Board needs to deal with appeals committee problems

The process by which presidential candidate Reed Collis was disqualified has raised serious questions about this year’s election team and the appeals committee that governs it.

After an initial 2-1 vote was cast to allow Collis to remain in the election, the vote was nullified following the decision of the chair to cast a vote in a system that should have prevented him from doing so.

Whether it a simple misinterpretation of policy, a lack of knowledge, or the desire to discredit what many viewed to be a joke candidate, the problem is that the chair stepped out of his bounds when he voted in the appeals committee meeting. The chair is supposed to remain impartial, and there is a reason why the chair typically refrains from voting.

As the initial vote was 2-1 made by the appeals committee, this should have ended the process as two-thirds of the voting body had made a decision. There was no need for the chair to vote in this situation.

It is now the responsibility of the current board of directors to hold both the appeals committee and the chair of the board responsible for their actions. An emergency board meeting must take place immediately, as this issue has gone beyond the scope of the appeals committee. If directors want to do their job and save what has been a year where little has been done little in the way of representing students and holding management accountable, they need to fix this situation.

Although it would certainly be much simpler to let the issue slide under the rug, as many in the union often do when conflict arises, directors need to show the student body that they still represent students. WLUSU, and the chair in particular, should not have the right to pick and choose which rules to follow in the election process.