The Home Team is calling for a re-election process after they were disqualified from the Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) elections by chief electoral officer (CEO) Julia Parsons on March 22.
“We personally would like the election completely thrown out,” said The Home Team’s candidate for president, Zayge Klein. “We think [the rulings] was completely biased and completely unjust.”
The team was disqualified due to a total of six violations. The rulings were made public on the RRRA elections website. They involve three violations for failing to stamp campaign posters, one violation for only having one signature on a two-person room door poster, and two violations for having an off-campus student volunteer.
The off-campus student volunteer in question is Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) president Fahd Alhattab. A Google drive accessed by Parsons that contains The Home Team’s campaign material shows the drive was owned, updated, and modified by Alhattab, according to the ruling.
Alhattab said he was paid by The Home Team as a graphic designer for their campaign material. He added he provided his services as an independent contractor for Quedge Design.
“I understand how it looks like, I understand the appearance. However, I have not taken a stance anywhere to say I’m supporting any team,” Alhattab said. “I did what was required of me, which was develop the graphics. I believe the violations placed upon them [are] unfair and biased simply because it was my name.”
Parsons said as of Feb. 11, RRRA council voted that off-campus volunteers were not allowed to campaign for any teams running in residence association elections. However, as per RRRA election bylaws, teams are allowed to get their campaign material off-campus if they were given a fair market value quote.
“I am not an expert graphic designer by all means, I am not paid hundreds of dollars to do graphic design, I have never been paid that much,” Alhattab said. “Unfortunately, fair market price is one of the most ambiguous claims unless it has been set beforehand.”
He added he does have receipts for the services he provided to The Home Team, but that he was not asked to provide them by the CEO or RRRA’s constitution board.
“I do feel that this election is being messed with and I do feel that teams are being targeted unfairly,” Alhattab said. “You know the Home Team was a clear head runner for it all.”
Klein said her team did not receive a 24-hour warning for five of the six violations and the evidence for the violation regarding poster signatures has inconclusive evidence, as the poster was taken down when Parsons went to review it.
She said her team is still on the floor during election days as a protest. Klein added her team is not technically disqualified until all the appeals processes have been exhausted.
Parsons said The Home Team has appealed all their violations to RRRA’s constitution board. There are four people who sit on the board, including current RRRA vice-president (programming) Arpita Dar. Parsons said the constitution board has rejected two of the four appeals, the off-campus volunteer violation and the one of the poster stamping violations.
Two new violations emerged from the first constitution board meeting. One of which was that the board felt “the CEO was lenient with the poster violation” as two posters were discovered unstamped, not one. The second new violation was regarding Alhattab’s modification of the Google drive, which happened on two seperate dates, March 11 and 14.
The Home Team is currently appealing the rest of their violations to the constitution board. The board has to make a ruling within 48 hours.
