The Student Association’s judicial board struck down Jordan Zager’s grievance, filed last week against the elections committee chair, Sunday.
Zager, a sophomore English and cinema major, raised his hand to ask vice president for academic affairs candidates questions during last week’s community sweeps, but was denied the right to speak by elections chair Mary Leonardo. Zager said he wanted to ask about diversity. He attended the different sweeps hoping to ask the vice president for academic affairs candidates about a possible queer studies minor.
According to Leonardo, students may only ask questions in a sweep at their own community, and decisions regarding audience members’ involvement are up to the discretion of those running the sweep. Zager, a resident of Newing College, came to sweeps in College-in-the-Woods and Hinman College hoping to talk.
“Since there was such a limited time for questions and answers, I felt that community members should have the time over non-community members,” she said.
Leonardo didn’t say during the sweeps to only call on community members for questions, but she wasn’t expecting non-community members to be in attendance, she said.
“I never heard of people going to different communities to ask questions during sweeps because you have an opportunity at your own community,” she said.
A statement issued by the judicial board reaffirmed Leonardo’s stance, which claimed she has the authority to grant or disallow speaking privileges to those who are non-members of a community.
The judicial board said that under the rules of order, non-community members are allowed to attend meetings, but do not constitute members of the meeting body. They therefore don’t have the right to speak.
Zager said that although he agrees with the rule, he couldn’t find where it was listed in community constitutions. The rule also doesn’t appear in the SA constitution.
“It doesn’t say that in the constitutions in the majority of the communities,” he said.
“Because Mr. Zager was treated in the exact same manner as other students, we decided that there were no injustices committed on behalf of Ms. Leonardo,” a portion of the judicial board statement read.
Zager felt this section was incorrect, because he said an off-campus community member spoke during the CIW sweep before he was denied the right to talk.
“They didn’t notify anyone beforehand who was allowed to speak,” he said.
The judicial board’s statement acknowledged the lack of communication between the elections committee in regards to the rule and advised them to “establish and implement principles stringently” to avoid this conflict in the future.