The Spectator’s Investigation into Senior Caucus Tickets 2023

On Wednesday, May 31, The Spectator published digitally that it will not be endorsing any Senior Caucus tickets this spring due to questionable communication among all three tickets. 

On Monday, May 29, The Spectator received anonymously leaked screenshots of online conversations between the Senior Caucus tickets. These conversations had become the basis of a Board of Elections (BOE) investigation regarding allegations that the Mikhalevsky-Patel ticket had discouraged the Levani-Vallejo ticket from running against them. The BOE reviewed the exchanges in their own investigation and determined that no tickets should receive strikes. According to standard practice, the BOE requested that the exchanges remain private from anyone outside of the BOE and the involved Senior Caucus tickets. The BOE aimed to prevent any misunderstandings within the student body in the event that excerpts of the exchanges were removed from context. 

Both the Levani-Vallejo ticket and the Chen-Karim ticket felt that the allegations were not fully addressed by the BOE’s decision. Due to unresolved concerns and misconceptions circulating the student body, The Spectator Editorial Board voted not to endorse any Senior Caucus tickets this spring, instead opting to investigate the situation. 

The Spectator conducted an investigation in which the Editors-in-Chief, Rebecca Bao and Phoebe Buckwalter, interviewed all three tickets (Luis Vallejo & Tomas Levani, Margaret Mikhalevsky & Yashna Patel, and Zidane Karim & Anthony Chen) and the Board of Elections (Vanessa Chen, Niamh Werner, and social studies teacher and faculty advisor Matthew Polazzo).

In the interview transcriptions, YAMA references the Mikhalevsky-Patel ticket and TOLU references the Levani-Vallejo ticket.

Interview With Luis Vallejo & Tomas Levani

Q: How would you describe your professional relationship with the other tickets running for Senior Caucus? 

Levani: So, Chen-Karim—never knew these guys before, I kind of exchanged a few words with them at the debate but I don’t really know them. YAMA ticket, I mean, Yashna [Patel] was kind of close to me in chemistry class last year. I’m not friends with them. I’ve talked to Yashna [Patel] a few times before; definitely not really friends with any of the other tickets. The same goes for Luis [Vallejo].

Vallejo: Yeah, I would say I’ve spoken to Margaret [Mikhalevsky] before. I don’t really talk to her anymore. Chen-Karim—I don’t know them either. 

Q: What has communication been like among the three tickets leading up to and during the campaigning process? 

Levani: So, Chen-Karim—[Luis Vallejo and I] don’t really talk to those guys. There was something, I think, [which is] probably why this investigation is happening, with Yashna [Patel]. She DMed me right before the election when she figured out that we were running, with what I thought was a threat. I was doing this team for the Wharton [Global Youth Program Investment] Competition, and she was [on the team], one of her friends was [on the team], and she [said] she’d make her own team if I ran [for Senior Caucus with Luis Vallejo]. She offered me a spot to join her team; I told her “I don’t really care,” but I saw it as a threat anyway. That’s pretty much the only interaction before we started campaigning. 

Q: How have the other two tickets affected your ticket’s current campaigning strategy, if in any way?

Levani: I think pretty much we had a set [campaigning] strategy before we started running; we knew what we were doing. Maybe some minor changes [were made], but not any significant ones. 

Q: How do you feel the pressures you have faced in this election were affected by your status as challengers? How has this affected your relationship with the other tickets?

Levani: Again, we really have no relationship with the other tickets. We don’t talk to them, so it couldn’t have affected that. There was some pressure I guess, though, since Margaret [Mikhalevsky] has won three times and [Margaret Mikhalevsky and Yashna Patel] have won [caucus elections] together one time. We knew it was going to be harder, but I think that wasn’t going to stop us from trying; we were going to do our best nonetheless. 

Q: How has the Board of Elections dealt with any miscommunication or conflicts between tickets (such as warnings, strikes, reasons for warnings and/or strikes, etc.)?

Levani: So regarding the screenshots I was talking about, I think yesterday [Tuesday, May 30] or the day before that [Monday, May 29] I sent them to the BOE. Nothing happened. So pretty much, after Yashna [Patel] made [what I interpreted as a] threat I said, “I’m still gonna run.” She said [she was] joking. [The BOE] thought she was joking; I don’t really believe it. It seems [to me] like she is making sure to not get in trouble.

