Last Friday the SA Elections and Credentials Committee found the UB Students' Party guilty of making a false and libelous statement against the Results Party, the incumbent SA administration against whom they are facing off in the elections this week. This is the second time legal action was used to settle disputes between the two parties. The current embroilment in this bitter campaign arose when Results Party presidential candidate and current SA president Chris Oliver filed a complaint with the E&C Committee over statements made in a Students' Party flier.
Following a hearing Thursday night, the E&C committee found that one claim made on the flier - the selection process of bands for Fall and Spring Fest had "no student input" - was both false and malicious. To rectify the situation, the E&C committee sentenced the Students' Party to apologize in a written letter to The Spectrum.
Right now, that organization is standing as a sense of reason amid the party squabbling. Libel is a loaded charge, but the E&C Committee correctly relied on the rules of the original SA Constitution that clearly state: "No candidate, party, or representative may convey false information pertaining to the election in any way, shape or form." The Students' Party was particularly at fault, due to the fact that one of their NYSSA candidates, Vinny Rondinelli, attended a summer orientation as an aide and witnessed freshmen voice their opinions on musical acts.
Regardless of the Students' Party's culpability, Oliver made his own party look worse by actually pursuing the matter through formal complaint. Unless there is a visible amount of damage, a libel charge reflects poorly on a litigant looking for the law to solve his problems. This is surprising coming from an incumbent who has served on the SA e-board for two years already. Oliver took the criticism too personally, and should have taken the high road by ignoring attacks he felt were baseless.
But they aren't entirely baseless. Granted, the exact wording on the flier ("no student input") is erroneous, but it serves a legitimate purpose. Despite its acerbic tone, the flier is a great means of informing students about the issues, especially voters who did not attend the club council meetings.
Truth be told, the Students' Party is addressing the fact that students have very limited input for Fall and Spring Fest music acts. Even if artists' booking schedules render full student input almost impossible, a simple student-wide poll could have provided SA a better understanding of what students want. It's certainly more accurate than relying on how loud a bunch of freshmen scream during summer orientation.
The Students' Party engaged in more mudslinging during the campaign. But the Results should realize that it comes with the territory when you are not the incumbent, and when the only "town hall" meetings offered are biased, club council assemblies. The idea of using these meetings to create effective student dialogue is a joke when the majority of audience members are club representatives who benefit financially from the current Results administration.
It also doesn't help that by Wednesday, sympathizers of each party had attended the club council meetings to childishly heckle the opposition. SUNY Trustee George Pape had to be silenced by E&C chair Barbara Edsall after he made vain attempts to criticize Students' Party NYSSA candidate Melinda Mulawka on Thursday. The Wednesday meeting saw similar behavior from identified UB Students' supporters, obviously an attempt to outrace the general student body to the question and answer period and drown out pro-Results sentiment.
Lost in these affairs are the issues, which is too bad because candidates on both sides worked hard to inform students of possible changes in TAP and EOP. Legal actions, biased club council meetings and general mudslinging have worn the competing parties away into one collective mess. It's fun to watch, but the mess makes it hard to differentiate the substance from the spectacle, and leaves us wondering if there's any substance to find.
