The amendment, which was proposed by SGA Chief Justice Taylor Kilroy, would prevent students from being tried in the Student Government Court of Appeals by the same people in the University Hearing Board for the same incident.

“If we had a scenario where, purely hypothetically, two candidates got in a fist fight, what would happen is the election commission would hold them responsible, as candidates. Meanwhile, the Dean of Students would hold them responsible as students,” Kilroy said.

“If these two candidates felt that these punishments were unjust or unwarranted, they could appeal them. The penalty as candidates from the election commission would go to the Court of Appeals, whereas the penalty from the Dean of Students office would appealed to the University Hearing Board.”

The issue, Kilroy said, is that the same students who serve on the University Hearing Board also sit on the SGA Court of Appeals.

“We can’t have the same people voting twice — that just isn’t fair. At the end of the day, that just doesn’t seem right. Especially in a scenario where there’s accusations of bias or something like that. You want entirely fresh eyes on both sides,” he said.

Because the SGA Constitution was created by the students, a student vote is required for the amendment to be passed, according to SGA Speaker Stephen Cronin.

The referendum may occur during next year’s general election or in a special referendum. Kilroy said the SGA wants to make sure the referendum is held at a time where students will be on campus and informed enough to vote.

Motorcycle legislation

Also discussed at the meeting was Graduate College of Social Work Senator Josephine Tittsworth’s bill that would allow motorcycles with only state issued handicap permits to park in UH handicap spaces.

Administration and Finance Committee member Isaac Norris said after talking to UH’s head of transportation, the committee learned that in order for a motorcycle to park in a handicap spot on campus with valid state permits, students just need a sticker on their license plates. The sticker can be obtained through the Department of Transportation.

Norris said the Department of Transportation is going to update its website to reflect this information.

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This bill, written by Chief Justice of the SGA Court of Appeals Taylor Kilroy, deals with the fact that some of the students on the SGA Court of Appeals also sit on the University Hearing Board.

“Most of the time that’s cool,” Kilroy said. “It fails, though, when you have election complaints go to the dean of students.”

Students disqualified from SGA elections because of fraud could appeal to the University Hearing Board if they think university rules were broken during their original hearing. If this happens, Kilroy said, some of the students who heard the original fraud case would be on the bench at the next court.

“Fundamental ideas of unbiased tribunals and fair hearings are implicated when the same student members judge two different stages of the same matter,” the bill says.

The bill will be the first of many reforms to the SGA’s various codes and bylaws, but the rest of the reforms may not be so quick to appear, Kilroy said.

“We’re trying to make sure these are good changes and lasting changes,” Kilroy said. “It’s better to do a good job then a quick job.”

Bandoh set the task forces to work on the reforms partly in response to the problems SGA experienced during the last two election seasons, but they cover much more than the election codes; Bandoh said he wants SGA to “clean house.”

“Part of it does stem from elections … (but) we’re doing a complete overhaul of SGA,” Bandoh said. “If we’re going to be effective in the things we do, we have to clean up internally.”

The three task forces are going over the SGA constitution and bylaws, which govern the general operation of SGA: the election codes and procedures and the judicial codes. When the task forces finish their work, they will package the reforms together in one bill, which will be presented to the SGA senate sometime in the summer, Bandoh said.

“Hopefully the senate will pass it and send it to my desk to sign,” he said.

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CLASS Senator Yessenia Chavez said she received a complaint from an LGBT advocate about hearing hate speech on campus from a member of the Bulldog Ministries. The ministry is known for their stance against the LGBT community, atheists and abortion.

“Hate speech is very prevalent and when people listen to it they can become victims of it,” Chavez said. “When there is hate speech being said on campus, it hurts me and it hurts my students too.”

Chavez asked the senate if there was anything that could be done to prevent hate speech on campus without violating the freedom of speech.

Sergeant at Arms Henry Velman said there is a difference between free speech and hate speech, but not much can be done unless the student breaks written rules.

“As far as what you can do to stop it, counter protest is the best alternative,” Velman said.