Vallejo: Yeah, but that [perceived] threat has caused a lot of doubt. 

Q: How have you navigated the overlap between personal and professional relationships during this year’s Senior Caucus elections?

Vallejo: In terms of personal connections, [we had] no connection with Yashna [Patel] or Margaret [Mikhalevsky] before or even during the campaign. We have never been friends. I talked to Margaret [Mikhalevsky] at the beginning of the year, when we hung out. But during the campaign, we’ve had no such friendship, relationship, or connection. The [Chen-Karim] ticket [is] also the same deal: no ties, no connections. That’s what we try to do—we try to keep it professional and just give out our best effort.

Levani: We just want to have a fair competition for the person who the student body wants [to win].

Q: How have online communications (text, Messenger, Zoom, phone calls, etc.) with the other tickets influenced your relationships with them?

Levani: [The conversation with Yashna Patel] before we started running didn’t really impact our chances of winning or anything. We just saw it as something unfair.

Vallejo: But it did add another personal level to this campaign. Threatening us [felt] kind of personal. It’s a personal thing. We kind of took that into account campaigning. 

Q: If you were to change one thing regarding the current system of caucus elections, what would it be and why?

Levani: I don’t know really who’s managing the Board of Elections, but I think it’s one or two people. The response I got [from the BOE] seemed to me like only one person was checking things—Vanessa [Chen], to my knowledge. I sent [Vanessa Chen] a few DMs asking her questions, [but there were] really no responses, just left on read. I would have a big team of people reviewing things and voting, not just leaving the power to one [or two people], who could obviously be biased. 

Vallejo: We also want to make sure that there’s a way to verify that [the BOE] doesn’t have any personal bias. If [managing the election] is up to one [or two people], then obviously bias is just going to completely take over the entire position. 

Q: To what extent do you think the current caucus elections system promotes transparency? Where does it succeed in this goal and where does it fall short? 

Levani: I think the main thing is just the Instagram. There’s two ways of really campaigning: word of mouth or Instagram and social media. I think the system [the BOE has] of checking stuff on social media works. I think they’re doing a pretty good job for letting you campaign. 

Interview With Margaret Mikhalevsky & Yashna Patel

Q: How would you describe your professional relationship with the other tickets running for Senior Caucus? 

Mikhalevsky: Anthony [Chen] is one of our IT directors currently and he was also one of our IT directors last year. Beyond that, we don’t really have a relationship with him. I’d say Yashna [Patel] and I have been friendly towards Anthony [Chen]. Zidane [Karim] also on friendly terms—he’s never been a part of caucus, though. And with Luis [Vallejo] and Tomas [Levani], I personally have not really interacted with them before this year.

Patel: For me, I’ve known Anthony [Chen] just through caucus and just his work as IT director. I don’t really know Luis [Vallejo] and Zidane [Karim] that much outside of the campaigning aspect. But I have known Tomas [Levani] since last year—we met at the second semester of last year when we sat next to each other in chemistry. 

Q: What has communication been like among the three tickets leading up to and during the campaigning process? 

Mikhalevsky: I didn’t really communicate with either of the two tickets prior to campaigning or during campaigning, honestly, beyond during the debates. 

Patel: I’ve only communicated with Tomas [Levani] before the campaigning season started. That was the conversation that I sent to [YAMA campaign manager] Eugene [Park], which was the five screenshots over Instagram. Out of the four people running [besides us], that was the only contact I’ve had prior to the campaign season or during the campaigning season at all. 

Q: Since The Spectator is not allowed to publish all the screenshots, can you clarify for the student body what the screenshots contained or what were the most important aspects of them?

