”
Straw man city up in this comment
I just think The Wheel needs to move out of their glass house before throwing stones.
I just don’t understand how it’s okay to elect someone who lacks integrity and disregards the rules. If you were really the best candidate, you wouldn’t need to cheat to get a position, the Emory community would have seen that. And I do believe that it’s possible that he obtained the 0.4% votes (the percentage that brought him over 50% to win) the day of elections. And 20 hours of community service, that’s a joke, VE kids do that in a week. Such a disappointment in Elections Board and Raj Patel.
And once law schools Google your name, I’m sure they’ll be overjoyed by this article. Good luck passing the integrity section on the bar.
Ya these dirty indians are worse than the jews!
To complete the Wheel’s quote from the Elections Board:
Article IV, Section 3.13: 3.13 “On the date of the election, no candidate, campaign staffer, nor any other individual excluding the Elections Board will be allowed to encourage individuals to vote by standing near or in any way providing eligible students computers on which to vote. This
provision is established in compliance to a Constitutional Council ruling in March 2010.”
Whaaaat? This is absurd. Their own reporting even contradicts itself. In the editorial they’re implying that an e-mail to Clairmont was considered to be the campaign violation. From http://www.emorywheel.com/raj-patel-elected-as-sga-president/:
“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.”
That article says the two violations were a facebook chat conversation with one student and a facebook post that was up for 10-20 minutes. 20 hours is a lot for having a private conversation with one student who probably didn’t vote for him and a facebook post that wasn’t up for more than 20 minutes….
So you admit he cheated but not by a lot? The editorial asks for a no tolerance policy. Learn to read before you point out contradictions that don’t exist.
Um…there is a contradiction.
a) “The Elections Board found that Patel’s actions, which included…an email to the Clairmont Campus…were not influential enough to have swayed the outcome of the election, and Patel was assigned 20 hours of community service as punishment for his actions,” implies that Patel was sanctioned for e-mailing Clairmont.
b) The Wheel’s earlier article says e-mailing Clairmont didn’t violate rules.
Calling something a rule violation in an editorial but saying it wasn’t a rule violation in their earlier article is a contradiction. If not, please explain….
As for your second point: like 3000+ people voted and the winner had a margin of more than 100 votes. The actions that were considered “cheating” by the election board were 1) a private chat with one student, and 2) a facebook post that was up for a max of 20 minutes.
I’m not saying it was okay. It’s right that there’s a punishment. I just think it should take more than a private chat with someone and a post that could have been up for a max of 20 minutes to throw out all 3000+ votes.
I agree. Raj doesn’t have enough friends on Facebook for him to realistically have swayed 100 people in less than 20 minutes, especially considering that we were all bombarded with campaign advertisements anyway.
I don’t personally know either of the candidates so from a neutral perspective, this is ludicrous. The violations were not “influential enough!?” If the Honor Council blatantly finds an individual guilty of cheating on an exam, but he still gets a bad grade on it, does it mean that the individual will not be punished because he did not cheat ENOUGH!? I can’t even…
That is an interesting analogy and I hadn’t thought about it that way. I was coming at it more from the punishment should fit the crime. Chatting with someone on facebook and posting something for less than 20 minutes just doesn’t strike me as that big of a deal. It that’s enough to invalidate an election, campaigns are going to be about digging up as much dirt as possible on everyone.
What does this have to do with it, though? The editorial says that the rules said nothing about Facebook and social media specifically.
See, that doesn’t make sense to me either. If there’s nothing in the rules about social media specifically then how did Patel break rules through using social media? It can’t be both.
I bet hahaha is actually Raj himself or a close friend LOL
Who I am is someone who’s been really happy with The Wheel’s coverage of the academic cuts and the faculty’s response to J-Wag’s statement and so I followed the election stuff they’ve been putting out. I was really discouraged to read:
“‘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,'”
which doesn’t really give complete information about what happened and wasn’t disclosed earlier in their reporting. Until it’s more clear what happened I’m not going to take anything The Wheel writes about this seriously. Wheel people who themselves violated ethical principles could have easily been on the endorsements committee, the editorial board that wrote this, writing other articles about the election, etc. The Wheel has no right to get huffy about anything unless they clarify this.
There’s nothing about the rules for social media, but it does BLATANTLY STATE that you can’t campaign the day of, which means you can’t tell people to vote for you through an medium (speaking, social media, email–just to name a few)
That makes sense. I guess specific stuff about social media would be redundant then?
Now its 95% sure its raj, 3% a friend, and 2% rando.
Being called a “rando” bothers me. I’m not allowed to care what goes on the student paper unless I’m a candidate or their friend?
Keep calm and vote for the cheater!
So, is a candidate sending out a link to the elections website equivalent to “providing eligible students computers on which to vote?” Other forms of “campaigning” clearly persisted on election day — flyers for candidates were still hanging around campus, students circulated campaign-related materials on Facebook, various individuals and organizations sent out messages to encourage voting without endorsing particular candidates. The Constitutional Council could update the rules to make them less ambiguous regarding social media and other platforms for campaigning. But I worry that a strict policy on campaigning through social media might become really convoluted — i.e., if you’re a candidate and set your profile picture on Facebook to an image that says “VOTE FOR ME,” and on the day of the election you change it to something else, but the “VOTE FOR ME” image is still archived on your Facebook profile… is that considered campaigning on election day? How much should be left up to interpretation of the Elections Board, and should they always err on the side of invalidating the election?
I think this was the right decision for the Elections Board to make, and sets a good precedent — unless a candidate’s actions can be shown to have unethically affected voters or the process of collecting votes (e.g., if someone had hacked into the elections website, or bombarded people with biased materials on election day), you have to believe that voters picked the candidate they actually wanted to hold the office. Invalidating elections routinely because of ambiguous violations undermines the democratic process. Elections Board members are appointed by the sitting SGA before elections occur; if you encourage them to overturn the results of elections, you risk making every election subject to the arbitrary approval of a group that was hand-picked by the previous administration.
You’re right, it is a bit ambiguous. You can leave your profile picture up, so long as it wasn’t changed the day of elections. You can leave any status up that was made prior to the day of elections. But what you can’t do on the day of elections is engage in a Facebook chat with a student and give them a direct link to your platform and encourage them to vote. This is not giving the student all information about all of the candidates. By sending them to your platform the day of elections, you are giving the student a one-sided view of the candidates running, and that is campaigning for yourself the day of.
Looks like some WASPS are mad about losing their privilege lol
EVERYONE HERE NEEDS TO CHECK THEIR PRIVILEGE AT THE DOOR. This is especially important for the *many* white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant students that we have here at Emory University. All 5 of them.
Raj Patel is an Oxtard! How could you people elect him?
This really adds to the morale of our school, doesn’t it… The administration fudging SAT scores, Wagner writing that insensitive, dumb column, and now this. Integrity is no longer a characteristic that describes our school. Raj Patel should step down from his newly elected position, if he has any sense of righteousness left in him.