LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Brandfon responds to Justice election articles
Forum | 10/14/03
Posted online at 5:20 AM EST on 10/14/03
To the Editor:
Two weeks ago, over 35 candidates participated in Student Union elections, and fourteen were elected to serve their constituencies on the Senate. All but one of them had no problem following rules, no problem asking for clarifications and no problem heeding rules violation warnings that came from the Elections Commissioners.
The elections rules, which are very publicly available on the Student Union website (http://union.brandeis.edu), were designed to incorporate suggestions from past Union Judiciary decisions and eliminate any confusion for the candidates.
There are a number of aspects of The Justice's coverage of the disqualification that are particularly concerning. Your article and editorial painted our Secretary and our Elections Commissioners as underhanded, conniving and despicable people whose only goal was to make candidates' lives miserable and capriciously decide the results of elections while ignoring the will of the voters.
When our Secretary formally communicated his disappointment with your staff in the days following the printing of the last paper, he received a response from one of your editors that read in part, "Tell Danny Silverman to shut the fu*k up." I hope that your editorial board shows a little more professional tact when interacting with their readers, and that you are more responsive to the rest of our community when they express concerns.
I also find it extremely unprofessional that your staff would publish text from a personal e-mail sent from one student to another. It calls into question your respect for individual's privacy on campus, and causes me to doubt your ability to discern what is and is not appropriate for print.
Members of our Union Government spent hours in your office helping your writers make their deadlines. They sat and explained why the rules were important and how the disqualification was carried out. They clarified the significance of each and every elections document your writers had. The dozen or so factual errors in the article and the editorial show that either those hours weren't enough time, or David Cutler '06 chose to ignore the information they provided.
Two weeks ago, over 35 candidates participated in Student Union elections, and fourteen were elected to serve their constituencies on the Senate. All but one of them had no problem following rules, no problem asking for clarifications and no problem heeding rules violation warnings that came from the Elections Commissioners.
The elections rules, which are very publicly available on the Student Union website (http://union.brandeis.edu), were designed to incorporate suggestions from past Union Judiciary decisions and eliminate any confusion for the candidates.
There are a number of aspects of The Justice's coverage of the disqualification that are particularly concerning. Your article and editorial painted our Secretary and our Elections Commissioners as underhanded, conniving and despicable people whose only goal was to make candidates' lives miserable and capriciously decide the results of elections while ignoring the will of the voters.
When our Secretary formally communicated his disappointment with your staff in the days following the printing of the last paper, he received a response from one of your editors that read in part, "Tell Danny Silverman to shut the fu*k up." I hope that your editorial board shows a little more professional tact when interacting with their readers, and that you are more responsive to the rest of our community when they express concerns.
I also find it extremely unprofessional that your staff would publish text from a personal e-mail sent from one student to another. It calls into question your respect for individual's privacy on campus, and causes me to doubt your ability to discern what is and is not appropriate for print.
Members of our Union Government spent hours in your office helping your writers make their deadlines. They sat and explained why the rules were important and how the disqualification was carried out. They clarified the significance of each and every elections document your writers had. The dozen or so factual errors in the article and the editorial show that either those hours weren't enough time, or David Cutler '06 chose to ignore the information they provided.
