A vice presidential candidate accidentally posted a tweet criticizing one SGA presidential candidate on the organization’s official Twitter account during the debate on Thursday.
Rohini Sethi, vice presidential candidate for Project Red: Better Food, Better WiFi, Better Parking, accidentally posted a tweet bashing PowerHouse candidate John Fields’ campaign on the organization’s official account.
Rohini Sethi, a vice presidential candidate, accidentally posted a message criticizing John Fields’ platform on the official SGA account during Thursday’s debate. Trey Strange/The Cougar
The current SGA administration immediately deleted the tweet and expressed that it is not the organization’s official position on Fields’ campaign.
Sethi said she was tweeting and re-tweeting on behalf of SGA as part of her position as associate marketing director. She meant to post the criticizing tweet from her personal account.
“I apologize to the student government as an organization and to the students as well,” Sethi said. “I am human. I’m not perfect. I don’t think this is in any way a reflection of how I would do my job.”
Sethi, who is running on the ticket with presidential candidate Shane Smith, apologized for the mistake but stood by her tweet’s message.
“I was trying to condense everything that had just happened in the debate in just 140 characters, and that’s honestly how I felt,” Sethi said. “When you try to do so many things, it’s hard to get anything done. I just thought (Fields’ platform) was too overarching. I did not mean to be brash or abrasive or bash them, but I did mean to be truthful.”
Fields declined to respond to the tweet.
Section five, clause six of the SGA Election Code states that a vice presidential candidate must remain for the duration of the election process.
“If either the presidential candidate or the vice presidential candidate drops out, then the entire ticket is out,” SGA chief election commissioner Jackson Crawford said.
If Smith wants to continue running for the presidency, Sethi will have to continue on the ticket for the rest of the election process. Smith said he didn’t consider dropping her, anyway.
“I believe completely in Rohini,” Smith said. “She made a mistake, and we’ve all made mistakes. That does not reflect who she is. She’s very smarty and very talented. She will do the best job in the role. I would absolutely never consider any sort of replacement.”
Sethi said she hopes that students understand the mistake and don’t hold it against her in the election, and says that she will not let it happen again. As a preventative measure, SGA has removed Sethi’s access to their social media accounts.
I would just like to clarify that the presence of my quote in this article does not in any way imply that I believe Shane Smith should replace his vice presidential candidate. I was asked a question about a specific rule in the election code, and I answered that question.
Between Rohini Sethi and Trey Strange, Trey is the one who should be considering resignation for not just running this article, but running it as the top news item coming out of last night’s SGA Debate.
Simply shameful.
I didn’t know it was shameful to point out someone’s incompetency….but hey I mean if the media does something you don’t like bash them right?
To clarify, the person posting under the name of “Project Red” has no affiliation with our group.
Rohini recognized her mistake, immediately owned up to it and didn’t try to lie about it, like many politicians would. As we’ve said many times, we are not politicians and don’t want to be. Our group consists of 14 RAs, 5 Greek affiliated members, and 10 current SGA senators. We’re students and sometimes we make mistakes.
I thought the coverage of this article was fair. Trey interviewed Rohini and me very professionally and reported the facts.
Fields is not worth a vote anyway.