The DASB Senate candidates from SHIFT and BRAVE joined on May 28 before election result announcements to address the DASB elections committee’s transparency and enforcement of election codes.

The meeting resulted in the disqualification of four senate candidates for failing to submit reports of campaign spending.
Two candidates were appointed community service if elected for not complying to the campaign code. They ended up not being elected.

The elections committee deemed Karla Rivas’ slandering of the BRAVE coalition a major infraction.

“I think the reason that this is more heavy than it might seem, besides just codes, is that we’re all going to work together if we get in,” said Thao Le, presidential candidate for BRAVE and one of only nine students elected into the senate.

The elections committee also discussed unfair advantages of candidates currently in the DASB Senate, a mystery liking of the “BRAVE for DASB” Facebook page from the DASB account and racial remarks toward the Senate’s Asian majority.

Each was dismissed or considered a minor infraction by the DASB elections committee.

According to the DASB elections code, minor infractions are those that do not damage college property, create an unfair campaign advantage or impede the election in any way. They were corrected within 24 hours.

The DASB elections committee, lead by current DASB president Julia Malakiman, argued that the codes were open for circumstantial interpretation.

“With this meeting, I hoped to get fairness with the SHIFT coalition complaints,” said Thy Doan, SHIFT executive vice president elect. “We can’t really go back to get fairness, but we can bring it to the election committee … I just wish everyone ran with integrity.”

BRAVE and SHIFT each challenged the elections committee for their approach to the 2015-2016 elections.

“The election committee clearly didn’t know what they were doing and they did not upkeep to the code,” said Mina Aslan, BRAVE senator who was recently voted into office.

Aslan said that committe members did not post open agendas to the public or share the times and minutes of meetings, illegal offenses according to the Brown Act.

“We didn’t know a lot of things that were conducted,” Aslan said. “The committee was not transparent or just.”

Malakiman did not respond to La Voz Weekly’s attempts to contact her.