Social Work Senator Josephine Tittsworth said the senate could create a resolution to make a motion against hate speech.

“The best you can do as a senator in the SGA is to draft a resolution saying the student body does not support hate words, hate speech, and then present it to the SGA as a resolution,” Tittsworth said. “A resolution is simply a position of the senate.”

Constitution and bylaws amendment

SGA President Cedric Bandoh’s timeline to bring the constitution and bylaws amendments to the senate by next week was pushed back after a meeting with the task force.

“We saw we needed to take a little more time to make sure we get it right the first time, because what we are doing here is going to totally change the organization,” Bandoh said.

The constitution currently allows for members of the Court of Appeals to also be members of the hearing board, which Bandoh calls a “huge contradiction.”

“You’re going to have the same people who just decided the case also deciding your University board hearing decision,” Bandoh said. “That’s why we need to make a constitutional amendment to remove the court of appeals from that and to have independent students serve on the University hearing board.”

Bandoh said he hopes to have the amendments to the bylaws and code completed and voted on by the end of the summer and implemented in the fall semester.

Biker legislation

Senator Tanzeem Chowdhury said a committee meeting will be called to discuss the University’s policy on motorcycle handicap parking. “That’s going to be done hopefully on Monday and brought to the senate floor on Wednesday,” Chowdhury said.

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The Student Government Association senate will have a first reading of a bill that would change the University’s policy on motorcycle handicap parking. The discussion will occur during the third senate meeting at 7:30 p.m. today in the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library Rockwell Pavilion.

If bikers park in handicap spaces, they have to hang a UH handicap tag from their motorcycle even if they have state-issued handicap licence plates or risk getting a parking ticket, said College of Social Work Senator Josephine Tittsworth.

“You’re dealing with a very small minority of people who are handicapped and ride a motorcycle,” she said.

While motorcyclists already have their own special parking areas, they are not always as close to the students’ destinations as handicap spaces, Tittsworth said.

Students, faculty and staff can park their vehicle in the handicap spaces with a UH handicap pass, but the pass is not safe when hanging from a motorcycle.

“If you hang a placard on a motorcycle, anyone can come by and steal it,” Tittsworth said.

Tittsworth said while she uses a UH handicap pass in her car, she doesn’t use it on her motorcycle and has not yet received a ticket for parking in a handicap space without the pass.

Also at the meeting, the Senate will go over several presidential and speaker appointments to fill senatorial positions and positions on the executive branch of the SGA.

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Positions filled included chief of staff, speaker for the senate and pro tempore speaker, as well as various positions in the four committees.

Stephen Cronin was endorsed for the position of speaker for the senate by former Speaker Reyes Ramirez and was later elected to the position by the senate members.

“He’d be a good one,” Reyes said.

“He knows (the rules) like the back of his hand and I think he runs an efficient meeting.”

Cronin said he plans on taking a “transpartisan” role as speaker and will not sponsoring or writing legislation while in the position.

“I don’t really believe in partisanship from the speaker’s position,” he said.

“My perspective on what the speaker does is more limited, perhaps, that what the last speaker did.”

SGA President Cedric Bandoh laid out a schedule for the task forces reforming the bylaws and election and judicial codes, with the task force meeting over the rest of the week and the final vote by the senate as early as April 25.

“It is a lot to get done in a matter of two and a half weeks, but I believe with the expertise of the individuals we have on the task forces, this will get done,” Bandoh said.

“It’s necessary for us to move forward and do a good job this school year.”

Vice President Turner Harris presented a possible change to the current methods of open forum between students, SGA and the administration — the use of MindMixer software to create an online forum allowing students to share support ideas.

“Also, kind of an accountability aspect there that students are posing ideas and the right people are looking at them,” Harris said.

The reason Harris wants to make the change, he said, is that the senators in the last administration fell far below their town hall budget.

“Instead of allocating $5,000 and spending $1,500 on pizza, how about lets get some software to replace that,” Harris said.

The first problem facing the implementation of the software, however, is the cost.

“I don’t really see this getting implemented until we get our new budget,” Harris said.

