Luke Brown recently published an opinion piece outlining their dissatisfaction with their disqualification from the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) presidential race, claiming ASPC has “a malicious disdain for being challenged, and [a] questionable practice of disqualification.” As the current elections commissioner and member of the elections committee, I find it necessary to correct the inaccurate statements in candidate Luke Brown’s opinion piece and provide transparency for what transpired.
What I write here is grounded in the elections code, which governs ASPC elections; violations of the code are reported to the elections committee, which excludes anyone running in the current election cycle. The elections committee makes rulings on complaints, which can be appealed to the full senate (again, not including those running in the current election cycle) in the case of disqualification, improper procedure, improper sanctioning or new evidence.
It is through this procedure that we, the elections committee, notified candidate Luke Brown of their multiple violations of the elections code. One of these violations is from a category named “questionable practices” that addresses campaign actions not enumerated in other sections of the code, in addition to running a “campaign before meeting with the elections commissioner.”
Brown writes in their piece, “They [the Senate] did not identify what questionable practices I engaged in.” Yet, in an email to the candidate, ASPC President Devlin Orlin wrote, “The Elections Committee has also received a complaint of ‘questionable practices’ (Elections Code Section 3) for your Instagram campaign posts directly discussing other candidates and making personal attacks.”
During Brown’s campaigning, their public Instagram campaign posts included: “[Candidate 1] is incredibly talented and goodhearted — although a bit of a rules freak … I like [Candidate 2]’s campaign; I think it’s more than a little gimmicky, but I’m buying it … Finally, [Candidate 3] is God’s gift to the earth and the idea that he has an opponent means God is dead.” The original post included the full names of other candidates in this election cycle, which I have removed so as not to reproduce these comments.
To directly call a candidate a “rules freak,” or “more than a little gimmicky,” or state their existence as proof that “God is dead” are personal attacks that deeply concerned me, the elections committee and the senate. In speaking with the current ASPC president, he mentioned never having seen such attacks on other candidates’ personal qualities by name.
Brown claims that “They [the Senate] did not identify what questionable practices I engaged in” is unequivocally false and is a misrepresentation of what occurred. In addition to the inaccuracies regarding the “questionable practices,” what I am more concerned about is the blatant omission of parts of the elections code and the election timeline in their article.
When Brown reached out to me to officially ask to be a write-in candidate in the spring elections cycle, I informed them that they would be eligible to run “as long as you abide by the elections code.” This phrasing was clear.
Shortly after being granted permission to run, however, the elections committee received a complaint following the official start of their campaign. The complaint alleged that the candidate had been campaigning for days before officially asking to be a candidate for ASPC president, which is in violation of the elections code. This violation is enumerated in the code as a reason for disqualification, as well as plagiarism and spending over the allotted amount on campaign materials, as specified in Article I, Section 5.
Brown claims that the rule the elections committee and I based our decision on “does not exist at all in the elections code.” This is false, as can be seen in Article IV Section 2, which states that candidates “may not begin to campaign before meeting with the Elections Commissioner.”
They campaigned for days before asking to be added to the ballot as a write-in for ASPC president, and made personal attacks on other candidates. Given the severity of both violations, it was the judgment of the voting members of the senate that disqualification was the necessary sanction.
Brown was informed that “By a vote of 9-2 [not including the ASPC president as the non-voting chair], the senate has disqualified you from this election for your conduct in campaigning.” ASPC establishes the same standards for write-in candidates as candidates on the ballot so that a person cannot choose to be a write-in to circumvent election rules. Brown was disqualified from being a candidate for the same actions that would have warranted a disqualification had they been a regular candidate.
To vote to disqualify a candidate is not a decision that senators take lightly, yet when I see multiple and egregious violations of the code that are then misrepresented publicly, it is my duty to speak up to uphold the integrity of ASPC elections. It is also important to keep in mind that this was also a decision made not by one person or committee, but by the full senate upon review of the appeal. I hope that this overview can be of use to the student body in illuminating what transpired during the election cycle, and as always, we welcome feedback on how the elections code can be more representative of our community’s values.
Will Dunham PO ’27 is from Maine, and is hoping to pass his finals so he can go back to the woods and listen to Noah Kahan in peace.