Sophomore Russell Shepard can no longer run for University Court, Student Government Commissioner of Elections Alexis Sarver said Tuesday.Shepard, a wide receiver on the football team, was on the “Geauxing the Distance” campaign ticket, but Sarver said he has been disqualified for failing to attend one of two possible meetings all University Court candidates must attend.Candidates for University Court must attend one of those two meetings to still be eligible to run for office. The meetings took place March 9 at 1 p.m. and Monday at noon, and Sarver said Shepard missed both because of class.Candidates have the option to set up a separate meeting through the SG Commissioner of Elections if they provide an excuse within a valid time frame. Sarver said the deadline to provide an excuse for either meeting was March 9 by 4:30 p.m., but the deadline was not strictly enforced.She said the first time she talked to Shepard about the meetings was shortly after Monday’s meeting.Shepard would have been informed about the meetings during election filing from Feb. 22-24, Sarver said.”He had class, but I was not informed in the time that I was supposed to be informed,” Sarver said. “Had he told me in due time within the deadline, then I would have possibly set up something for him to have a makeup.”She said she was first informed around 11 a.m. Monday by someone from the Geauxing the Distance ticket that Shepard would not make Monday’s meeting.”He had a class at that time [of the meetings], and he had a pop quiz [March 15],” Sarver said. “Even the week before would have been fine. Five minutes before it is not enough time, and it isn’t fair to the other candidates.”Sarver said she has already disqualified other candidates running for college councils because they failed to attend mandatory meetings.”This isn’t the only case at all,” she said.Millena Williams, the SG vice presidential candidate on the “Geauxing the Distance” ticket, said she didn’t have any definitive information on the issue, and the ticket will try to clear up the problem if possible.”We’re not expecting any special treatment,” she said. “But it was a school interference, and if there’s any way we can work around it, we’ll try to because he’s really excited to get involved — as we would with anyone on our ticket.”Shepard was not available to comment Tuesday after LSU’s football practice.Williams first presented Shepard with the opportunity to get involved in SG.Williams said he and Shepard met last spring when Shepard enrolled early at the University, and the two had several discussions about SG.SG isn’t something unfamiliar to Shepard, who is known to most University students strictly as a star athlete.Shepard said on Thursday he has been involved in student government since his early teenage years, which carried over to his high school days at Cypress Ridge High School in Houston.Shepard had been juggling his class schedule, spring football and campaigning on a day-to-day basis before missing Monday’s meeting.”He’s coming to ticket meetings,” Williams said Sunday. “He’s campaigning as much as he can in between classes. He’s definitely doing a good job.”University Court, which consists of nine members, is the judicial branch of SG. It handles any dispute that happens within SG from elections to impeachments to any appeals or suits that are filed.
Sports contributor Sean Isabella contributed to this report.—————Contact The Daily Reveille’s sports staff at [email protected]