“We currently have $5,000 in the senate budget, and for a campus of 40,000 students, it would cost us about $8,000, which is actually not bad … I think $8,000 is actually pretty reasonable.”

Other SGA appointees include Christopher Holly to chief of staff and Sean Tarver to speaker pro tempore.

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Instead, the senators in attendance were sworn in, and short speeches were given by several members of SGA.

“We’ve been through a lot this year, and we’re not the only ones; UT disqualified one of their presidential candidates, LSU just recently disqualified an entire party from campaigning,” said Chief Justice Taylor Kilroy.

“This is your opportunity to band together and be in SGA. Forget the parties, forget who you ran against, forget all that nonsense. Because your job right now is to work for students.”

SGA President Cedric Bandoh said he wants to set up a task force to reform the SGA election code, judicial code, bylaws and constitution.

“I think a lot of the issues that arose during the elections came because those documents were very ambiguous, had a lot of loopholes, had a lot of contradictions in them,” Bandoh said.

“To move forward and be effective in the things we do, I think it’s important to improve the documents that we use to govern ourselves internally.”

Former SGA President Michael Harding said he decided to rescind his veto of the Good Samaritan Act, which was passed in the final meeting of the 48th senate two weeks ago, but he declined to comment on why.

Seventeen members were initially in attendance, but several more filtered in as the meeting progressed.

The only legislation on the agenda is a presidential veto of the Medical Amnesty Protocol, called the Good Samaritan Act.

The bill, written by Michael McHugh, would provide limited amnesty to students who call for medical aid in drug- or alcohol-related medical emergencies.

The students would not be subject to sanctions for violating certain rules pertaining to drug and alcohol use and possession in the student handbook as long as they meet the dean of students’ requirements.

The veto was made by Michael Harding, who said he will release a statement today explaining it.

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Although the Student Government Association Court of Appeals decided to disqualify four members of the McHugh-Aijaz party from the elections, it did not order a new election.

The disqualified students will be replaced by the candidates with the second-highest number of votes in their respective elections, said Chief Justice Taylor Kilroy in an email announcing the decision. Cedric Bandoh and Turner Harris received the second highest number of votes in the election for president and vice president, and Bandoh said he intends to accept the position as SGA president on Sunday, the first day of the SGA’s next administration.

“I’m very humbled and honored to serve the student body as student body president,” Bandoh said. “I can definitely tell you this is not the route that I thought I was going to go on to come to this position.”

The original disqualification by the Election Commission was struck down due to violations of the election code, Kilroy said.

The Election Commission said it respects the court’s decision because they are upholding the election code and the SGA’s integrity.

The unprecedented nature of this type of fraud and incongruences within the election code made the situation difficult to deal with, said Chief Election Commissioner Arsalan Razakazi.

“We did the best we could,” he said.

Although Michael McHugh could not be reached for comment, Cameron McHugh — Michael’s brother and the person who represented the appellants in the hearing — said it was good that the Election Commission’s decision was formally overturned, even if the students were still disqualified.

“It shows that there was bias existing in the Election Commission,” he said. “I think it was really unfortunate that the Election Commission was able to bypass some of the laws in the election code and disqualify the candidates based on hearsay alone.”

Cameron said articles printed in The Daily Cougar covering the election and accusations of fraud were biased against the McHugh-Aijaz party and influenced the justices in their ruling.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that The Daily Cougar went ahead and published an article about convicting the students before any evidence was presented,” Cameron said. “After so many weeks of the Cougar printing articles of this nature with no evidence or any support for its claims … I think that was just too much to convince (the justices) otherwise.”

The Student Government Association Justices struck down the Election Commission’s decision to disqualify four members of the McHugh-Aijaz party due to code violations, but determined three of them participated in election fraud.

President-elect Michael McHugh and Natural Sciences and Mathematics senators-elect Laxmi Ramana and Brandon Balwant have been disqualified for the fraud. Mohammad Aijaz, McHugh’s running mate, was also disqualified, although the court did not say Aijaz committed fraud.

