On March 6, the largest plurality of student voters was told by the Student Election Commission that their vote for Dan Weber would not be counted. The day after the results announcement, well-prepared complaints over campaign practices were brought against the winning candidate by his active opponents in the race. They accused him of campaigning in unapproved places such as libraries, destroying their chalking and signs and posting fliers in the residence halls.

As a result, the SEC declared Matt Reschke the student trustee-elect, a completely unprecedented reaction to biased and unverifiable testimony. Rather than make all of his allegations prior to the vote, our trustee-elect wanted the election to be decided by who had the best ace up his sleeve.

I wish that the candidates competed in a better election system; I wish they would refuse to violate any SEC rules. Trustee Asonye (07-08) made minor infractions. So did Trustee Schmitt of along with most candidates for this election. We all see the campaign fliers in the classrooms, and many accusations of chalk defacing were documented, including cases in which Weber’s campaign was the victim. Correcting this, however, does not start with effectively disenfranchising 33 percent of student voters. It starts with processing each complaint on reasonable evidence and doling out proportional punishment.

Even if some of the accusations are true, ask yourself if we can attribute his enormous margin to these activities. I don’t think so. Weber is the fairly elected Student Trustee.