The results of the second Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) election have been appealed by team United, and according to chief electoral officer David Valentin, RRRA’s constitutional board is yet to set a date to make a decision on the appeal.
A New RRRA has been fined for three violations of cyber-harassment and another violation of texting harassment that were validated, according to the RRRA electoral office.
Will Cathcart, presidential candidate for United, said there should be more serious consequences for A New RRRA, and said the team should be disqualified.
According to Cathcart, if the team was disqualified and there wasn’t a third election held, United would become the new executive-elect by default.
Valentin, however, said it is up to the constitutional board to decide what the next course of action would be if A New RRRA was disqualified.
“The constitutional board could choose to disqualify A New RRRA; that could be it, and team United would be the winners,” Valentin said, “Or recognizing that many students voted for a team that was no longer in the running, [the board] could order a run-off vote or . . . order for a new election.”
Valentin noted that A New RRRA has appealed every violation they were given no matter what the violation was, even when they were formerly team Rez-Solution.
“This is in stark contrast to other teams that haven’t appealed, unless they actually thought they were going to be overturned,” he said.
According to Valentin, the rate of upholding violations was about 90 per cent.
Sidney Otoboeze, president-elect from team A New RRRA, said he thinks team United has the right to appeal decisions that they believe don’t favour them but said they don’t have a strong case.
“We had a democratic process where students had to vote for a team that was on the ballot, and they have made their choice,” Otoboeze said.
Otoboeze noted that A New RRRA appealed the violations that were given to them.
“A lot of them were about frivolous stuff. Facebook tags were actually what we got most of the violations from, and they were tagged as ‘harassment.’ Certainly someone could tag someone else in a picture and then report [A New RRRA] for the violation.”
He also refuted the text message harassment because he said the student who registered the complaint omitted essential parts of the message thread that was sent to the CEO.
Team members of A New RRRA will not be present at the meeting regarding the appeal calling for their disqualification, according to Valentin.
