BHS Elections Controversy Settled

Between May 4 and May 6, Berkeley High School held its first election convention to determine the members of the 2010–2011 student leadership team. After the voting period, ballots were counted by current Associated Student Body (ASB) officers, and the results of the elections were released the following week.

In the aftermath of the convention, concerns were raised about some aspects of this year's election process, and debate has arisen over the outcomes of specific contests. However, the ASB Cabinet has decided to maintain the results as announced last week, and plans to reevaluate certain aspects of the election process in the fall.

"I had heard rumors about all kinds of stuff," said Principal Jim Slemp about the aftermath of the elections. After voting took place, the administration and current leadership team held various meetings and put forth statements to address the issues raised.

"Overall, I think it went pretty well," said Miya Sommers, ASB Vice President. "In previous years, we've never had this much involvement from the Berkeley High community. Of course [the convention] was new, so we had issues that we'd never had to deal with before."

Over the course of the election, leadership received reports of attempts by at least one staff member to influence student votes through intimidation.

One teacher allegedly submitted absentee ballots on behalf of eleven students which had been filled out with the teacher's own candidate choices. These ballots were recognized and subsequently voided during the vote count.

"There was speculation that one teacher was overly involved," said Slemp. A national organization called the League of Women Voters helped to supervise the elections, along with volunteers from the Berkeley City College Civics Club. According to Slemp, "They did have to tell this teacher to butt out."

Student Activities Director Chris Young indicated that there had been action taken by some Academic Choice teachers to “influence the vote to favor AC candidates.”

In addition to this issue, staff and students spoke out against uneven small school representation among the elected students and in the delegate pool.

“Once the results were revealed, two teachers expressed concerns directly to me about small schools not being represented well on [the School Governance Council (SGC)] and [the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project (BSEP)] and at the Convention,” wrote Young in an email to the Jacket. Leadership maintains that all students were given equal opportunity to participate in the elections.

Some teachers and students were particularly concerned about the outcome of the close race for School Board representative, between Arts and Humanities Academy student Omar Sanchez and Berkeley International High School student Lias Djili. Sanchez lost the election after a delegate vote at the convention, as the student body vote was not decisive.

Sanchez protested the outcome, requesting a meeting with Commissioner of Elections Bryan Farb and the ASB cabinet in which he presented a petition signed by 28 teachers and over one hundred students.

However, after meeting to discuss the issues, the BHS leadership team agreed to maintain the election results.
Young cited three main motivations for the decision. “That all social studies teachers were given a fair chance to get delegates to the Convention, the process was explained and agreed upon by candidates, and the voting record of the convention along with the impressions made by candidates during the question and answer period of the convention,” Young wrote, “were [all] evidence that it is doubtful SLC representation in the convention — though not proportional by SLC — was a determining factor in the winner through that part of the process.”

Slemp was in agreement with Young. “Everyone, through multitudinous emails, was given the same opportunity to participate,” he said. “There were fewer small school representatives there, but that wasn’t through any sort of exclusionary process.”

About the result of the debacle, Djili stated, “I believe that [the convention process] was something we all agreed to, and knowing that, we have to respect that. You can’t change the rules at the end of the game.”

Leadership has been working towards the implementation of a new student body constitution, which was not ratified this year, but is expected to go into effect at some point next fall. They believe that this document will help to prevent the uneven representation in the election process by different BHS small learning communities that occurred this year. The constitution, which has already been created, will continue the changes in student leadership at BHS begun this school year.

“Once this new constitution is in place, it’s going to have requirements of equal representation,” said Sommers. “There will be a House of Representatives. I also think that there are going to be more candidates in the elections, just because of the new culture at the school.”

Photos:

• Election Fraud (Phoebe Wong)