On Tuesday night at a special board meeting, Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union board of directors and board of governors candidate Anthony Zambito was disqualified from the election.
The Students’ Union board of directors approved to disqualify Zambito in an hour and a half in-camera session. The board meeting was originally called to order to talk about Zambito’s appeal after he was rejected from using his campaign material money to give a donation to a campus club and buy tickets for Laurier Musical Theatre’s performance 0f 9 to 5.
The board said Zambito’s behaviour was in question due to harassment of members of the student body.
“Obviously disqualifying a candidate sucks because they’ve been through the process for two and a half weeks and the day before voting days it’s unfortunate,” said Colin Aitchison, chair of the board, in an interview with The Cord. “Looking into it and actually reading up on the student code of conduct and talking to the university, we felt that it was a violation of the non-academic student code of conduct. From there we can’t really let a candidate run to represent students if they’re violating the non-academic student code of conduct.”
Aitchison said to his knowledge, the Students’ Union hasn’t had to disqualify a candidate before for violating the student code of conduct.
According to Aitchison, Zambito did “not take it too well afterwards.”
After the meeting, Zambito refused to leave the board room in an act of “civil disobedience,” announced publicly on his Snapchat story. Aitchison said the appeals committee, who met after the meeting, asked Zambito to leave and he “requested that he would stay.” Aitchison said he asked Zambito again to leave and after he did not cooperate, called Special Constable Services to escort him off the premises.
With Zambito’s disqualification from the director race, there are 19 individuals on the ballot.
-With files from Kaitlyn Severin
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