SA presidential candidate Viqar Hussain might be facing community service hours for breaking election rules regarding the use of e-mail listservs.
Hussain, running for the Student Association's top spot under the UB Advocates party, had an official in the athletics department send an open letter Hussain wrote to the listserv for all student-athletes, campaigning for their votes. The election rules and regulations say that sending "unsolicited copies of the same message to a large number of e-mail accounts" is considered spamming, which is a violation of university policy.
According to several people familiar with SA's election guidelines, listservs are not allowed, as they fall under the spamming category. The penalty for spamming is a maximum of 50 community service hours.
The idea to mass e-mail UB's roughly 800 athletes came from a casual conversation with Kellie Peiper, student-athlete services coordinator, who sent the letter out for Hussain early Tuesday.
Hussain told The Spectrum he was unaware the e-mail reached so many people.
"I was thinking it was seven kids on this (student-athlete) committee," he said. "I should have checked into that."
"If it is a violation," he added, "then I could be in trouble."
One of Hussain's opponents, Greg Stern, said his Progress party would bring the listserv e-mail to the attention of SA's Election and Credentials Committee. Avneet Jacob, the committee's chair, could not be reached for comment.
SA Vice President Sonia Kang said the possible violation goes to show just how heated this year's election has become.
"It's hard to not spam because you want to get it out to the masses," she said, "but obviously he's going to get community service for that."
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
