Freshman election results announced

The Nominations and Elections Committee announced the winners of this week's freshman elections last night after dismissing charges brought by two candidates for alleged violations of the body's Fair Practices Code. At the end of the NEC's two-hour FPC hearing, the body announced that Adam Zimbler won the first presidency of the Class of 2003. The College and Wharton freshman received more than 18 percent of the votes in a crowded field of 13 candidates. NEC officials said that 45.3 percent of freshmen participated in the election for class president, a percentage significantly higher than had been seen in recent years. College freshman Jeb Winton was elected to one of eight available spots on the Undergraduate Assembly with 360 votes, more than any of the other 31 UA candidates received. As the top vote-getter, Winton will also serve as one of the UA's representatives to University Council. The other seven freshman UA representatives elected were College students Lara Bonner, David Levin, Molly Siems and Becky Tracy, and Wharton students Yale Cohen, Ethan Kay and Albert Song. Winton and Bonner were also elected to the two College positions on the Freshman Class Board. Song was elected treasurer and Cohen was elected as the Wharton representative. College freshman Emily Newman was elected vice president of the freshman class, College freshman Marissa Savit was elected secretary and Wharton freshman Santiago Rivera was elected vice president for corporate sponsorship. Dan Parry won the Engineering spot on the class board and Nadine Spitalnick, a Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer, won the Nursing seat. The results of the elections were announced only after the NEC had deliberated for more than an hour on the charges and disqualification appeals brought by four candidates. College freshman and presidential candidate Daniel Cohen charged that Donald Huang, also a College freshman and presidential candidate, had violated four campaign-poster rules. In presenting his case at the meeting last night, Cohen insisted that he felt bad about charging Huang with violating campaign rules but that he felt compelled to do so after seeing several apparent violations, including seeing one of Huang's posters covering one of Cohen's on a kiosk in front of the Quad. In his defense, Huang denied that he had committed any of the alleged violations and noted that the NEC's candidate information packets said the University is responsible for enforcing its own policies with regard to posters, not the NEC. "I was not contacted by a single person" from the University, Huang said of his posters. "I was very careful in reading every statement from the NEC." The second charge was brought by College freshman Brett Singer, a candidate for vice president, against the NEC itself. Singer charged that the NEC violated its own rules by allowing College freshman Matthew Keesan to file forms establishing his candidacy for vice president after the NEC's deadline for filing such forms had passed. "I saw the candidate collecting signatures after 6 o'clock," the deadline for filing, Singer said. "This is not a rule that could go either way." Under questioning from NEC members, however, Singer acknowledged that the NEC's actions did not directly violate any rule in the FPC -- calling it "a gray area" -- and that he didn't believe he lost any votes as a result. In the NEC's defense, College senior David Ecker, the group's grievance officer, noted that the NEC typically allows a few extra minutes for candidates to submit forms to account for possible differences in times of watches. After the charges were heard and defended, the NEC heard appeals from two of the five students who were automatically disqualified for failing to submit required spending forms by the NEC's Wednesday night deadline. The other three disqualified candidates chose not to appeal. UA candidate Amy Cohen said she submitted her spending form two hours late because she was attending a review session for a Psychology midterm during the time when the NEC was collecting the forms. Her appeal was denied. Amanda Krawitz, also a UA candidate, said she failed to submit her spending form on time because she was waiting in her dorm room for the arrival of friends from South Africa who arrived several hours later than originally planned. Krawitz said she made several attempts to contact the NEC at the time, and her disqualification was reversed.