Patel: Me and Tomas [Levani] have known each other since last year, so we talked regularly every single day. And then this year we didn’t have any classes together, so I just see him in the hall and I’d say “hi” to him. I feel like we had some similar few friends, so we’d see each other and talk to each other now and then. I’d say we were friends. We first started talking to each other more regularly again when Tomas [Levani] posted saying that he was looking for members for the Wharton [Global Youth Program] Investment Competition, and he was creating a group. So I had messaged him, basically showing my interest for the group. Then we had an interview, kind of, and we were in a group chat with each other [and] the rest of the members—that’s basically how we talked to each other. But we still have similar friends and, at this point, we’ve been talking in the group chat as well. One of my friends told me that Tomas [Levani] was running for Senior Caucus. I’ve known him for a year now; he never really showed interest in student government until this point. I messaged him over Instagram and spam DMed him just confirming if he was running or not and if he was running seriously, because I just hadn’t expected him to run either. I felt in my messages, to me, it was clear that this was meant as a joyful, kind of like a joke, approach. The vibe with how I was texting, there was no professional aspect of it—I thought it was just kind of chill. He’d message back and I’d realize that he was upset by my messages because, to him, it was that I was like telling him not to run and like I didn’t want him to run. When I realized he was upset, I quickly apologized and made it clear to him that I was joking, and I wished him luck with his campaign. I thought that we should still work together in the Wharton [Global Youth Program Investment] Competition group. The bottom end of the conversation was just talking about details about the Wharton [Global Youth Program] Investment Competition.

Q: How have the other two tickets affected your ticket’s current campaigning strategy, if in any way?

Mikhalevsky: I don’t think they affected our campaigning strategy. I feel like we’re kind of campaigning the same way, at least that I’ve campaigned for the past three years, besides the fact that we used to send e-mails to people as an additional form beyond DMing people. But now we can’t send out the e-mails because that’s the new [BOE] rule. That wasn’t because of the other campaigns, that’s just as a result of the new rule. The new rule is that you are not allowed to send individual or mass e-mails.

Q: How do you feel the pressures you have faced in this election were affected by your status as incumbents? How has this affected your relationship with the other tickets?

Patel: We’ve spent so much time and effort in doing caucus work over the past two years, and me and Margaret [Mikhalevsky] love doing this work as well. When we’re campaigning, we just really emphasized that we’d like to continue doing this work and, through the past two years, we’ve gained so much experience. There is some sort of pressure to retain that connection to the student body as well. But it hasn’t affected our relationship with the other tickets. I think part of the reason that I hadn’t expected Tomas [Levani] to run is because I feel like every single year we see the people who are interested in caucus through applications or past campaigns, and Tomas [Levani] has never really mentioned it to me—which is completely okay, you can still completely be 100 percent interested in caucus and not mention it to me—but that was part of the reason why I didn’t expect him to run.

Mikhalevsky: One slight thing I’d say I have just noticed is, in terms of debating, during the debates, for example, when you’re an incumbent, you do tend to notice that any time there are ticket-directed questions, all ticket-directed questions are directed to your ticket. I feel like that’s a given, that’s kind of expected. Other than that, the campaigning has been pretty standard for all of us. 

Q: How has the Board of Elections dealt with any miscommunication or conflicts between tickets (such as warnings, strikes, reasons for warnings and/or strikes, etc.)?

Patel: In our experience, the BOE has been super clear with all of the strikes. Throughout all of the years we’ve ever campaigned, they’ve been super clear with why they’ve given us strikes. Their BOE constitution is pretty clear—they basically just emphasize that you should ask for permission before you do absolutely anything related to the campaigning process, which has worked pretty well with us. When we’ve ever had any concern regarding something that wasn’t allowed with another ticket, we’ve messaged or emailed [the BOE sending] the piece of information that we’re concerned with, ask if it’s allowed, and then [the BOE] handles it from there. 

Mikhalevsky: The one thing that’s important to know about the BOE is that they follow the BOE Charter to a “t”—exactly everything that’s mentioned there. If anything is broken and you hadn’t asked permission, you will get a strike. Also, about the permission [rule], sometimes things that maybe aren’t explicitly stated word-by-word, if you do something without asking permission for it, that might entail a strike. That’s less common, though.

Q: How have you navigated the overlap between personal and professional relationships during this year’s Senior Caucus elections?

Mikhalevsky: Honestly, Anthony [Chen], Zidane [Karim], and I, at least I feel like, we’ve been on pretty chill terms. I’ve talked to Anthony [Chen] today [Wednesday, May 31] even and at the debates, we exchanged each other’s name cards. I felt it was very chill, up until now with them. But with Luis [Vallejo] and Tomas [Levani], again, outside of campaigning, I don’t really know them, so I haven’t interacted with them outside of campaigning. And honestly even in campaigning, I haven’t interacted with either of them besides in debates.

