Union members today voted to re-open nominations in the election for President Elect of the Union. The only candidate, Jack Solomon, faced severe criticism following substantial allegations by the Secretary, Cansu Uyguroglu, of racist comments he had made in the past.  The remarks came to light on Wednesday and the allegations were then put directly to Solomon in a hustings on Thursday. The claims were corroborated in a public post by Lousia Broeg, Chair of the Consultative Committee, who said that she had heard Solomon make them. Similar concerns were also raised Mirza Sameer Baig Chught, a former Senior Access Officer. In an open letter, he claimed that he had heard Solomon say “Palestine does not exist” and that a friend close to Solomon remarked that Solomon did not view Palestinians as human beings.
Elections for President, Secretary, and Treasurer were uncontested after the Elevate slate disbanded, due to their mishandling of a candidate for the Standing Committee, who had sent racist ‘hack’ messages. Members had to register to vote online last week in order to take part, despite this 666 votes were cast on Friday.
This means that a re-run of the presidential election is expected next week. Nominations will close in 72 hours.
An anonymous member of the Hope Slate told the Oxford Student: “I think the recent allegations of racism were a political ploy and manipulated the passion of Black Lives Matter supporters. The person making them said time and time again they never wanted to be president. This is categorically not true.” They added that they thought allegations of racism ought to be “investigated wholly and fairly.”
Solomon got 300 votes while 325 people voted for re-open nominations. Adam Roble won the most votes of any of the officers as Secretary, despite this widely being viewed as the most junior of the four.
The results in full are as follows :Â
President-Elect
Jack Solomon – 300 votes
RON Elected – 325 votes
Librarian-Elect
Chengkai Xie – Elected 333 votes
Douglas Rebanks Huang – 135 votes
RON – 114 votes
Treasurer-Elect:
Tamzin Lent Elected – 379 votes
RON – 179 votes
Secretary:
Adam Roble Elected – 452 votes
Ron -130 votes
Elected to standing committee:
Zeus Chen
Viren Shetty
Josh Wallace
Julia Hussain
Molly Mantle
Alex Warr
Adam Shewry
Elected to secretary’s committee:
Ben Goodrick
Oliver Hardman
Benedict Yorston
Kesaia Tonganivalu
Joe Lawler
Juan Davila
June-Ho Chung
Alana Brown
Parth Gosalia
Lily Jiang
Priya Gara
The former candidate for President has been contacted for comment.
