‘We’re qualified and we’re not going anywhere’: Activate TU responds to being called ‘unprofessional’ after winning TSG election

They wish to move forward and continue to implement their platform following these events

“A friend of mine said she overheard someone say that Activate TU were the most qualified, but it bothered her that we were black,” said Tyrell Mann-Barnes, our newly elected TSG president, “People have said, ‘they only won because they’re black’…but we won because we are more qualified.”

In the 2017 TSG election, Tyrell Mann-Barnes, Paige Hill and Kayla Martin’s campaign aimed to demonstrate they had the qualifications and necessary experience to be our next TSG representatives.

In a recent article by The Temple News, it was reported that TSG Commissioner, Noah Goff, wrote a letter of dissent to TSG leaders about the Elections Committee’s decision to lift Activate TU’s suspension on the last day of the election. The letter was sent anonymously to The Temple News, and in it Goff stated the following:

“With the revelation of how close the election was, Connecting TU has a compelling (and in my opinion, correct) complaint that the Elections Commission’s unfair decisions directly cost them the election,” Goff wrote in the letter. “Had Activate TU won by a large margin, then this simply would be a personal concern about the precedent regarding overspending. Now it must also serve as a warning about the intensity and potential validity of any Connecting TU complaints in the coming weeks.”

Activate TU reached out to The Tab Temple to provide a final response regarding any ongoing notions of their victory being  “valid,” or whether it was unfair they won the TSG election–despite a 56 vote margin of victory and a record number of endorsements.

Activate TU’s suspension and the alleged violations

On April 6th, Temple Student Government tweeted a press release, in which they postponed announcing election results upon the revelation that Activate TU may have been in violation of a $1,000 spending cap imposed on both teams.

“When they postponed the election results, no one knew why. It wasn’t until 5pm that we found out and then a press release was sent out at 5:30pm stating that they handled their investigations and were moving forward to their announcements on Friday,” said Kayla Martin, the VP of Services. “When we went there they told us they were investigating our finances since they miscalculated it. They didn’t understand how certain things were done and it took two minutes for our finance director and campaign manager to go in there and say ‘You did this wrong’ and then we walked out and that was that.”

Both teams were being investigated for this alleged violation, according to Activate TU, and they felt disappointed that their violation was the only one stated in the press release postponing election results.

What happened at the Bell Tower

Activate TU were subsequently suspended from campaigning at the Bell Tower. However, according to Activate TU, both campaigns were at the location and they proved it to the Elections Commissioner.

“Instead of receiving an explanation that both campaigns were at the Bell Tower, our name was the only one mentioned and instead of suspending the other campaign for the same reasoning–we were the only ones suspended after we proved that both campaigns were in fact at the same location,” said Martin.

According to Activate TU, they were also questioned about an organization buying a poster for them with their free poster allocations. They explained Goff notified them this purchase was a “gift” and it should be included in their investigation against them.

?? Uvote.temple.edu ??

A post shared by Activate TU (@activate_temple) on Apr 5, 2017 at 9:46am PDT

Activate TU stands by their claim that they did not violate any rules by being at the Bell Tower since the opposing campaign was also there. They immediately cleared this situation up with the Elections Commission as it became a concern. Although Connecting TU was also being investigated for being at the Bell Tower, Activate TU was the only team publicly stated in the press release.

Connecting TU told The Tab Temple they were at the Bell Tower on April 5th because they were told by both Noah Goff and Chris Carey, the director of student activities, that they were allowed to. The fact that both teams were present at the Bell Tower did not result in any violation and Activate TU’s suspension was lifted.

The Temple Party Owl tweet

Activate TU explained the need to address another investigation into the opposing campaign’s actions–Connecting TU were under investigation for a Temple Party Owl tweet.

Kayla told The Tab Temple, “Noah, the Elections Commissioner, argued that an organization buying a poster to promote us should be constituted as a gift, even though it was not considered a gift by the elections code or the elections committee as a whole. However, he never mentioned his concern about the gift that other campaign received from Temple Party Owl–which was worth over $100.”

“In that press release, they basically said we did nothing wrong, but not once was Connecting TU mentioned for being under investigation for the Temple Party Owl gift, or the fact they were also at the Bell Tower as well,” said Martin.

Connecting TU told The Tab Temple that because the Temple Party Owl tweet “did not say ‘you must vote for Connecting TU to win’, it does not violate the elections code,” but that their team “did get penalized half a point because, according to the elections Committee, it ‘could have been read as Bribery or coercion for votes.'”

Activate TU did not initially comment on the situation, but after agreeing to be transparent with the student body, they decided it was only right to speak on issues that they faced as students, who not only had the qualifications, but also the experience to be our student government officials.

Mann-Barnes told The Tab Temple, “We weren’t going to bring any of these things up, but as Black individuals, we understand that if you say anything people will say ‘they’re complaining’ or ‘they’re playing the race card.’ But this isn’t a race card. This is actually what we faced.”

The Twitter rumors

Many students on Twitter were also vocal about the experiences they went through with each campaign and Martin wishes to clear up the rumors of their campaign allegedly telling students to say certain things on social media.

“We have not told any student to talk about their racial bias issue that they might have experienced from the other team. There’s an underlying issue with all of this, with the fact that you are blaming us for students speaking out on their personal experiences, simply because of our race–shows you there’s a bigger problem,” Martin said. “Any violations that people think we committed–the other team did as well.”

Martin continued, “When you look at the critique that we had, a lot of it would not happen if you did not look at the faces behind the platform. If everything came down to our platforms and what people stood for, I do not think this campaign would have went where it did.”

Activate TU wishes to tell the student body that: “Our campaign understands everyone’s concerns based off what they heard through rumors. We just encourage everyone to actually ask us questions, since our responses have recently been silenced in other news outlets. Our goal has always been to represent all students in the most efficient way, and that remains our top priority.”

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