The Elections Commissions held a meeting last night to hear Jon Chichwak’s appeal against the Student Senate election, as well as to make a decision about possible election violations.

Chichwak, a former Student Senate president candidate and junior in political science, said Greg Doucette, his opponent and a junior in computer science, should not have been added to the runoff ballot because he was not one of the top two candidates after the general election.

Sara Yasin, a junior in textile and apparel management, was Chichwak’s competition, but withdrew from the race before the runoff to study abroad.

The Elections Commission rejected Chichwak’s appeal.

It also decided upon a notification concerning one of the violations while it dropped the second one.

Brittany Prater, the Elections Commission chair, said going into the meeting she wasn’t sure what exactly the outcome might be.

She said the group hadn’t formed any ideas ahead of time.

“[I went in thinking] I can see both sides of the stories, and I’m going to make the decision based on the information presented to us,” Prater, a sophomore in political science, said.

The Elections Commission presented Chichwak with a notification concerning Jessie Jeppsson, a freshman in engineering, who was involved in the vandalization of Doucette’s campaign material.

The commission dropped the violation regarding Arvic Macapagal, a sophomore in mechanical engineering, and his possible vandalization because no action shot could show Macapagal’s participation in the vandalization.

Prater said the Elections Commission’s biggest concern throughout the election process was keeping things fair for the student body overall.

She said electing a student who only won about 30 percent of the vote to a seat without allowing the student body another option to choose a Student Senate president with a majority vote is unfair.

“It is important to us to maintain that the student body elections are fair,” Prater said.

Greg Doucette, the Student Senate president, said although he is content with the outcome of Chickwak’s appeal, he is worried about the repercussions of a similar situation in future elections.

“I’m worried about the precedent because the perception is that if you don’t have photographic evidence of someone in the act of actually destroying your stuff, there’s no way for a candidate to actually be punished for it,” Doucette said.

According to Doucette, the fact that the Elections Commission dropped one of the violations he filed against Chichwak’s supporters could possibly encourage candidates in future elections to destroy any campaign material they want without fear of punishment.

“They’ll just do it in the dead of night when there [are] no photographers around,” Doucette said.

Following the Elections Commission’s rejection of Chichwak’s appeal, the commission gave him two options.

He can either continue by appealing to the Judicial Board or he can accept the Elections Commission’s decision.

Chichwak said he doesn’t plan to appeal to the Judicial Board.

“[The Elections Commission] made a just decision, and so I’m not going to pursue it further,” Chichwak said.

He said the only reason he appealed in the first place was to draw attention to the possibility of a future occurrence like this where one of the top two candidates for a student body office withdraws and the possible impact of this.

“[I did it to] let everybody know how the Senate needs to handle this next year so it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Chichwak said he isn’t sure what he is going to do now that he lost his appeal. He said he talked to Bobby Mills when he first won student body president about possibly working with him.

“We’ll see what other kind of student leadership roles I can fill,” he said.