University of Guelph's CSA successful in rigging OPIRG Guelph Board elections
Congratulations to the leftists at the University of Guelph's CSA for their successful rigging of the Guelph OPIRG Board elections!
According to their website, the nomination deadline for candidates for the OPIRG Guelph's Board is now TOMORROW... after they were successful in getting the deadline for nominations extended in an effort to ensure that several conservative leaning students are blocked from joining the Board.
Problem is... someone within their own ranks didn't agree with the CSA's dictatorial tactics, and published their panicked e-mail plotting for the whole world to see.
As promised... the evidence of electoral tampering by members of Guelph's CSA!
(NOTE: as I understand, each of the original recipients of this e-mail were contacted, and several indicated they had no part in this scandal... as such, their names have been removed from the offending e-mail to protect their innocence)
Interestingly enough, it's not the first time one of the aforementioned parties has been linked to underhanded electoral tactics...
Whether or not it's against the rules, it looks like they were successful in rigging the vote by getting the nomination date moved, after it had already passed, in order to allow them to find more left-leaning, or rather, more suitable candidates for their Board... I came into possession of this follow-up e-mail, sent today by someone within the OPIRG...
Welcome to campus politics folks... leftist style!
Thing is, as I said before, it's not the first time one of these names has been linked to electoral fraud... a sharp eyed source sent me this link from a couple years back, from the U of Guelph's CSA run "The Canon" website no less... "Elections Make Us Crazy"
The highlights...
There's likely a whole lot more to come, so stay tuned... I'll post more as my sources gather more information on this growing scandal.
According to their website, the nomination deadline for candidates for the OPIRG Guelph's Board is now TOMORROW... after they were successful in getting the deadline for nominations extended in an effort to ensure that several conservative leaning students are blocked from joining the Board.
Problem is... someone within their own ranks didn't agree with the CSA's dictatorial tactics, and published their panicked e-mail plotting for the whole world to see.
As promised... the evidence of electoral tampering by members of Guelph's CSA!
(NOTE: as I understand, each of the original recipients of this e-mail were contacted, and several indicated they had no part in this scandal... as such, their names have been removed from the offending e-mail to protect their innocence)
----- Forwarded Message -----What's this? Members of the U of Guelph's CSA attempting to interfere in the elections of the OPIRG Board? And using official CSA titles, positions and resources to boot? Surely there's a rule or two against that sort of unethical behaviour, right?
From: "Claire Whitehead" (clairemw6@gmail.com)
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 3:50:48 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Fwd: URGENT! Conservative Take Over of OPIRG-Guelph
Hello,
Please read below this really messed up news regarding OPIRG-Guelph, an organization that does amazing work on campus and in the community.
I'm leaving Guelph in May, or else you better believe I'd be trying to get on the board. If it's at all feasible for you, please consider running for the OPIRG board (when word comes that the deadline has been extended, I can pass it along); it's a lot less intimidating than it might sound. Whether or not you'll consider running, please PLEASE pass this message along to folks you think should know.
RL [Robyn Letson]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cailey Campbell (csaexternal@gmail.com)
Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 6:44 PM
Subject: Fwd: URGENT! Conservative Take Over of OPIRG-Guelph
To: Robyn Letson (robynletson@gmail.com), (NAME REMOVED) , Eduardo Huesca (ehuesca@uoguelph.ca), Sarah Ayton (sayton@uoguelph.ca), Zoe Barrett-Wood (zoebarrettwood@gmail.com), Arthur Churchyard (Arthur.Churchyard[at]gmail.com), Scott Gilbert (E-MAIL REMOVED AS PER SCOTT'S REQUEST), dmartins@uoguelph.ca, (NAME REMOVED)
Hey!
So, I'm not sure if many of you have seen this article http://ryersonfreepress.ca/site/?p=745&preview=true but what happened in Waterloo is now happening if Guelph. Today 4 members of the Guelph Campus Conservatives submitted nomination forms for the OPIRG Board elections. This is a move to compromise OPIRG and defund the organization. If you know of ANY student who could run in the OPIRG Board election or ANY community member who could fill the two community seats please, please, please send them this email or get them to contact Marnie at opirgorc@gmail.com. The nominations forms were due today, hence the 4 conservatives submitted them today, but the deadline for nomination will hopefully be extended again. I will let you know when the deadline is extended. The nomination forms can be found here.
http://www.opirgguelph.org/index.php?mode=2&linkID=1&l=0&page=0
If you can help at all please, please do! OPIRG is so important to this campus!
