Student Association members addressed concerns about the suspension of a candidate for comptroller during last week’s election at Monday’s meeting.

Comptroller candidate Eduardo Gomez’s campaign was suspended Thursday night, about 20 minutes before SA’s online election poll closed at midnight. SA announced Gomez’s suspension on their Instagram account, then deleted the post shortly after. Stacy Omosa, the other comptroller candidate, won by 99 votes.

Several people wrote comments on the SA Instagram account’s posts Thursday night, saying that the election was rigged against Gomez. Many of the comments specifically attacked Torre Payton-Jackson, co-chair of SA’s Public Relations Committee, who posted the announcement of Gomez’s suspension on SA’s Instagram account.

Payton-Jackson said people also made comments and posts attacking other candidates. Mackenzie Mertikas and Sameeha Saied won the election for SA president and vice president, respectively.

“It got to the point where we received death threats, people were coming after the winners based on what they looked like,” Payton-Jackson said after the meeting.  “I even saw people who I considered my friends reposting pictures of the winners and then picking at every single flaw inside the picture.”

SA’s public relations board was not informed of Gomez’s disqualification until around the time Payton-Jackson posted the statement — about 20 minutes before midnight, she said.

Payton-Jackson took the statement off of SA’s Instagram when she found out Omosa had won by 99 votes, she said.

Sophia Faram, SA’s elections and membership chair, emailed SA members around 11:40 p.m. on Thursday to inform them that an individual connected with Gomez’s campaign slandered an opponent to gain an unfair advantage. Gomez and Omosa were the only candidates on the ballot.

The SA statement was released close to midnight because SA’s Board of Elections and Membership received evidence that Gomez’s campaign had violated SA’s campaign rules only 24 hours before the election closed, Faram said in an interview after the meeting.

After the board’s three members conducted interviews, analyzed the evidence and came to a decision, they contacted Payton-Jackson to release it through social media, Faram said.

Faram said Payton-Jackson could not have controlled the election because students vote through MySlice. A staff member of SU’s Information Technology Services sent Faram an Excel spreadsheet of the votes, she said. During elections, ITS checked IP addresses to see if students used multiple MySlice accounts, logged on multiple times to vote or used fake MySlice accounts, she said.

Faram said she tried to make the election as fair as possible and the stressful miscommunication was caused by the intensity of the decision.

“For students who are not in Student Association, it is so hard to understand the moving pieces and the dynamics between individuals, let alone the policies of the elections and the candidates themselves,” she said.

The Board of Elections and Membership will release a statement with more details about the election next week, Faram said.

Peter Choi, Public Relations Committee co-chair, thanked the Assembly members who supported him and Payton-Jackson during the elections.

“We hadn’t made any mistakes this year up until Thursday, and that was a very important thing, so I apologize from the bottom of my heart because I love SA and the school,” Payton-Jackson said.

Other business

• SA’s Assembly unanimously voted Representative Lily Datz into the Alumni Board. President Ghufran Salih said Datz will make a significant impact as a woman on a male-dominated committee.
• SA elected current Judicial Review Board Chair Vishwas Paul as the student representative to SU’s Board of Trustees. Paul said he wants to improve relations with the Syracuse community and provide more students with financial aid during his time on the board.
• Community Engagement Committee Co-chair Greg Mytelka announced the fundraiser, “Refugee is Not My Name.” The event will raise money to provide new technology for studentsatthe North Side Learning Center. It will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. on April 17 at the Jabberwocky Cafe in Schine Student Center.

Published on April 16, 2019 at 12:24 am

Contact Abby: akweiss@syr.edu | @abbyweiss_21