Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) executive candidate Tomisin Olawale received an electoral warning Feb. 9 after posting a series of tweets on his personal Twitter account.
Olawale, a vice-president (student life) candidate with A Better Carleton, re-tweeted a Charlatan tweet about executive videos, writing “I ROCKED THIS.”
CUSA’s chief electoral officer (CEO) Sean Finn banned using Twitter to campaign during the all-candidates meeting Feb. 7.
Although Finn said the tweet was “worthy of an electoral offence,” it’s going to serve instead as “a warning to all candidates.”
“I don’t think it’s been made clear enough at this point what’s the deal with Twitter,” Finn said. “I don’t think it’s fair to give him an electoral offence when we didn’t talk about re-tweeting.”
For his part, Olawale said he was surprised by the warning. Although he said he understood candidates couldn’t tweet or promote the campaign, he said he didn’t see the harm in re-tweeting the executive videos from the Charlatan because “it was already public knowledge.”
“The public had already heard it, so it wasn’t like I was starting a whole new campaign on Twitter,” he said.
Although he called the warning “a bummer,” he said he’ll be staying off Twitter until the election days Feb. 15-16.
“When [Finn] says no to this or yes to this, as much as I may like it or not like it I’m following the rules,” Olawale said.
