Violation made unknowingly
Letter to the Editor
The first news that I received of an Election Day violation was a phone call from The Observer between 9-10 p.m. Thursday night.
I was shocked to hear that an e-mail I wrote to my friends, my section mates and my business group members would disqualify the Hanover/Micek ticket. I have known Hunt Hanover since I was his Freshman Retreat Leader my sophomore year. After that, we participated on NDE together and have kept in contact ever since. I sent out that e-mail because I wanted to let my friends know that I knew Hunt and that I thought he was a great guy. It was not intended to be campaign material. In the e-mail, I encouraged my friends to simply vote, no matter which candidates they picked. The e-mail that I sent out was of my own doing and the Hanover/Micek ticket never asked me to send it. Having no affiliation with student government, I never knew that it was against election bylaws to e-mail individuals in regard to the election.
The main reason that I did not know these rules is that the election bylaws are not distributed to students. This bylaw, that neither I nor the rest of the student body was aware of, was only passed two weeks ago.
Another bylaw that I was not aware of, as I am sure is the case of the majority of Notre Dame students, is that you cannot send out e-mails or anything else that is considered campaigning after midnight the day of the election. Because I was not aware of this, and because I sent out my e-mail less than three hours after the deadline, it was considered another violation of the bylaws.
I hope that you, the Judicial Council and student body, understand my actions and see that it was never my intention or desire to bend or break any campaign rules. I just wish that someone would have informed Notre Dame students of these rules so that a situation, like this one, would have never occurred.
Michael Fairchild
Senior
Alumni Hall
February 19, 2000
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, February 21, 2000
