RHA disagreement leads to a dropped slate

The issue centers on lost student signatures.

By Krissy Tripp

Published Feb. 19, 2009

As of Tuesday night, the Doug Cowing and Mike Madden slate dropped from the Residence Halls Association presidential race.

While the Board of Elections said it disqualified the slate, Cowing and Madden say they stepped down.

"We've been accused of misrepresenting signatures," Cowing said. "This is not so. There was no misrepresentation."

Cowing said he and Madden collected the signatures necessary to run during fall semester, but lost their petition of support paper near the deadline. Cowing said he wrote down the names of people he remembered signing the paper. He claimed he brought this up with the Board of Elections Chairman Nate Ballance, who allowed it.

"That was absolutely not cleared with me," Ballance said. "The petition of support was clear that residents had to sign it."

The slate was given a second form to get more signatures, but Cowing and Madden were never given approval to write names down from recollection.

During Monday night's meeting all of the slates met with the Board of Elections. Ballance said every signature must be verified as a resident, so every slate had to go back and correct illegible names, but the Cowing-Madden slate's petition brought up extra concern because multiple signatures were in Cowing's handwriting. Names written in his handwriting were contacted to verify that they had at least signed the original document.

At Monday's meeting Ballance said the Board of Elections told the slate they were likely to be disqualified for the fraudulent signatures, and discussed the option of formally stepping down.

Cowing said the Board of Elections hadn't made a decision by Monday's meeting because they didn't have responses from all of the people in question. Cowing and Madden wanted to wait for the verdict before stepping down.

Ballance e-mailed them Tuesday night to tell them they would be disqualified from the race. Madden and Cowing both responded within two hours time to ask the record show them formally stepping down.

"We cannot sweep the truth under the rug," Ballance said in an e-mail to Cowing and Madden.

In an interview, Ballance explained the slate was warned about the probable outcome of the investigations and had 24 hours to step down.

"We weren't given a chance to defend ourselves," Madden said. He explained if other slates had illegible names, they were given them back to get more clear signatures. However, Cowing and Madden weren't given their petition of support back to validate the names in question.

Ballance said in an e-mail to Cowing and Madden six fraudulent signatures were found in addition to multiple other signatures that were clearly written by Cowing. Ballance said he found people who not only denied signing the petition for support, but also asked to have their names removed.

Julie Strope was one of the names Cowing said was in question. She said she didn't remember signing the petition for support until Cowing reminded her that she signed it fall semester, only after Ballance called.

"I have a bad memory," Stope said, "(Cowing) seems trustworthy and I trust his judgment."

Ballance said if they wish, Cowing and Madden still have a chance to appeal. He also made it clear he still wants them to remain involved in RHA.

"Both of them genuinely seem to care about residents," Ballance said.

He sent them an e-mail after the decision was made urging them to remain involved.

"We have nothing against them. We think they are great student leaders," Ballance said. "A mistake was made."

Madden, however, feels their slate was taken advantage of. He repeatedly said during the interview his rights were violated because he wasn't given a fair chance to defend himself against the accusations.

"I don't want anything else to do with this organization if this stuff is allowed to happen," Madden said.