Patel: Up until now, the relationship was pretty steady. We were pretty close friends with all of their campaign managers, the campaign managers of the two tickets were pretty close with our campaign managers, and vice versa. I didn’t think there was any negativity between any of the tickets. It was just a normal sense of competition that exists between tickets. That was it up until when everything came out now.

Q: How have online communications (text, Messenger, Zoom, phone calls, etc.) with the other tickets influenced your relationships with them?

Mikhalevsky: We haven’t really communicated with the other tickets. I think the main thing with online communication was prior to campaigning any issues that have arisen. Because the initial cause for the investigation—any messages that pertained to that—all occurred prior to campaigning. During campaigning, I don’t think we’ve interacted with the other tickets.

Patel: I feel like things have gotten super messy now, post all of this coming out, because it’s just a lot of each ticket defending themselves almost. And no one really knows everything that’s going on—we don’t know everything that’s being said, [the other tickets] don’t know everything that’s being said. We just found it interesting that the other two tickets had a group chat with each other because we just never really see that happening prior to the campaigning season; I feel like it’s super individual between the tickets.

Mikhalevsky: I’m slightly curious as to when that started and why that started as well. That is one thing that I’m also kind of confused about because that is unusual. The other candidates of each of the two tickets had a group chat with each other, not sure as to why it was started, but they had a group chat to each other that we [Margaret Mikhalevsky and Yashna Patel] were not a part of.

Q: If you were to change one thing regarding the current system of caucus elections, what would it be and why?

Patel: We can answer this with a question because [Margaret Mikhalevsky] campaigned three times before and I’ve campaigned two times before and we’ve never encountered anything like this where people are spreading information about caucus tickets in-person in school other than “Oh, who are you voting for? Why are you voting for them?,” so this is all really new to us. Our question is how this is going to be handled, because, based on things I’ve heard, people are saying that the BOE is corrupt, The Spectator is corrupt. We really don’t know anything that’s going on other than [what] people told us they’ve been hearing throughout school. A campaign thought they were going to be endorsed and [thought] they didn’t get endorsed because we worked with The Spectator and the BOE to take away their endorsement. There’s so much random things going on and, prior to this occurrence, we thought the system [of the BOE and The Spectator endorsements] worked perfectly well. I feel like [The Spectator] takes so much into consideration when [deciding] endorsements, and the BOE takes so much into consideration when they’re making their rules and how they approve every single post. That system worked super well.

Mikhalevsky: It’s not the system I would change, I feel it’s ensuring that people follow the system. Because one thing in the BOE Charter that’s very explicitly stated—I might not get the exact words correct—is that if you’re making any attacks on a ticket, it must be on their policies and not a personal attack. And if you do have any personal issues or issues with the campaign, the rule is that you’re supposed to reach out to the BOE and ask them about it. My point is that, if you have personal issues with another ticket, you don’t bring it to a greater audience, you bring it to the BOE first and the BOE addresses it. I think the system is fine, just enforcing the system, but I don’t think that’s in the BOE’s control.

Patel: The important part is that you have to give both The Spectator and the BOE time to actually figure out what to do, especially since all of this is so new. Last year, when we were campaigning, we were given strikes too and even when we had certain disagreements with the BOE, we were able to say our part and they would take time to discuss if it was a strike or not if it wasn’t clear. But if it was a clear strike and they asked chosen BOE officials, then they would grant us the strike because that is the system.

Q: To what extent do you think the current caucus elections system promotes transparency? Where does it succeed in this goal and where does it fall short? 

Mikhalevsky: I feel it succeeds in transparency; these interviews are happening now. [The Spectator] is interviewing all the tickets and [that] is more objective than every ticket saying their own piece and having it be spread and changed [in a] game of telephone among the rest of the students. The Spectator is definitely what keeps the process transparent. I feel like [the current caucus elections system] could be more transparent, but I wouldn’t be able to explain how to do that. The BOE and The Spectator are doing the best that they can do right now to try to keep things as transparent and as fair as possible. The rest of it falls into the tickets’ hands to, first of all, follow the BOE Charter and also cooperate with The Spectator regarding any interviews they have and any questions they have.

