SGA upholds disqualification

Travis Williams and Aziza Bowser were certified as SGA president and vice president March 24.

The move by the electoral commission came hours after the SGA Supreme Court decided to uphold its decision to disqualify Larry O. Rivers and Virgil A. Miller from the race.

“The electoral commission voted to disqualify the Larry Rivers ticket for their multiple violations of election codes,” said Deputy Electoral Commissioner Mikal Lewis.

The Supreme Court upheld its decision from Friday to disqualify Rivers and Miller from the race after the ticket was disqualified by the Electoral Commission for accumulating too many penalty points while campaigning.

“We are disappointed in this decision,” said Micah C. Zeno, legal counsel for Rivers and Miller.

Zeno said Rivers and Miller are planning to appeal the decision, handed down in a special 1 a.m. meeting held in Senate chambers, early next week.

Rivers and Miller were assessed 80 points by the electoral commission for violating electoral codes. The points were assessed for:

lCampaigning before Campaign Week: 30 points

lNo campaigning in SGA: 20 points

lBlatant disregard of the codes: 30 points

The points for “pre-campaigning” stem from comments made by both candidates in the article “Candidates prepare for SGA election.” The article ran in The Famuan on Feb. 24. The other points were assessed when Erin Barnes, SGA Senate Elections and Appointments chairperson, said she saw at least two students wearing a Rivers/Miller campaign t-shirt during an SGA meeting on March 5.

The Rivers/Miller ticket won the run-off election over Williams and Bowser, 1381-936.

“The students’ votes don’t count,” said Kenjay Williams, a 21-year-old business administration student from Denver. “We spent so much time telling students to come out and vote.”

Williams and Bowser, speaking through “The Genesis” administration spokesman Darnell Strom, seek to unite the campus after more than a month of waiting to find out if the appeal by the Rivers/Miller campaign would win out.

“We wanted to stay silent during the appeals process,” Strom read from the statement. “Travis Williams and Aziza Bowser want to unify the student body, not divide it.