On Wednesday, April 12, Elections Commissioner Devlin Orlin PO ’25 declared Bianca McNeely PO ’25 the new ASPC Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA). McNeely’s victory comes after a re-vote for the position announced to Pomona students in an email on Monday, April 10.
Orlin initiated the re-vote after the ASPC election committee found two student candidates running against McNeely in violation of the elections code. McNeely was the only one of the three campaigning candidates who did not violate the elections code.
Orlin shared that the ASPC elections committee selected from a few choices of how to proceed after finding out about the violations.
“The elections committee had the options of disqualifying a candidate, holding a re-vote with a notice of the violation placed on the ballot or another action,” Orlin told TSL via text. “We aim to give voters the greatest agency, so we thought a re-vote would be appropriate.”
One of the opposing candidates was elected VPAA in the initial vote on Tuesday, April 4. This student previously served for three years on the Academic Affairs Committee.
“[The student] campaigned using a social media account from a previous elections cycle,” Orlin said to Pomona students via email. “[The student then] misled the Elections Committee [during their investigation].”
The student addressed these concerns in a statement on a new public Instagram account used to campaign for the position.
“I mistakenly used an old Instagram account without carefully going over the code,” the post read. “After the Elections Commissioner reached out to me, I immediately made a new account and deactivated the old one. The old account was used for less than 24 hours.”
The other student named in the email from Orlin was pulled from the ASPC election because the committee found that they began campaigning before the re-vote was announced.
All ASPC candidates attended a presentation about the election code as per ASPC procedure on March 29. Candidates were informed that, in the case of a violation of the code, they could be publicly named.
TSL has deliberately chosen to allow the two student candidates facing disciplinary action to remain anonymous in order to avoid any further repercussions upon publication.