Arden
--
Arden Hagedorn
Local Affairs Commissioner
Central Student Association
UC 274 | University of Guelph
--
csalocal@uoguelph.ca
519.824.4120 x 54407
--
csaonline.ca || thecannon.ca
--
Arden Hagedorn
Local Affairs Commissioner
Central Student Association
UC 274 | University of Guelph
--
csalocal@uoguelph.ca
519.824.4120 x 54407
--
csaonline.ca || thecannon.ca
--
Cailey Campbell
External Commissioner
Central Student Association
UC 274 | University of Guelph
--
csaext@uoguelph.ca
519.824.4120 x 58328
--
csaonline.ca || thecannon.ca
--
Robyn L.
robynletson@gmail.com
www.praxismetaxisadidassneakers.blogspot.com
Interestingly enough, it's not the first time one of the aforementioned parties has been linked to underhanded electoral tactics...
Whether or not it's against the rules, it looks like they were successful in rigging the vote by getting the nomination date moved, after it had already passed, in order to allow them to find more left-leaning, or rather, more suitable candidates for their Board... I came into possession of this follow-up e-mail, sent today by someone within the OPIRG...
----- Forwarded Message -----From: "Marnie - OPIRG-Guelph ORC" (opirgorc@gmail.com)Interesting, don't you think? Several conservative leaning candidates apply for the positions within the previously approved time frame, the CSA panics, and then uses their influence to get the dates moved to allow them to find other "hand picked" candidates... or at least, according to the above panicked e-mails, a couple warm bodies who can fill the chairs, who are more likely to vote in accordance with the CSA's wishes.
To: (CANDIDATES NAMES REMOVED)
Sent: Monday, 23 March, 2009 12:48:56 GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Notice: Change of Date for elections & Nomination period extended
Hello candidates,
This email is to inform you that the OPIRG Board has made a decision to extend the Board Nomination period to Tuesday March 24th at 5pm and that the elections will now be taking place on Tuesday March 31st. I am in the process of updating our web site and other notices to reflect this.
Marnie
Marnie Eves
Organization & Research Coordinator
OPIRG Guelph
www.opirgguelph.org
1 Trent Lane,
University of Guelph
Guelph ON
N1G 2W1
519-824-2091
Welcome to campus politics folks... leftist style!
Thing is, as I said before, it's not the first time one of these names has been linked to electoral fraud... a sharp eyed source sent me this link from a couple years back, from the U of Guelph's CSA run "The Canon" website no less... "Elections Make Us Crazy"
The highlights...
That was to be the only spell of tranquility in the seven-hour meeting, as tempers immediately flared up when the matter of elections began to be discussed. At the heart of the matter was an e-mail circulated about External Commissioner candidate Romesh Hettiarachchi. While the e-mail did not explicitly call for voting against Hettiarachchi or in favour of Cailey Campbell, his only rival in the race, Hettiarachchi felt that the email was nothing short of character assassination and was severely detrimental to his chances in the election and to his career beyond this university. Campbell was ultimately elected with a 221-vote margin over Hettiarachchi.Of course, Campbell was never directly implicated in that 2007 scandal, but it certainly doesn't help her image when she's been caught red-handed trying to interfere in this one.
There's likely a whole lot more to come, so stay tuned... I'll post more as my sources gather more information on this growing scandal.
Labels: "progressives", activism, election, loony lefties
posted by Christian Conservative @ 7:00 p.m.
11 Comments:
At Mon Mar 23, 08:22:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
It seems as though you have written this blog as a direct attack towards left leaning individuals. If there was a breach in the electoral process, then please report the facts. Don't give a right-leaning political slant on something that could easily be as misconstrued as this. The absurdity of your attacks makes me wonder if the emails were simply fabricated or adjusted to fit your political agenda.
At Mon Mar 23, 08:24:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
Is this for real?
Jeff
At Mon Mar 23, 09:27:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
you bet this is for real. for the student fee paid to OPIRG, check out http://www.csaonline.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39&Itemid=35
$5.82 x 17 000 undergrads and 2 000 grad students = over $110 000
and from the e-mails, you can see the sort of shoddy way OPIRG is being run (i.e. the elections have been re-scheduled twice already, etc.). who knows how that $110K is being spent?
