Allegations of bias in yesterday's Felix prompted the elections committee to temporarily impound copies of the newspaper. This action is not within the remit of the elections committee since it is editorially independent and only the Felix editor may make decisions concerning the content and issuing of Felix. If complaints to the editor are not dealt with satisfactorily then the only remaining course of action would be to bring disciplinary action against the editor.
Alex Coby, Felix Editor, arrived to college yesterday morning to find members of elections committee guarding boxes of Felix while others were carried upstairs into the Union offices and snatching copies of Felix from people's hands. Mr Coby described these actions as "absolutely outrageous, completely out of order and quite possibly illegal" and further stated that he was currently contemplating what action he might take over the next week as a result. In a statement released this afternoon the elections committee stated "we regret the temporary impounding of Felix while we investigated these allegations."
A similar complaint was brought to against Live! but modifications to the article concerned by the editor allowed these to be resolved. According to election regulations "all media or newsletters reports or comments must mention the names of all candidates standing for a post within the body of the report". It may be argued that it is open to interpretation whether this refers to all media reports or merely those reports specifically concerning the elections.
Following discussions to it was decided to re-release Felix and copies were finally distributed by a tired looking Alex Coby late yesterday afternoon. However an appeal against the decisions of the elections committee, the full contents of which are currently unknown, was brought forward to ICU Executive committee last night. Exec however decided to uphold the decision of the elections committee. No candidates for these elections were present for the discussion and decision making portion of the meeting, which was held in closed session.
The final outcome of this decision is still unknown as it is possible an appeal to council may be made. In the meantime elections are still going ahead as planned.
Other problems dogging these elections include a the bugs associated with the inaugural use of online voting in ICU sabbatical elections. A technical problem associated with the integration of the ULU based voting website with the ICU website that caused many of the problems has now been fixed.
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