Nicole Skinner and Carlos Vazquez, two ASUI senators running for ASUI president and vice president, were publicly reprimanded through a news release sent out by the ASUI elections coordinator today.
Nicole Skinner and Carlos Vazquez
Michael Bivens, the elections coordinator, wrote Vazquez and Skinner violated section 2000.000 ASUI Rules and Regulations.
According to the news release, there were two main incidents that drove the elections coordinator to publicly reprimand the Skinner-Vazquez campaign.
The Skinner-Vazquez campaign posted a Facebook event in which a member of the campaign invited the ASUI and ASUI Vandal Entertainment Facebook pages to host an open forum. The Facebook events then showcased a Skinner-Vazquez campaign photo on each page, making it look as though ASUI endorsed Skinner and Vazquez.
“This was a misuse of office materials,” Bivens said. “This appeared to have been done on purpose.”
Several thousand Facebook users viewed the post that appeared to endorse the Skinner-Vazquez ticket, Bivens said.
Skinner said their campaign team member did not send the request with bad intentions.
“Carlos and I didn’t find out about this (the Facebook events) until afterward,” Skinner said.
Sean Collins and Austin O’Neill
The elections coordinator further found a series of personal Facebook posts created by a Skinner-Vazquez campaign volunteer stating the Austin O’Neill and Sean Collins campaign had plagiarized a previous campaign strategy — the 12 Days, 12 Vandals endorsement campaign. O’Neill is running for president and Collins is running for vice-president.
“We found these to be baseless accusations that simply weren’t true,” Bivens said. “The posts didn’t stop and we felt it severely damaged their campaign and we don’t stand for those accusations.”
Collins said he was disappointed in the use of Facebook posts against their campaign. The 12 Days, 12 Vandals strategy stemmed from McKenzie MacDonald’s 2017 campaign, which Collins said they had asked to utilize as part of their own campaign.
“We initially weren’t concerned, we just felt it was kind of petty,” Collins said.
Collins said he and O’Neill did not feel the Facebook posts were hurting their campaign until one of their endorsements had been pulled in direct correlation to seeing the posts.
ASUI presidential voting will take place from April 9 to April 11.
Editor’s Note: Austin O’Neill is a columnist for the opinion section of The Argonaut
Hailey Stewart can be reached at [email protected]
Correction: Due to ASUI elections coordinator news release error, the ASUI elections coordinator has since retracted the violation placed on the Skinn-Vasquez campaign in which campaigns materials were placed in the DSI office. Michael Bivens, elections coordinator, issued an apology and retraction April 6 stating the violation was determined inadvertent and not connected to campaign staff.
A previous version of this article misspelled Carlos Vazquez’s name.
Clarification: A team member of the Skinner-Vasquez campaign invited the ASUI groups to host the open forum. A team member of the Skinner-Vasquez campaign also created a personal post regarding the O’Neill-Collins campaign.