Elections commissioners investigates MSA campaign e-mail
An e-mail promoting the Pattison/Eden slate was sent out early Tuesday morning to random students.
Published Nov. 3, 2004
The Board of Elections Commissioners is investigating a mass e-mail sent out Tuesday morning that promoted the Pattison/Eden MSA slate, BEC chairwoman Tara Brandenburger said.
Two versions of an e-mail telling students to check out Paul Pattison and Abby Eden's Web site were sent at around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. The e-mail included a conversation through previous e-mails between two people and a message that Pattison and Eden should be elected because they "are going to save each student, like, $60 a year on books and bring back Stop Day."
BEC vice chairwoman Taylor McKinney said they had confirmed that a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, of which Pattison is a former president, sent out the e-mail.
She said the names of two people e-mailing each other about the campaign were not students, and there are no records of them ever using the Webmail program.
Brandenburger said members of the BEC have been working with Information and Access Technology Services and administrators to determine what specific rules have been broken regarding MU's mass e-mailing policy.
Brandenburger said the e-mail might violate IATS mass e-mail policy that says a student can't send out more than 250 copies of an identical e-mail.
She said IATS is working to see how many e-mails were sent out.
"It's more than a violation of BEC policies," she said. "It's an infraction of Student Life policies."
McKinney said administrators told her and BEC members that they want to see the BEC handle it, but they thought it was a major case.
"They felt it warrants some pretty serious punishments," she said.
Brandenburger said IATS and administrators will look at possible punishments for the person who sent out the e-mail, but the BEC will probably file a complaint with the Student Court this week about Pattison and Eden.
"We don't have enough information yet to determine our recommendation to Student Court," she said. "Any punishment will be decided by them. It could range from a 'don't do that again' slap on the wrist to being kicked out of the race."
Pattison said a few people have asked him about the e-mails, but he hasn't seen them and doesn't know what they said.
"I've been telling friends to e-mail their friends," he said. "I don't know much about it right now."
Pattison said he thought IATS e-mail policy was that a student couldn't send out more than 250 e-mails at a time.
"I looked at it a couple months ago," he said. "You can e-mail as many as you want, but if you try to do more than 250 at once, the computer won't let you do it."
Pattison said he doesn't think he'll get in trouble with the BEC because he didn't send out the e-mail himself.
"They said we could have our friends campaign for us," he said. "It's not a problem."
Brandenburger said she was upset a slate would participate in such behavior.
"I'm very disappointed, because we made it very clear what this policy was," she said.