“Unfortunately, due to the joint ticket, Mohammad Aijaz will also be disqualified,” said Chief Justice Taylor Kilroy in an email announcing the decision.

Chief Election Commissioner Arsalan Razakazi declined to comment on the decision until he could speak with his fellow election commissioners, and neither Michael nor Cameron McHugh could be reached before publication.

“I speak for the Court when I say that we delivered this judgement with heavy hearts,” Kilroy said.

“It is truly regrettable to discover that fellow students aspiring to represent the student body succumbed to these temptations.”

Appeals hearing

The party members fought the original disqualification in front of the SGA Court of Appeals Monday in a two back-to-back hearings that lasted from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The Commission’s arguments during the hearings were largely based upon two student affidavits and the testimony of James Lee, a member of the McHugh-Aijaz party, while the appellants maintained a denial of the charges and said the Commission broke several rules with its actions.

“We believe that these charges brought up against the defendants were both meritless, thoughtless and were in direct violation of the election code,” said Cameron, who represented his brother and the other appellants under the guidance of Houston Attorney and former Houston City Council Member Jolanda Jones.

Cameron said the complaints of fraud were filed passed deadline, but the Commissioners said they were allowed time to investigate the allegations.

“In the election code,” said Assistant Election Commissioner Said Jalajal, “it states that because there was election fraud, we did not have to file a complaint because we as an election commission have jurisdiction to investigate and deliberate onto the actions.”

Lee said he had been given seven PeopleSoft numbers and told to use them to vote for McHugh and Aijaz in the run-off elections.

Michael denied this and said Lee was making the allegations due to bitterness over rejected romantic advances made on Michael.

Lee said this was not true.

The appellants tried twice to have Kilroy and Razakazi recused from the hearing, saying they are biased against Michael, but the motions were denied both times.

“We have, in the past, heard allegations (against) Chief Justice Kilroy about blatant bias against members of the McHugh-Aijaz party, particularly Michael McHugh,” Cameron said.

The motion against Razakazi was denied by Kilroy, who said that he could not be recused, as he was one of the appellees.

“You cannot recuse a party… so I’m going to deny that right off,” Kilroy said.

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Michael McHugh and Mohammed Aijaz, who ran for president and vice president, filed separate appeals from Laxmi Ramana and Brandon Balwant, who ran for Natural Sciences and Mathematics senate seats, on March 21.

Both appeals claimed the Commission did not adhere to the Election Code when disqualifying the candidates and said the students be reinstated to the position they were elected to in SGA.

McHugh and Aijaz filed their appeal through Houston attorney Jolanda Jones, in which they said the Election Commission violated six clauses of the SGA Election Code — including the timeliness of the registration of the complaints and exclusion of the names of the complainants.

The Court of Appeals has one class day after the hearing to file its written ruling with the Election Commission, the SGA President, the Speaker of the Senate, the appellant and the complainant, according to the Election Code.

The SGA Advisor will implement the rulings, according to the Election Code.

The candidates were originally disqualified when the Election Commission found them guilty of using other students’ personal information to vote in the SGA elections, according to the Election Commission’s decision.

“Few members from the McHugh-Aijaz party were approaching students with a ‘petition’ that was ostensibly for a request to fix the faucets in the library,” the decision said.

“A student who filled out the petition which asked for first name, last name, people soft, birthday, classification and college that they are enrolled in which is the same information as needed to cast a vote in the SGA election.”

McHugh and Aijaz said the decision did not follow the Election Code.

“The impact of the Commission’s decision undid a lawful election and denied the Appellants Due Process. The appeal is based on frivolous allegations and violations of the Election Code by unknown complainants and other co-conspirators, all of whom have political agendas and motives against the Appellants,” said McHugh and Aijaz’s appeal.

The Election Commission and appellants declined to comment.

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Numerous witnesses told the election commission Natural Sciences and Mathematics senators-elect Brandon Balwant and Laxmi Ramana, members of the McHugh-Aijaz party, approached students with a “petition” to change faucets in the M.D. Anderson Library that required the students’ first and last names, PeopleSoft numbers, birthdays, classifications and the college they were enrolled in — all information that was required to vote in the election, said Arsalan Razakazi, chief election commissioner.

