The Elections committee has issued the following statement:
On Sunday evening, a campaigning irregularity complaint was submitted to the Elections Committee. The complaint stated that VP Academic candidate Johannes Rebane and friends were in Vanier commons block and going door to door asking students to vote on their laptop, and giving cookies to students. The committee was made aware of this from another candidate, who provided contact information for two apparent witnesses that reported this action to the candidate.
The committee followed up by discussing the allegations with the candidate in question, who denied partaking in such activities, and provided credible accounts of where he was at the times the infraction was alleged to occur. To follow up, the committee contacted the eyewitnesses. The eyewitnesses provided their accounts of what occurred at Vanier commons block.
It is the committee’s decision that at this time there is very little evidence supporting the claim that Johannes engaged in such behaviour. As well, there are highly conflicting narratives of what actually occurred, questionable biases, and extremely vague descriptions of the time frames. Specifically, the allegations that they went door to door are unfounded due to the lack of wireless internet access in the residence buildings. In addition, upon contacting a number of different authorities at Vanier, there are no accounts of anyone working witnessing such activities. The residence associations at the residence buildings across campus have been very active in ensuring campaigning follows strict rules within their jurisdiction, and thus the committee trusts that they would have been aware if such actions had taken place.
Signed,
Elections Committee
Looks like the entire thing was a slander campaign. Clap clap. Glad to know that people need to resort to these sorts of tactics to try to win or influence an election. And you ask why students don’t like student politics…
Should vexatious complaints be punishable under the electoral code?
They do nothing but smear and waste the elections committee’s time, and candidates should be cautious when using the EC’s time which could be used for more important things like genuine complaints and engaging the electorate.
"Looks like the entire thing was a slander campaign. Clap clap. Glad to know that people need to resort to these sorts of tactics to try to win or influence an election. And you ask why students don't like student politics…"
I find it is quite interesting that nobody has a critical take on the Elections Committee statement. And therefore, it must be a 'smear' campaign. Poor innocent politicians were just being nice and following regulations when evil students with undefined 'questionable biases' tried to smear them and hurt their upright campaign. Bad students, now should be punished by the authority of the AMS. And, if you ever say anything critical of anyone, you must be a slandering smear campaigner, since the narrow, self-serving, 'logic' of the status quo student media does not allow for anything more sophisticated. The papal infallibility of the Elections Committee is not up for any questioning. Beware that any critical thinking can be construed as evil-intentioned, questionable (without detail as to why), libelous, slant & smear. Some people need more detail to be convinced, but ain't necessarily so for the pro-Sauderist student media. Thanks for coming after us, though, we're flattered.
Rodrigo, what evidence do we have that the incident took place? Why should we take the statement as being a falsehood? We have 1 person who stated that this incident happened, and countless others who said that it didn’t. Perhaps you should realize that there are good student politicians. I know lots of them. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t in the AMS, and the ones who try to make it are discouraged by those people who spread lies and falsehoods about them.
There’s room to be critical without resorting to slander. What you published wasn’t criticism. Criticism and being critical involves looking at hard facts, looking at things like platform, and critiquing those by pointing out both strengths and weaknesses. It has nothing to do with advocating for a certain ideology, and everything to do with reporting on the truth. If you have a problem with the Elections committee, perhaps you should do something to reform it. But so far, we have the word of one person against that of several dozens who didn’t witness anything sketchy take place.
Let’s just get this clear. Critical thought=/=slander. You can do one without doing the other. I’d say that reporting someone’s name before facts were clear is slanderous and involves no critical thinking whatsoever. I think at some point, we should stop being skeptical and accept fact. Otherwise, we’d all still be in the realm of denying global warming because we all thought that scientists were out to get us ;)
All of this makes me sad. I need a hug.
-cc
I think that too much attention has been given to this issue so far. The student who reported the behavior found it was something that should be reported immediately, and did so. I do not believe this person is blatantly lying or trying to run a smear campaign. In fact, Wlad (eyewitness) turns out to be part of the Knoll editing group who disendorsed Jeremy Wood for VP Academic. So they are perhaps running a double-smear campaign against all candidates… I am curious as to what exactly are the ‘biases’ that caused the EC to discredit the testimony.
One thing I ask people to keep in mind is that I am not the only person responsible for what is published at UBC Student Media. It seems that there are enough people running another type of smear against UBC Student Media.
Candidates are public figures running public campaigns, and should be able to face an opposition on their own. And everyone operates under some ideology… as to the criticism we’ve posted, refer to the write-up (not mine) on Monegro’s platform, and the many videos we’ve posted.
I am not sure that the eyewitness is against ‘several dozens’ of other people, as you suggest. There is not such indication in the report from the Electoral Committee. This has nothing to do with global warming. May the 3 paragraph report of the Elections Committee be taken as Final Word of God in this issue, so we can all be happy again!?
*furry tear*