Keep the election fair: BOE must uphold and obey the Student Code

The body in charge of campuswide elections has made a series of gross blunders in the past few weeks.

This week the Board of Elections surprised prospective student candidates by announcing that candidates may no longer solicit signatures in classroom settings or through the use of dormstorming.

Candidates must receive 800 signatures to qualify for the election a feat that will be particularly difficult this year because of the unusually large number of candidates.

While there is no clause in the Student Code that determines where and when the campaigns may petition for signatures the board should have notified the campaigns of these significant changes to signature collection procedures long before Tuesday's mandatory meeting.

The board should not be allowed to arbitrarily change regulations without giving ample notification to candidates who have already organized their campaigns around election precedent. Past candidates relied heavily on dormstorming and classroom signature collection.

Further" the board has refused to penalize the student body president candidates who created ""secret"" Facebook groups before campaigning officially began.

Creating these groups prior to Tuesday's candidate announcement was a clear violation of the part of the Student Code that regulates campus elections" Title VI Article IV Section 402. It states" ""No campaign-related material" including web pages instant message profile links or icons and social network groups" shall be allowed on the web until a candidate's declaration of candidacy is filed with the BOE.""

That leaves little room for interpretation.

The board's declaration that these groups are legal and its refusal to penalize the candidates who created these groups is unfair to those who actually followed the Code" who missed out on essential public exposure.

Specified public campaigning dates are designed to prevent candidates from passing out fliers putting up signs or starting Facebook groups whenever they please. Without these regulations students could kickoff their campaigns years in advance.

Election laws are in place to protect the integrity of the process. The board is threatening that balance with its haphazard notification of campaign rule changes and its refusal to enforce the Student Code correctly.