Protest slams elections

By Perry Swanson
The Metropolitan

A protest at Student Government Assembly elections this week focused attention on Metroâs democratic process, or a perceived lack thereof.

The election ended April 8; results will be announced April 13.

Erica Tapia, a 20-year-old Metro student, said she was left out of the election process because the student Election Commission wouldnât approve her request to join the presidential race. She made her request more than a month after the deadline to register and only two days before voting started.

Tapia stood outside the library, and then by the flagpole in the middle of campus, encouraging students to write her name on the ballot.

Election Commission chairwoman Kerrie Dallman said write-in votes for Tapia wouldnât be counted. Since Tapia didnât register as a candidate by the March 4 deadline, and she didnât attend the candidate meetings, Dallman said the commission decided she couldnât be allowed into the race.

Tapia filed a complaint with the student Judicial Board on April 8, asking for a reversal of the commission decision preventing her from running as a write-in candidate.

Judicial Board Chief Justice Krystal Bigley said the board would consider Tapiaâs complaint along with a written statement from the Election Commission and decide whether to hold a hearing to decide the matter.

Tapia said she didnât think much about running for student office until reading a column by presidential candidate Dave Flomberg in the March 27 edition of The Metropolitan.

In the column, Flomberg, a copy editor/columnist for The Metropolitan, said he joined the race on a dare, and originally intended to relinquish the office if he won.

ãSo vote for me or donât vote for me, I donât give a damn,ä Flomberg wrote.

Flombergâs competition was Andy Nicholas, who campaigned with a group of candidates called the Student Power Initiative.

ãOnce Dave wrote what he wrote, Andy was the only candidate left,ä Tapia said. And that meant students had no real choice in the presidential election, she said.

The Election Commission said as long as Flomberg was still officially in the race, he was a viable candidate.

The protest took many student eyes off basic campaign issues such as parking and using pluses/minuses in grading. Instead, debate at the flagpole, where Tapia and about 15 supporters made their stand April 7, centered on whether she should be allowed into the race.

A womenâs studies professor, Xetura Woodley-Tillman, showed up with several students to protest Tapiaâs exclusion.

ãTheyâve been trying to silence Erica since this whole thing started,ä she said.
One current student government member spoke to the gathering, saying Tapia should be allowed to run.

ãStudents should be able to decide whomever they want to vote for,ä said Janet Damon, assembly vice president of Diversity.

Damon, who made a run to retake the Diversity office with the SPI ticket, said her support for Tapia was not a stab at Nicholas.

Still, Damon expressed discomfort with Nicholas as a possible student government president, especially because she joined the ticket when the current president, Karmin Trujillo, was still in the race.

ãIâm not sure how much of his passions are earnest and how much of his passions are a thing of political ambition,ä Damon said.

Trujillo dropped out of the race in February and asked Nicholas to run for president.

Jessie Bullock, assembly vice president of Student Fees, said she would introduce a resolution at the groupâs meeting April 9 asking the Election Commission to count votes for write-in candidates.