"Lots of politics, but no decision on SA bribery charges"

Student Association officials have still not made a ruling regarding charges of bribery and slander brought six months ago against Mazin Kased, now the SA treasurer.

All the charges revolve around last spring's SA election and a taped conversation in which Elevation '05 candidate Kased offered Francisco Baiocchi a job with SA if he were to drop from the election and turn on his fellow party members.

Baiocchi was then running for SUNY SA delegate with the Reform Our Campus party. Baiocchi now says he does not have the time or energy to pursue further action, but fellow party member Matt Pelkey said he plans to see the case to the end.

At the end of last semester, Joe Varghese, then chair of the Election and Credentials committee, said he would decide on the case before the summer, but did not do so before graduating and leaving UB.

Now the new E&C chair, Avneet Jacob, will take over from where the case left off, according to SA President Dela Yador, who ran with Kased on the same ticket.

"I want to resolve this thing and take care of what needs to be taken care of and move on," Yador said.

"I don't even know what the holdup was," Yador added. "It's really a burden."

Kased said he hasn't kept tabs on the issue.

"I don't ask, I don't care, because I know I did nothing wrong," he said.

As treasurer, Kased said he has his hands full with work and doesn't have time to go out of his way and wrap up a six-month-old issue.

"If it's going to continue on, long or short, I always know I was innocent, so it doesn't really matter to me," he said.

Yador said he hasn't forgotten about the charges, and he hopes the E&C committee will take the right steps to move forward "without being insensitive to the parties involved."

Last semester, the Reform Our Campus party offered a settlement - that Kased either resign or face the Student-wide Judiciary alone - but that's now long expired.

Elevation '05 filed its own offer, that all charges be dropped if Kased issued a public apology and performs community service hours. That settlement was rejected, and a counter-charge of bribery against Baiocchi was never ruled upon.

Considering so much time has passed since the conversation that started it all, Yador said Baiocchi and Pelkey should do whatever they feel they need to do.

"They did put a deal out there, and we refuted that, and we're waiting to see what happens," Yador said.

Baiocchi said although the long wait has probably ruined chances for a fair ruling from the E&C, he's glad he's had a chance to gain perspective on the issue. Varghese was undoubtedly busy, Baiocchi said, and as a student "it was certainly a very ambitious thing we were asking about him to do."

Baiocchi said it might have been better if Varghese handed the case to the Student-wide Judiciary to start, although he understands that is not SA procedure.

"His dismissal is like a tacit approval," he said. "It sends a really negative image to a lot of people."

"It just shows the lack of accountability," Pelkey said. "It is a perfect example of the lack of accountability and validity in the SA."

According to Pelkey, he is currently trying to find ways to go around the E&C committee and get the case right to the Student-wide Judiciary. But until then, it is stuck in limbo.

"This is a pretty serious claim, and it can just be ignored? I don't see how any representative or officer from SA can try to spin that in a positive light," he said.

Pelkey said that like Baiocchi and Kased, he and fellow party member Elizabeth Salzman have little time to pore over SA laws and draw up legal documents. But with the support gained last semester, "I do think we could pull it off, and I do think we could present an arguable case."

Baiocchi said he's still disappointed in Kased's actions, especially because he thinks Yador will be fantastic for the SA administration, "but I don't have the energy to make the student body care about an issue like this."

"End of the day, the people voted Mazin in and I'm not about to question the democratic process," he said. "I wouldn't call it a mandate, but he was voted in by his peers."