An election full of questions

This weekend the students in charge of elections at Penn made a number of freshmen feel a lot like Tom DeLay. And the fuss is all over a few little groups on facebook.com

While the debate over the Web site's various merits rages on, here at Penn, quite the controversy has arisen over a new usage: student government campaign tool. You know, as in the freshman elections and the Nominations and Elections Committee. I'd refer you to a front-page story in this newspaper, but then you'd probably never make your way back to page six. So in short: freshman student government candidates plus the Facebook equals all hell breaking lose. Due to 18 violations of campaign policy brought against 14 candidates, we're only just getting last Thursday's election results today.

David Diesenhouse, the chairman of the NEC, has promised that the committee will be looking into whether there's anything they "can or should do" to improve the information provided to candidates to avoid future snafus. Considering that he's just had to spend his Sunday night deliberating over 18 different violations for 10 hours, I would place emphasis the "should" part of the sentence.

The whole debacle started during an informational meeting with the NEC. At one point, a freshman asked one of those "hypothetical" questions about a "theoretical" Facebook group "theoretically" created before the beginning of the official campaign period.

Rather than answer his question directly, vice-chairman Eli Hoffman referred the student to the Fair Practices Code -- something that, in all likelihood, the student has just been looking at confusedly. It should have been obvious that when it comes to the Facebook it needs to say something a little more specific than: "Only during [the Election Proceedings] may candidates and their surrogates actively promote their candidacies by campaigning. Any act, process or publication which may solicit votes is considered campaigning."

I'd like to point out that the FPC does refer candidates to the University's Electronic Use Policy but that has much more to do with using University servers to store child porn or run a pyramid scheme. Not very helpful when trying figure out the legal usage of the Facebook.

For some candidates, the Fair Practices Code rules on other Internet resources made the answer pretty clear. "Since we're not allowed to send messages out to the class listservs then I figured we shouldn't be allowed to create Facebook groups before the campaign started," said Wilson Tong, a newly-elected member of the Undergraduate Assembly.

Others saw things a little differently. Class of 2009 Presidential candidate Dan Tavana didn't see creating a Facebook group as actively campaigning to solicit votes. As long as the candidate did not invite people to the group, voters would only find the group on their own.

It's telling that after the candidates' meeting and the vice-chairman's vague response, none of the candidates with "illegal" Facebook groups dismantled them. While some allegedly altered the title of their groups afterwards, the matter still didn't concern them enough to make them worry that they were risking their entire candidacy.

The Nominations and Elections Committee basically does only one thing -- run elections. As simple as that sounds, I'm sure it's a pretty tough job. However, they have made their jobs a whole lot more difficult by not answering the simplest of questions. When talking to the vice-chairman, I got the impression that he thought the non-specificity of the FPC was actually an advantage because it allowed candidates to follow their own judgment.

Maybe that logic works when dealing with upper-class incumbents who have been around forever, but freshmen need a little more of a helping hand. It's unfair to expect them to grasp the vagaries of the student government policy within a week of arriving here.

The Nominations and Election Committee should completely overhaul the information it distributes to candidates. By trying to sound all official, the NEC did a great disservice to themselves and to the freshmen who ran this year. And next time, when someone asks a question, they should actually answer it. It'll save everyone a whole lot of trouble.Amara Rockar is a junior political science major from St. Louis. Out of Range appears on Tuesdays.

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