Drama dominates senate election

As the Student Senate presidential race comes to a close, more drama surrounding the two presidential candidates surfaced during the Student Senate meeting Monday as both campaigns are accused of stealing promotional signs.  

Chief Justice Nathan Cronin presented that on Friday, the Student Senate Constitutional Court issued a cease-and-desist to presidential candidate Sullivan Jones, 20, sophomore of Papillion, after evidence of him and his campaign team removing campaign signs for candidate Isioma Akwanamnye, senior of Lagos, Nigeria. The cease-and-desist served as a warning to the Jones team. He would not be removed from the ballot unless further evidence of him stealing campaign signs was presented to the court. 

“Based on the evidence presented to the chief justice by both students and staff, you and/ or your campaign staff have taken down posters from the other candidate in the election race,” the cease-and-desist stated. “Whether it was you doing this act or your campaign staff (regardless of if your staff was acting under your orders or not) is not acceptable behavior for the Student Senate elections.” 

On Sunday, Jones petitioned the court with the accusations that the Akwanamyne team had also removed campaign signs and that she should be disqualified from the election and her name removed from the ballot. 

“I wouldn’t take down his posters or whatever because I want people to vote for me,” Awanamyne said. “That’s not the kind of president I want to be and that’s not values I hold. I believe that, as long as he doesn’t have proof to say that I did it they’re all lies, and people shouldn’t vote based on lies. They should vote on the truth and the facts of the case.” 

Jones said that his petition was a “formal” and “symbolic” way to let Awanamyne know that his campaign was dealing with the same thing.  

A court case between Jones and Akwanamyne was opened and on Monday the Student Senate Constitutional Court made the unanimous decision to reject the petition to remove Akwanamyne from the ballot, citing that the petition was not completed because there was no evidence of removal in the petition and no witnesses had come forward, and that the court case would be dismissed.  

Jones said in an interview that he did have proof, however believed the petition was misapplied. 

“We have proof that some signs where we’ve taken pictures and the next day we’ll walk through and they’ll be gone,” Jones said. “Specifically, one day in the Admin building I walked up to go to class Saturday morning and other people commented on my signs that were there. Then, a group of students walked through afterwards, and the signs were gone. It is difficult to say that it was her or her campaign, because there was a large group of kids, but the way I understood it when I spoke with the chief justices it wouldn’t be expected that a random student would be stealing campaign signs from one specific opponent. Obviously, it had to be someone associated with that campaign. 

“I don’t think Isi would be taking my signs down personally,” Jones said. 

He then went on to say that the proof would never be concrete.  

CSC students will receive an email to vote for Student Senate president and vice president today. The ballot will be available until noon Saturday. The winners of the election will be sworn in at the final Student Senate meeting Monday.  

“I want to be able to run and even if I don’t win I want to be able to stay on senate and do all of the things I do because I love my job as a senator and I want to be able to represent my constituents to the best of my ability,” Awanamyne said. “I’m running for president because I want a bigger platform to do the job I already do. I just want people to understand that. I don’t want this election to divide campus, there’s already a division around so I don’t want to make that gap any wider.”