The Student Government Association elections board charged executive board slate Cardinal United with one violation Monday night with a fine of $35.
Kevin Thurman, elections board chair, said the slate violated Elections Code Article 7, Section 3, which allows the elections board to enforce the SGA constitution, SGA bylaws, Ball State regulations and federal, state and local laws.
Cardinal United’s treasurer candidate Brandon Pope allegedly sent a text message to someone, encouraging them to criticize platform points, campaign manager Con Sullivan said. Either the text message recipient or someone who saw or heard of it felt offended personally and reported the action.
Sullivan said the mutual agreement at a meeting this past weekend between the executive board slates and the elections board was to criticize other slates’ platform points, rather than the people on the slates.
“The people affected, I’m assuming is one of Spark’s staff members, feel threatened or [that they were] not in a fun working environment for school learning, it was that part of the student code,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said Cardinal United will appeal the violation and fine.
“We are going after the platform points,” he said. “We haven’t gone after anybody personally, so we are confused as to why the elections board would say, ‘Yes, you can attack the platform ideas; they’re research,’ but when we say that, then we get fined.”
