Burnt Orange Report

Equal Time

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

First off, look for Daily Texan endorsements on all the student elections on Monday. The Texan editorial board issues it's own endorsement, separate from the panelists, though we'll be on our own page. (I'm looking forward to the 12 hours of interviews we have tomorrow, I kid you not!)

After today's little scuffle noted in the Texan, both campaigns have since sent out e-mails to their listservs, so I have posted the relevent info in the extended entry.

Oh, and Dusty Mangum, UT's hot Rose Bowl kick winning Kicker will be appearing at the Ignite Rally on Sunday 8 PM on the main mall. Daron Roberts, former SG president four years ago, will also be an invited guest according to one of the thousands of SG ticket related flyers I've run across this week. I've had no word yet on the level of 'campaign activites' that Connect will be hosting this weekend as I'm sure everyone is still sorting out today's ruling.

So with that, to the extended entry!

First, a short note from Ignite.

Last night our opponents were found in violation of several Election Code provisions by the Election Supervisory Board, an independent body, and have been banned from campaigning until Tuesday at 12:01 am. This means they will not be allowed to campaign anywhere. They cannot ask people for their vote or even for their support, promote their platform ideas, or speak to organizations--the only thing they are allowed to do is wear their t-shirts.

IGNITE will be the only presence on campus today and on Monday, and we need you now more than ever. If you have a shirt, make sure it gets on a body. If you don't have a shirt, stop by and grab a button from our tables. Wear these with pride because they represent the ethics that have been behind this campaign from the beginning. Come by our tables, even if it's just for a few minutes, and join us today and Monday as we continue towards elections!

Jess, Colby, and the IGNITE family

Fairly short, professional, and self-explanatory so I'll move on to Connect.

There was an ESB hearing tonight and a decision was made against us. We were filed on because we reserved Banner Space on Speedway and in the Business School under organzations that we were a part of. This is a typical thing done by campaigns and has always been done in the past.

We were found to be guilty of violating a SALD (CCI) rule as well as a ESB Advisory Opinion. The penalty we recieved is that we are not allowed to campaign on Friday or Monday. This means no tabling, no speaker circuits, no putting up signs, no saying Vote.

You need to know we did nothing wrong and that we are appealing this decision. Here are the details:

The first is that both campaigns originally reserved Banner Space under organizatons. SALD found out that the Ignite ticket was doing this and they removed their banner reservations. We were never told by CCI or the ESB that this was a direct violation. The first time that we heard about this was a violation was when the Advisory Opinion #3 was issued yesterday.

We are confused and appalled by this decison. This alleged violation is not written in any University code including the ESB code. The advisory opinion given by the ESB Chair was given after the banners were up and therefore we had no formal knowledge of this rule until that time and as soon as we did know about it we quickly removed the banners.

We are appealing this decision and hopefully it will be resolved before Monday so that we can camapign. We are both working dilegently to ensure that our campaign is not penalized for things that we did not know about. We need to work a hundred times harder to make sure this doesn't affect our campaign the way many are hoping it will. We are planning events for the weekend to make sure we can make up for the lost time. Stay strong and let's all stick together, we need to remain CONNECTed now more than ever.

If anyone else has comments or a response that's in addition to what was already said in the last post, please post them.