The Student Elections Committee asked the Student Judiciary Tuesday to eliminate the nine elected members of the BOOP student government campaign from student council and disqualify the other 13 who were not elected.
SEC Chair Mickey Stevens said a BOOP campaign message was chalked over another candidate’s chalk during elections, violating campaign rules. He said the group also violated election rules by playing music over speakers in East Campus Mall without a permit, breaking city ordinances.
Members of BOOP, a slate under which some students ran for Associated Students of Madison student government in March, said it is difficult to identify who qualifies as a member of “BOOP.” Of the 22 individuals the SEC is alleging violated campaign rules, nine were ultimately elected to student council.
Even if the SJ were to identify all BOOP members, student council representative-elect Maxwell Love said members were involved with the campaign in varying capacities and it would be unfair to punish everyone.
“It’s completely unreasonable to expect all 22 members of BOOP to be held equally responsible that can’t even be proven by court evidence to have been committed by members or an agent by the slate itself,” Love said.
But Stevens said BOOP members benefited from being associated with the slate, and similarly should be held responsible for the actions of other members.
“It’s logically impossible for a group to join together for a common benefit without any sort of joint liability or responsibility to each other,” Stevens said.
Representative and BOOP member Libby Wick-Bander said disqualifying BOOP members could discourage future candidates from being transparent about their campaigns and persuade them to form secret slates.
“We are organizing so that we can impact students and we can get the vote out and we are being publicly humiliated,” Wick-Bander said. “You’re trying to remove elected representatives and take the voice away from students who voted them in.”