Patel: The fact that [The Spectator] is getting all the tickets’ point of view is great and that is part of the reason that the The Spectator and the BOE are transparent. Overall, I feel like the [BOE] system is transparent, as in when you get a strike, you can go on the website and see what tickets have a strike and why they were awarded a strike. The strikes are discussed with [faculty advisor Matthew] Polazzo, which provides a very objective point of view. There isn’t one single thing I can pinpoint that needs to be changed because this is all so new.

E-mail Interview With Zidane Karim & Anthony Chen

Q: How would you describe your professional relationship with the other tickets running for Senior Caucus? 

Chen-Karim: Our relationship with the TOLU ticket is both professional and well—there is no bad blood between us and we would be honored if they won the election. With the YAMA ticket, there seems to be an idea going around that we bear resentment because they issued a strike on us. We want to make it clear that this is totally untrue, and we accepted our strike. While we contested it and regarded it as unfair, we did not hold it against the YAMA ticket. Furthermore, while there may be disagreements over policies, we’ve maintained a professional relationship with the ticket itself. 

Q: What has communication been like among the three tickets leading up to and during the campaigning process? 

Chen-Karim: Communication was at a standstill until these past couple of days, where we talked with the TOLU ticket to clear up any misunderstandings. We have not spoken to YAMA as a ticket. We feel as if the format of the debate was too structured and rigid to allow us to converse with each other freely. However, we’ve noticed that when one idea is formed, it spreads throughout the grade even without our knowledge or confirmation of its validity. As such, misinformation and miscommunication have run rampant over the past two to three days.

Q: How have the other two tickets affected your ticket’s current campaigning strategy, if in any way?

Chen-Karim: We’ve maintained our personal strategies since last year, and we want to make it clear that it will stay that way. Regardless of other tickets’ strategies, we will continue to innovate our own methods of campaigning. 

Q: How do you feel the pressures you have faced in this election were affected by your status as challenger? How has this affected your relationship with the other tickets?

Chen-Karim: As challengers, it seems as if we are not taken seriously by many. We understand that our ticket used a humorous approach last year, but that was still surrounded by serious policies, something we’ve focused more on this year. We feel that our platform and campaigning have depicted growth in ourselves and our ticket. 

Q: How has the Board of Elections dealt with any miscommunication or conflicts between tickets (such as warnings, strikes, reasons for warnings and/or strikes, etc.)?

Chen-Karim: The Board of Elections issued us a strike for the existence of our Instagram account, which has existed since freshman year. Our bio was changed to senior caucus, before we decided to run, three months ago. Because of all this, the BOE issued a strike toward our campaign despite our argument that it was too old to consider and that the Instagram account had always existed without any disputes/conflict. But regardless of that, we accepted the strike. What we did NOT think was fair was TOLU’s potential blackmail into not running not being taken seriously. The TOLU ticket, in our conversation, revealed to us that there were potential threats made against them by the YAMA ticket. We as a ticket felt it was strongly unprofessional, especially coming from a place of power. We felt that the BOE should have taken these ideas more seriously and not held it against the ticket. From us came the idea that there was potential bribery from the YAMA ticket toward us to not run. Because we had no messages from the YAMA ticket themselves, and no tangible evidence, we never came forward with these accusations formally and never requested them to be brought to the Spectator in the first place. These ideas came from a private conversation, that through miscommunication and misinterpretation, were twisted into the ideas that we accused the YAMA ticket of bribery. We want to make it clear that this never occurred from us. 

Q: How have you navigated the overlap between personal and professional relationships during this year’s Senior Caucus elections?

Chen-Karim: Personal relationships have definitely been tested as we have friends in other campaigns, but we’ve tried our best to separate caucus and friendships. This obviously becomes difficult when people start to consider our ticket and platform before us as people. However, we’ve maintained diplomacy as best as we can. 

Q: How have online communications (text, Messenger, Zoom, phone calls, etc.) with the other tickets influenced your relationships with them?

Chen-Karim: Online communications are extremely easy to twist, so even if we communicate with one ticket perfectly well, images and screenshots are taken out of context or without further details that make our statements seem to suggest something else. We prefer in-person communications for this reason, as they are heard by everyone and cannot be twisted as easily. 

