By Susannah Waite, Editor-in-Chief
Students have five choices instead of the previous six for the top student government position.
Jacilyn Kennedy, entertainment business junior, was disqualified March 11 from the Student Government Association presidential race and lost her appeal March 14.
“The court decided that we did not have enough evidence to overturn the original decision, therefore the original decision was upheld and I was disqualified,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said she received four charges.
“The four charges were enticement, persistent act, a willful act, and election fraud,” she said.
The original decision was made during a hearing March 11, after a formal complaint was filed against Kennedy.
“I received notice at 3:45 p.m. that a hearing would be held at 5 p.m.,” Kennedy said. “We had a formal complaint filed against us, but we didn’t have any notice of what the complaint was.”
When she received notice of disqualification, she appealed the decision.
“If I had known that anyone on my campaign had said anything that could have been misleading or quote unquote shady, I would have taken them out of campaign, because I don’t want to be associated with that,” she said.
The issue could have been avoided if there had been more communication between candidates, Kennedy said.
“I feel like we could have had an honest conversation,” she said.
Kennedy said she is concerned about how students will perceive SGA in the future.
“I just feel that this is going to make it very hard for organizations to trust SGA and this has put SGA in a bad light,” Kennedy said. “We never had the intention of doing that, because we only wanted to make SGA a place that could work together with organizations to make OCU better.”
Kennedy was one of six students who filed for the office. It was the highest number of students to run for president in recent years. Polls open at 8 a.m. March 25 and voting continues through 7 p.m. March 26.
Read more about the election here.
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