By Rachel Makabi
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Many members of the On Campus Housing Council said they were
surprised to see the low turnout of candidates at their
Undergraduate Student Association Council endorsement hearing.
But many of the candidates said they never received an e-mail
about the hearing, although USAC Election Board chair Matthew
Kaczmarek said he sent out notices to all the candidates.
“Any registered campus organization can participate in an
endorsement meeting if they want to,” Kaczmarek said.
“OCHC decided to invite candidates to their own endorsement
meeting, not sponsored by us. They asked for our assistance in
publicizing it.”
Many candidates, mainly independents, but also some running for
Students United for Reform and Equality and Student Empowerment!
said they never received such an e-mail.
Out of six independent candidates, half of them said they never
received an e-mail about the event.
The other half were unavailable for comment after several
attempts.
Independent candidate Avneet Kaur, who missed an earlier
endorsement hearing because she had to study and revise a paper,
said she did not hear about the OCHC endorsement hearing until the
Daily Bruin contacted her asking why she was absent.
“I did not get an e-mail or any kind of
information,” Kaur said. “This is one of the most
important issues to me, to get my points and my ideas out there …
You are the first person to tell me about this.”
OCHC member Michael Filipiak said in an e-mail that he could not
contact any of the candidates directly, but had to go through
Kaczmarek.
“I received responses from approximately 10 candidates
saying that they would be able to make it to the hearings,”
Filipiak said in the e-mail.
“However, at the hearings, several candidates claimed that
they never received the e-mail,” he added. “I have no
idea why this may have happened.”
Filipiak added that many of the candidates who didn’t show
up at the OCHC endorsement hearing also failed to show up at the
student groups endorsement hearings earlier in the week.
Facilities commissioner candidate Annie McElwain and general
representative candidate Allende Palma-Saracho, respectively
running under the SURE and Student Empowerment! slates, said they
only heard about the meeting from other candidates who received an
e-mail.
OCHC endorsed SURE candidate David “N” Dahle for
president, SURE candidate Justin “M” Levi for internal
vice president, Student Empowerment! candidate Christopher R. Neal
for external vice president, and SURE candidates Adam
“D” Harmetz and Michelle “A” Styczynski as
well as Student Empowerment! candidate Allende Palma/Saracho for
general representatives.
With reports from Jeyling Chou, Daily Bruin Contributor
Corrections: In the story “Few candidates turn
out for OCHC hearing” (News, April 29) the subheadline was
incorrect. It should have read that half of the independent
candidates did not receive the e-mail. In addition, Matthew
Kaczmarek’s name was misspelled in the same article as well
as in “Online voting under consideration” (News, April
9) and “Ballot, online voting have pros, cons”
(Viewpoint, April 18) Correction posted
5/02/2002.