Q: If you were to change one thing regarding the current system of caucus elections, what would it be and why?

Chen-Karim: The current system of caucus elections is great when it comes to voting, but it seems that internal biases control a majority of votes. Platforms, campaigning, none of that matters now that we’re approaching senior year and people have essentially formed opinions already. We should find ways to promote the platform more than a popularity contest that currently exists. 

Q: To what extent do you think the current caucus elections system promotes transparency? Where does it succeed in this goal and where does it fall short? 

Chen-Karim: The caucus system tries to be transparent by illustrating information on the BOE website and the Spectator. But ultimately, this fails because of how easily misinformation spreads and the notion that people do not need to speak on the record all the time. We prefer that however – being on the record all the time makes it feel like you can’t have personal privacy anymore. There should be limits on what can be published and what cannot because, at the end of the day, we are all students at the same school. We see each other in classes and halls, and while campaigning it’s easy to forget that we’re all in the same boat. But because tickets prioritize winning, scandals and misinformation run rampant. We are people and students first, campaigns second. 

Interview With the Board of Elections (Vanessa Chen, Niamh Werner, and faculty advisor Matthew Polazzo) 

Q: How would you describe your professional relationship with the tickets running for Senior Caucus? 

Werner: I would say that for our professional relationship, we’re making sure that we’re constantly communicating. Again, it sort of goes back to the Board of Elections role throughout all of these different caucus elections, making sure that all the [campaign] materials are being approved and that we’re constantly communicating about any disagreements or strikes, and any corruption that someone else may be seeing in another ticket’s campaign. 

Chen: The only relationship we have is as a regulating body for elections. Our job is just to make sure that the BOE rules are followed and that hopefully everyone is having a good time with the elections and no rules are broken. That’s really the only relationship we have with the tickets. 

Q: What role has the Board of Elections played in managing communication among the three tickets leading up to and during the campaigning process? 

Chen: Essentially what we do is that any time they have any campaigning material—this is all listed in our BOE rules that we read out during the interest meeting that [all tickets running for caucus] are required to go to—which can be like an Instagram story, this can be a poster that they want to put up, they have to send it to us through email, and we get it approved. Our rule of thumb is that if they send it before 9:00 p.m., we usually approve it on the day of, but obviously if it’s the weekend or during vacation, it’s a little bit harder to follow that rule. 

Werner: I think just making sure that everything that is being sent to us, we are going through, we are approving, and that’s how we’ve been communicating to the tickets. 

Q: How has the Board of Elections dealt with any miscommunication or conflicts between tickets (such as warnings, strikes, reasons for warnings and/or strikes, etc.)?

Chen: The BOE does not give strikes directly. We’ve never given a strike automatically before. Usually what we do is if we have evidence that a certain ticket is not following the rules, we reach out to that ticket, we send them the evidence that was given to us, and allow them to explain their side of the story so we can have a holistic picture of the situation. 

Polazzo: And also if there’s an allegation that another campaign has done something, we send it to the other campaign and give them an opportunity to respond. 

Werner: We definitely try and look at both sides of the story, and both sides have different views depending on the campaign, and from there we’ll be able to understand the situation better. 

Q: How have you navigated the overlap between personal and professional relationships that came with this spring’s Senior Caucus elections?

Chen: I think this is more regarding me because I’m a rising senior and they’re Senior Caucus. I have no relationship with anyone, no close relationships especially with any of these tickets. Most importantly, even if I did, it would not undermine my commitment to this job at all. 

Werner: I would definitely say we don’t have any personal relationship with these tickets. Even if we did, as Vanessa [Chen] said, that really wouldn’t stop this professional relationship that we have.

Chen: We don’t give one ticket an advantage for anything. We don’t give them tips or advice that would help their campaign at all unless we share it with everyone. 

Q: What role does the Board of Elections play in terms of managing the online communications (text, Messenger, Zoom, phone calls, etc.) that occur between Senior Caucus tickets?

Chen: That’s not really our job to manage any online communication—it’s more like we have a rule that you can’t be mean to other tickets, you can’t bribe, no blackmail, it’s all in our BOE rules. In regards to communication, Niamh [Werner] and I can’t just look at all of their phone history, and we can’t look at all of their private information. Even as a person, that’s a breach of privacy. 

