After the Student Association election earlier this month, all of the undergraduate senate seats belonged to students who ran on one slate: the Student Union.
Junior Matt Cohen was the lone non-slate member who was elected, but less than a week after the election, the oversight body revoked Cohen's victory for spending too much money during the campaign.
Last week Cohen (SoB-U) regained his "senator-elect" status following a unanimous decision by the SA Student Court overturning the Joint Elections Committee's initial decision to out him.
"In a nutshell, justice was served," Cohen said. "I hold no hard feelings against (the JEC)."
According to the opinion, released by junior Chief Judge Ryan Sullivan, the Court said the JEC ruled in an "arbitrary, capricious and irrational" manner when the election governance body disqualified Cohen after he was elected. The Court cited Ferguson v. JEC, which allows the Court to "overturn decisions using the arbitrary and capricious standard."
The JEC disqualified Cohen, the only undergraduate independent who won in the senate election in early March, for surpassing the $500 senatorial campaign-spending limit on a school bus rental, according to the JEC report. Cohen said that he split the $360 bus rental fee equally among four other candidates, including SA Executive Vice President-Elect Brand Kroeger.
The Court opinion indicated that the JEC had a misunderstanding with respect to who paid for the bus and mistakenly pinned the entire charge of the bus on Cohen, which put him past his spending threshold. Kroeger and Wilkinson filed their reports incorrectly and Cohen filed his correctly.
"With all of this evidence, it is clear to the Court that it was Mr. Cohen who filed his financial report correctly, rather than Mr. Kroeger and Mr. Wilkinson," stated the Court opinion. "The JEC's action of ignoring Mr. Kroeger's and Mr. Wilkinson's testimony saying that they incorrectly filed their financial forms and actually did split the costs with Mr. Cohen is such an arbitrary and capricious decision that it caused them to abuse their sanctioning power."
Junior Matt Cohen was the lone non-slate member who was elected, but less than a week after the election, the oversight body revoked Cohen's victory for spending too much money during the campaign.
Last week Cohen (SoB-U) regained his "senator-elect" status following a unanimous decision by the SA Student Court overturning the Joint Elections Committee's initial decision to out him.
"In a nutshell, justice was served," Cohen said. "I hold no hard feelings against (the JEC)."
According to the opinion, released by junior Chief Judge Ryan Sullivan, the Court said the JEC ruled in an "arbitrary, capricious and irrational" manner when the election governance body disqualified Cohen after he was elected. The Court cited Ferguson v. JEC, which allows the Court to "overturn decisions using the arbitrary and capricious standard."
The JEC disqualified Cohen, the only undergraduate independent who won in the senate election in early March, for surpassing the $500 senatorial campaign-spending limit on a school bus rental, according to the JEC report. Cohen said that he split the $360 bus rental fee equally among four other candidates, including SA Executive Vice President-Elect Brand Kroeger.
The Court opinion indicated that the JEC had a misunderstanding with respect to who paid for the bus and mistakenly pinned the entire charge of the bus on Cohen, which put him past his spending threshold. Kroeger and Wilkinson filed their reports incorrectly and Cohen filed his correctly.
"With all of this evidence, it is clear to the Court that it was Mr. Cohen who filed his financial report correctly, rather than Mr. Kroeger and Mr. Wilkinson," stated the Court opinion. "The JEC's action of ignoring Mr. Kroeger's and Mr. Wilkinson's testimony saying that they incorrectly filed their financial forms and actually did split the costs with Mr. Cohen is such an arbitrary and capricious decision that it caused them to abuse their sanctioning power."