At Mon Mar 23, 09:27:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
Yes Jeff & Anonymous, the e-mail is legit, as forwarded to my contacts at the University by someone on Claire Whitehead's "undisclosed" recipient list who wasn't to impressed with their unethical antics.
It's completely unedited, except for the names of individuals who weren't involved, and further confirmed by several of the individuals who were recipients of the e-mail.
This is the real deal... they got caught red-handed.
At Mon Mar 23, 11:46:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
From last year's Guelph OPIRG Annual Action Report: Membership fee from University of Guelph Students - $213,935; Total Revenue $258,938.
This is insane! They basically do nothing and have a budget of over a 1/4 million dollars! Colossal waste in my opinion.
At Tue Mar 24, 04:14:00 a.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
The 2007 incident was after my time in a UofG Student Government position. However, during my time at UofG I have gotten to know Romesh as a man of high integrity and if he alleges that his character was assassinated I would believe him.
H.
At Tue Mar 24, 12:11:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
Might I point out the obvious fact that it was the members of the campus conservatives that first got themselves nominated. Are they seriously trying to be constructive members of a campus organization, or are they trying to infiltrate it to defund or otherwise dismantle the organization for their own political objectives? It is this exact thing that has happened on several other campuses and now the campus community (yes, well beyond the CSA) is responding to thwart this hostile takeover. Come on people, use just a tad of critical thinking. Are we supposed to believe the conservatives just had a change of heart and now want to volunteer their time working on issues of human rights and equity? Laughable. OPIRG does have problems that need to be addressed but this is not the way to do it. Grow up.
At Tue Mar 24, 12:58:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
Well "Anoymous", as you might see if you take a look at my post from today regarding Queen's OPIRG, you might see a trend emerging... a consistant pattern of heading off any and all efforts at making reforms to their organization.
Maybe, just maybe, the problems are with the OPIRG, and not with the folks that are seeking to address some of the long-staning issues within the OPIRG?
Hey, if you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears.
At Tue Mar 24, 01:41:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
Dear "Anonymous",
I am writing to respond to your statement: “Are we supposed to believe the conservatives just had a change of heart and now want to volunteer their time working on issues of human rights and equity? Laughable.”
If you had the common courtesy to attach your name to your patronizing post, I would be able to discuss this with you in private; instead I have to respond in this forum.
I am one of the Candidates for OPIRG that the CSA feels the need to attack. I happen to be the President of the Guelph Campus Conservatives. Am I running because I am a Conservative? No. The Guelph Campus Conservatives has nothing to do with the OPIRG elections. Some of the Candidates are members of both groups, but why is that a problem? Many (if not all of the) people in OPIRG are politically involved to some extent. The CSA’s email was even addressed to Scott Gilbert, a former Communist Party Candidate.
In regard to your statement that I “just had a change of heart”, I think it would be nice if you looked at my past involvement before attacking me: I have been on multiple international builds for Habitat for Humanity, I have been involved in student Government since I was 12, I have worked as a volunteer for over a dozen outreach organizations across Canada and some internationally, and I participate in OPIRG activities throughout the year.
I have not had a change of heart, nor have my fellow Candidates. We want to be part of the decision making process to ensure more student involvement and better planned OPIRG campaigns. A $250 000 budget can go a long way when it’s not wasted.
What’s ironic is that by interfering with this election, the CSA is doing exactly what they’re accusing an innocent campus club of doing.
Ryan Monkman
At Wed Mar 25, 11:49:00 a.m. EDT,
o said…
Why am I not at all surprised? What do you expect from this bunch of people? I remember reading about Campbell in the Ontarion and how she participated in a recent so-called "peace" march, where she led UoG students and Guelphites in disrespecting the brave women and men in Afghanistan and all the good they've done for the Afghan people. They've gone so far left they ended up on the far right. These people are the future totalitarian government of our country. Some shut them down, FAST!
At Tue Jul 24, 01:52:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
This is a hilarious post to come across in 2012; what a great find! I am glad I stumbled upon it.
2009 - Conservatives making a big deal about OPIRG elections in which approximately 12 - 20 people on the entire campus vote.
Somehow, though, it is acceptable for Campus Conservatives to commit election fraud for the ACTUAL elections.
This is just so funny, I love it. Oh the irony is so strong in this one.
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