Werner: I would say that mainly what we’re focusing on is if people are doing some form of corruption in this individual communication that the candidates are having with each other, then that’s being sent to us. Our goal is really not to be violating people’s privacy or anything, it’s really just to be this regulating body and making sure we have a fair election.

Q: If you were to change one thing regarding the current system of caucus elections, what would it be and why?

Polazzo: No more scandals. I think the system as it is right now works pretty well. The system is what it is because of all the various infractions and violations that have happened in the past, so we do our best to try to solve the last problem. Students at Stuyvesant are very clever and industrious and they often come up with new ways to bend or go around the existing rules, and that requires us to come up with new rules. So it’s kind of a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. I think we would like it if students would be a little bit less inclined to try to creatively bend the rules and just stay within the bounds of the existing rule structure. But it’s Stuyvesant, so you kind of have to be prepared for that.

Chen: And something we always do for every single election is we update our current BOE rules based on any situation that occurs in the previous election. 

Werner: I think we’re definitely making sure that, as each election season takes place, we’re taking into account anything that happened in the former election season to make sure that we’re continuing to have that fair election where people don’t see a need to sort of, as Mr. [Matthew] Polazzo said, bending the rules and trying to go against the rules that have already been set.

Q: To what extent do you think the current caucus elections system promotes transparency? Where does it succeed in this goal and where does it fall short? 

Werner: Currently, our election system is definitely promoting that transparency that people, when any sort of strike, or when any sort of evidence of corruption is sent in, that we are looking at both sides of the story and really making sure that any of the tickets that are involved in this “scandal” are really getting to share their explanation and their perspective on it. And I think that definitely feeds in the transparency and making sure we are in constant communication through our e-mails regarding approvals, any strikes, any infractions, things like that. 

Chen: Also, keep in mind, we do send evidence that we are sent to the other ticket, so it’s not like they never get to see the evidence. We tried to show them what we’ve been sent so they can either refute it or maybe apologize because of it. 

Q: What is Rule 6 of the BOE Code of Conduct, and how does it relate to divulging information in regards to competing tickets to The Spectator? Rule 6 states, “Arguments that attack a candidate must be restricted to the ideas and plans of the campaign. Personal and ad hominem attacks are forbidden, and evidence of these infractions will result in a strike.”

Chen: It’s not that they can’t share their material to The Spectator, it was completely fine if [The Spectator] had it. The reason why we didn’t want it to be shared is because we haven’t investigated it.

Polazzo: It’s also fair to say an excised part of the conversation can rise to a level of being an attack if the full context isn’t shared. I could probably go through any of your texts with your friends and if I strategically cut out one part, it could make you look like a monster until the “jk” line appears afterwards. So we are especially concerned about what seemed to be an excerpt being leaked without having the full context. The idea isn’t that any communication with The Spectator is automatically going to be forbidden, but a public communication that seemed to be impugning the character of a particular candidate without providing contextualization, that seemed, to us, to be a little problematic.

Werner: The whole issue we were having was that they were using material taken out of context to slander another ticket, which was something we were still actively looking into.

Polazzo: I think your argument is that decontextualized text can rise to the level of something approaching slander. But again, we didn’t necessarily decide to give them a strike. Ultimately, you could read Aristotle’s politics—he says that you want to have some kind of written system of law or regulation which can provide people with guidance as to how they can live their lives. But no written system of law, no matter how well-written it is, is ever going to be able to deal with all the particulars. There’s just too many particulars. Like a decontextualized conversation sent to a school media organization, we just can’t write all that in. So, as a consequence, in addition to the written set of rules, you also have to, as humans, who are able to provide human judgment on situations that fall into the gray zone, I think that [Vanessa Chen and Niamh Werner] are extremely capable of providing that kind of judgment and guidance. In this instance, I think they made what was an appropriate decision to decide that the decontextualized screenshot: is it slander? It’s sufficiently damaging to the campaign, but it seems roughly equivalent to, enough at least, it seemed prudent to ask that campaign not to leak that to a media organization. We did an investigation—the investigation was talking to Yashna and that was it. Unless the individuals making the accusations want to come back with more data or evidence, and then I’m sure we’d be happy to look into it, but, in the absence of that, I think we consider the case to be pretty much closed at this point.