Michael McHugh, who was elected president in the run-off elections, and his running mate Mohammed Aijaz were also disqualified because of the fraud. His party — McHugh-Aijaz — was the main beneficiary from the fraudulent voting, Razakazi said.

“Candidates who are members of a Party are held individually accountable to the provisions of this code, although parties as a whole may be held accountable to the provisions of this code,” says article III, section three, clause four of the SGA elections code as quoted in the election commission’s decision.

Two other sections from the code that are quoted in the decision say that candidates found guilty of election fraud can be disqualified and candidates that don’t meet requirements of the code can not win the election.

“We interviewed; we contacted each of the witnesses; we tried to make conferences with them in our office. We do thank them for their time,” said Dre Perez, an assistant election commissioner. “It’s not easy for them to come over here…they have to study for exams; they have to write papers, so we just thank them for time and their diligence in helping us come to this decision.”

All four students have 24 hours to appeal the disqualification to SGA’s judiciary branch. If the appeal is accepted, they will go to trial, Razakazi said.

“We’ve done a lot of research…we’ve been working countless hours — we even worked over spring break. This decision wasn’t easy… it wasn’t something we took lightly,” said Said Jalajal, an assistant election commissioner. “Even though it’s tough, we’re sticking by this decision because we believe its fully right to those people who were done wrong.”

McHugh refused to comment.

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Chief Justice Taylor Kilroy said the Election Committee is watching tapes to identify who passed out petitions to a student in front of M.D. Anderson Memorial Library.

“We were actually lucky enough to have some witnesses of people giving out petitions and flyers for a specific candidate,” Kilroy said.

Civil engineering freshman Tanzeem Chowdhury said numerous emails sent to the Election Commission have not yet been answered.

“I come from a third-world country where corruption is part of their nature,” said Chowdhury, who came from Bangladesh seven years ago.

“If the same thing happens in country like this, how is democracy going to survive?”

Chowdhury said he’d like the Senate elections to follow the same voting format used for the athletics fee referendum.

“I realize it takes more money, but you guys can’t afford fraud year after year,” Chowdhury said.

“I’d rather cut things around somewhere else to ensure a fair election. I’d rather have the right people representing us.”

SGA President Michael Harding said the election scandal does not represent what the student government does for the school.

“Each year, there is always a scandal reported about SGA,” Harding said.

“Not to say that it’s okay, but no organization is perfect.”

Harding said that Chief Election Commissioner Arsalan Razakazi is “doing the best he can with the cards that he is dealt.”

Speaker for the Senate Reyes Ramirez agreed with Chowdhury about the senate needing to fix the problems that arose with this year’s election.

“It’s unfortunate if we have a person who wants to adulterate the system, but we have to deal with it,” Ramirez said.

“It doesn’t matter how many mistakes an organization makes, what does matter is what measures they take to rectify them.”

Chicano Mural

The senate also briefly discussed what to do with the mural in the University Center Cougar Den.

Several members of the senate, including Ramirez and Honors Senator Maggie McCartney, advocate preserving the mural in its original location.

“We are in support of preserving history and keeping an important piece of art where it is,” McCartney said. “Regardless of how much money it’s going to cost.”

Other senators were concerned with the costs associated with this solution.

“If we do move it, I feel it is irresponsible keeping it where it is,” said Rani Ramchandani, speaking for Jared Gogets.

The senators eventually decided to wait until the next meeting before taking any action on the bill.

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The candidates for president are Michael McHugh and Cedric Bandoh.

The candidates for the first senator-at-large are Imran Ghandi and Christopher Holly.

The candidates for the second senator-at-large are Kirby White and Adnan Ratani.

Students can use their PeopleSoft ID number, name and birthday to vote online at www.election.uh.edu.

Chief Election Commissioner for SGA Arsalan Razakazi said students should protect themselves and their voting rights by never giving out their PeopleSoft ID numbers, date of births or any other personal information to other students.

