Judicial Council sanctions free debate
Observer Editorial Board
This week, Brian Moscona and Keri Oxley's campaign for student body president and vice president was sanctioned by the Judicial Council for making comments deemed "insulting or defaming" toward other candidates.
The comments, which brought about the sanction, were issued in an internal campaign staff e-mail. The statement in question read: "If you have any questions about the platform ideas of other tickets please contact one of the people at the bottom of this e-mail [Moscona and Oxley] ... most of the ideas are not feasible!"
For this action, Judicial Board forced Moscona/Oxley to retract the previous statement and apologize to the other tickets.
Even though the Judicial Council declared the violation minor and gave Moscona/Oxley only a slap-on-the-wrist apology requirement, its actions were still too great given the violation.
When handing down this punishment, the Judicial Council failed to recognize the difference between "insulting and defaming" comments against an individual and "insulting and defaming" comments against a platform. Name-calling and petty personal attacks against other candidates have no place in an election. Criticism of an opponent's platform, however, should not be considered detrimental but is in fact crucial to campaigning.
If candidates cannot even acknowledge that some platform goals of other candidates might not be feasible, then why bother campaigning? Campaigning is mostly about convincing others that your platform goals are strong while your opponents' goals are weak.
In its ruling against the Moscona/Oxley ticket, the Judicial Council told the ticket that comments about other platforms should be reserved for the debate. While restricting a crucial element of campaigning to solely the debates was the incorrect decision, Moscona/Oxley's actions can hardly even be considered campaigning. The statements in the private e-mail did not encourage campaign workers to make public statements against other candidates. Moscona and Oxley asked their campaign staff to feel free to ask them about any of the goals of opponents platforms.
These weren't public campaign statements. If candidates cannot even discuss among their staffs the strengths and weaknesses of other candidates, how can they be expected to prepare for the debates?
The intent of the rule against "insulting and defaming" comments is to keep candidates focused on issues and not let the campaign degenerate into a battle of personal attacks. This interpretation of the rule however, has undermined candidates ability to discuss the issues. The absence of open discussion and debate about issues is truly "insulting and defaming" not some harmless instructions in a private e-mail.
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, February 1, 2002
