St. Thomas University students’ union appellate board has unofficially rejected appeals by both Elizabeth Strange and Frank Jr. Molley.
The results will be official once the board sends out emails to the appellants. Decisions of the board are final.
Strange, a candidate for vice-president education, did not want to comment immediately after the decision.
“I’m not talking to anyone right now,” she said.
Strange said Alex Driscoll, who defeated her for the position by 99 votes or almost 18 per cent, was standing near polling stations “excessively” and “staring at people.”
The board decided the evidence presented by Strange was not sufficient to continue the hearing process and voted to deny the appeal.
After the decision, Mathieu Carrier, one member of the board, said her appeal was denied because it relied on circumstantial evidence as well as hearsay, and came across as more of a personal attack than a legitimate case.
“A lot of the evidence she presented and the way she presented it, it seemed kind of unprofessional,” said Carrier, one of the two associate appeal officers.
“It was a lot of relying on her friends for evidence. I mean, you could always influence them to swing things your way. And her evidence wasn’t very strong.
“There didn’t seem to be a basis for a positive appeal.”
Frank Jr. Molley had appealed his disqualification from the presidential election before campaigning had even started.
He was disqualified by Sarah Bulman, chief returning officer, because he missed a mandatory meeting before campaigning started. He overslept after working a night shift.
The Aquinian will have a response from Molley on Saturday.
At his hearing, Molley said: “I feel that it is unfair that I was disqualified on the basis of missing this meeting.”
The board thought his appeal was “a play on words,” referring to how his case depended on interpretation of STUSU bylaws and the power of the chief returning officer in interpreting them.
One member said oversleeping and missing an exam or anything else would not give him special rights to do it again.
More coverage in the newspaper on Tuesday.
