Members of the ASUU elections committee are considering filing a grievance against presidential candidate Cameron Beech for speaking with The Daily Utah Chronicle before filing date and dialogue week.
Beech sent a memo to some of the other presidential candidates announcing his campaign colors, contact information and his intentions to have a clean campaign. The memo was also sent to The Chronicle.
The Chronicle wrote about the memo in the Jan. 16 article “Beech reaches out to fellow student body president candidates.”
Associated Students of the University of Utah Elections Registrar Lorraine Evans, Special Prosecutor Zan Larsen and Deputy Special Prosecutors Remington Johnson and Brad Clark are looking into whether the act is significant enough to file a grievance.
The action could potentially constitute a violation of pre-active campaigning laws, which require candidates to inform the elections registrar of any kind of public campaigning and prohibit approaching unaffiliated parties before dialogue week.
Evans said Beech came to her asking permission to send the memo to the other candidates.
“As far as I was concerned, I had given permission to send the memo to other candidates, but not The Chronicle,” Evans said. “If he had asked me about that, we could have talked about it?a lot of people read The Chrony and a fine line has to be drawn–that’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
Larsen did not make a statement, she said, because she does not want to prejudice the jury that will hear the grievance. Hearings for grievances will begin Feb. 6.
“It’s only our job to decide whether the rules were violated to the point that it should go before a jury, and we’re still deciding,” Evans said.
Beech said, “I’m working within the rules, and I think Redbook (the student constitution) will support me on any charge brought to me for talking freely with the press.”
Presidential, vice presidential and senior class president candidates filed to run for office last Friday. Dialogue week will take place Feb. 26 through March 2.