An anonymous person provided documents to The Cluster this week that accuse current Student Government Association president Ceazia Wright ‘27 of mishandling election code violations. Wright admitted in an email featured in the documents that she did not involve the SGA Rules Committee in disciplinary processes, which violated SGA policy.
The documents were allegedly part of a packet that was provided to SGA members during a closed senate meeting in which Wright was impeached.
In Wright’s email, the SGA president provided a statement to Dean of Students Doug Pearson and SGA Chief Parliamentarian Riddhi Maheshwari ‘27.
“It was my negligence in not reviewing the Election Code closely enough to recognize that the Rules Committee was required to be involved in addressing these matters,” Wright’s email reads.
According to a written statement from former SGA elections chair Shuler Reynolds ‘29, Kome Onowotu ‘28 sent a picture to SGA’s GroupMe on Aug. 24 that showed a person “chalking on the brick” in support of another candidate. This is a violation under SGA’s election code.
In screenshots of text messages between Wright and Reynolds, the pair discussed a 10% point deduction for the accused candidate if the chalking was done by someone on their campaign team, and a 5% point deduction if the chalking was done by another party.
A second unrelated violation concerned an instance where a candidate touched another person’s phone and “was making people uncomfortable,” Reynolds’s statement reads.
While the texts read that Reynolds and Wright agreed on the 5% deduction, in the end there was no punishment for either offense. Under SGA policy, the senate must be present for deliberations on election code violations. Wright’s decision was allegedly made without the full committee’s knowledge.
“I have never personally dealt with an election code violation before,” Wright wrote in the email.
Two pages of handwritten notes from the closed senate meeting were also provided to The Cluster. They appeared to be written by two different people. One page notes that Wright, during the meeting, apologized and admitted wrongdoing.
Another section of the page notes that some SGA members felt that Wright should face disciplinary action ranging from a semester-long suspension to a removal from her seat as president.
The second page contained three bulleted questions that appear to be from a closed senate attendee:
Hearing between them?
So how did you know to have a hearing without notifying the correct people?
Why wasn’t this just asked in the GroupMe if you couldn’t reach Riddhi alone?
Reynolds said he resigned from SGA on Wednesday, Oct. 14, the same day that The Cluster received the documents, but declined to comment on if the resignation was related to the impeachment process. Both Wright and Maheshwari said SGA members are barred from speaking on closed senate matters, and declined to comment.
This is a developing story.
Editor's note: Reynolds has since clarified to The Cluster that his resignation was not related to the impeachment process.
Nathaniel Jordan '29 is a Journalism and Anthropology major at Mercer, and plans to become an investigative journalist. He enjoys older pleasures like reading the Sunday paper and frequents local parks with his wife and son.