The final results of the election will be announced at noon on Thursday in the UC World Affairs Lounge.

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Arsalan Razakazi, chief election commissioner for SGA, said two students have come forward since elections began Feb. 27 — one of which The Daily Cougar reported on Thursday.

“When people vote, we can’t tell who they voted for — it’s a privacy issue,” Razakazi said. “We don’t know that. Nobody knows that. The computer does that itself because we want students’ privacy to be there.”

Razakazi said there were no cameras to reference where the students said they were approached, so he was unable to identify the people asking students to sign a petition.

Because similar fraudulent practices occured in last year’s elections, Razakazi said he added more security measures to voting by asking for students’ last names.

“The people who do fraudulent activities always have one thing up on us. You change something this year, they change their game. As election commissioner, you are more reactive than proactive,” he said.  “As proactive as I want to be… the thing is we’re only three people. We’re students first and then SGA later on. It’s hard to maintain 40,000 students out there. It only takes one bad apple.”

Razakazi said students should protect themselves and their voting rights by never giving out their PeopleSoft ID numbers or birth dates to other students, whether it be for a petition or some other matter.

“I’m still looking into it — even if it’s one person. I’m still going to be looking into it because to me, when somebody does voter fraud like that it’s taking away someone else’s right,” Razakazi said.

The investigation is on-going and Razakazi will continue to take complaints until 7 p.m. today. To file a complaint, email Razakazi at sgaelectioncommission@uh.edu.

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Students can use their PeopleSoft ID number, name and birthday to vote online at www.election.uh.edu.

The final results of the election will be announced at noon Thursday in the University Center World Affairs Lounge, according to the SGA website.

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Senators-at-large positions one and three will also enter run-off elections between Imran Ghandi and Christopher Holly, and Kirby White and Adnan Ratani.

Both McHugh and Bandoh said they were surprised by the small number of students who voted because of the high turnout for the student service fee referendum.

“That kind of came as a shocker,” McHugh said. “I’d like to see a higher turnout for the run-off election.”

They both said they were grateful for the results of the general election.

“(My vice president and I are) happy we made it to the run-offs,” Bandoh said. “That was our goal.”

Students can vote from 7 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. today through Wednesday, and the results will be announced at noon on Thursday in the University Center World Affairs Lounge.

For a list of students who won senate seats in the general election see page 2.

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Chief Election Commissioner for the Student Government Association Arsalan Razakazi said students should protect themselves and their voting rights by never giving out their Peoplesoft numbers or date of births to other students, whether it be for a petition or some other matter.

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Amber Khan, a biology sophomore, said when she logged on to vote Tuesday, the website said she had already voted.

“I hadn’t even been on the website. I didn’t even select a candidate; I was going to read about them, but then it said that I already cast a vote so I got concerned,” Khan said.

Simon Bott, her chemistry professor, said he encourages his class to vote, and she went to him asking for help.

“I asked her if she had given (her birth date or PeopleSoft number) out recently, and she said yes…  there was a petition out there on Tuesday about the M.D. Anderson bathrooms and they had the PeopleSoft IDs and birthdays,” Bott said.

Khan said the petition was to replace faucets in the M.D. Anderson library.

“This was on Tuesday around 5 or 5:30 or something like that. I was coming back from class, and I ran into these two students,” she said. “They asked me about if I’ve been to M.D. Anderson library and used the bathrooms over there.”

She said the students — who claimed they were part of a student organization, but didn’t name which one — told her if they got 500 signatures on a petition, the University would change the faucets.

“There was a sign in sheet, and they were asking for PeopleSoft and date of birth, your name — first and last name — and I think they asked for your major or something like that,” Khan said. “When I went to the voting site, I put in my information and it said that I had already cast a vote.”

Arsalan Razakazi, chief elections commissioner for SGA, said as of Wednesday night, he had not heard any reports from students, but if any came up he would investigate it.

Anyone with information about this, or who has had trouble casting their votes, should contact Razakazi at sgaelectioncommission@uh.edu

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