The results of the GUSA freshman representative elections were announced last Tuesday, but questions still linger about alleged derogatory incidents that occurred during the campaign.

The winners of the election were Mike Barrett (COL ’06), Octavio Gonzalez (COL ’06), Mariana Kihuen (COL ’06) and Dan Monico (COL ’06). They are all among the candidates who maintain that their campaigns were sabotaged in some way in the days before the election.

“I worked all night the day before the campaign started to put up fliers [in the New South stairwell],” Gonzalez said. The fliers were not posted for long, however. “All the fliers had been taken down Saturday morning.” Fliers for two other minority candidates – Kihuen and Daissan Ortiz (MSB ’06) – were also torn down, he said.

“These elections were run under a lot of racial tension,” Kihuen said. She said she had put up two banners in Red Square that were taken down shortly after they were posted. Again, she said, only those posters of non-minority candidates remained on the wall.

“All of my posters were torn down,” Ortiz said. “They didn’t stay up a day.” He added that he didn’t complain to the election commission, however, because “it was happening to everyone.”

Barrett and Monico, who ran on one ticket, said fliers mocking their distinctive ones with quotes from movies had been put up, saying “`Vote for Barrett and Monico because they are so rich,'” Monico said. “The worst part about it was they made us look like we had put them up.”

Gonzalez filed the only official complaint, according to election commissioner Ramya Murali (SFS ’03), about a derogatory flier. According to Gonzalez, the flier said “`What kind of name is Octavio? Caesar’s wife’s name was Octavia. Do we really want Caesar running GUSA?'” At the bottom, it said “`paid for by Students Against Stupid Candidates and Stupid Elections,'” Gonzalez added.

Kihuen also said that she had heard comments to the effect of “Why vote for a candidate whose name you can’t pronounce?” from other students involved in the GUSA campaigns. “It was a little disturbing, but I wasn’t discouraged,” she said.

“A lot of people’s fliers got taken down,” urali said. “It happens to a small extent every year, but it seemed to happen a lot more in this election.” She said despite the amount of informal complaints she received about other types of sabotage and inflammatory comments made by other candidates, no one filed a formal complaint except for Gonzalez before the 8 p.m. deadline on the Tuesday election day. “It really felt like materials being taken down were across the board,” she said. “No candidates were targeted more than any other.”

Election commissioners went through freshman residence halls checking that campaign rules were being followed, she said, and the Department of Public Safety also kept watch in Red Square and New South to try to ensure no further fliers were taken down.

Gonzalez said he wanted the Election Commission to investigate complaints more thoroughly. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t go out of their way to be proactive and investigate this further,” he said.

Students wishing to contest the results of the election have until the GUSA meeting Wednesday at 8 p.m. to file an official complaint with the GUSA Constitutional Council, Murali said. The election results will be approved by the GUSA assembly at that meeting, not having been approved at the last meeting, because urali could not attend and the voting tabulations had to be converted from percentages, GUSA president Kaydee Bridges (SFS ’04) said.

Bridges said that the Unity Coalition, a group of leaders of multicultural clubs on campus, is meeting Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. to discuss the freshman GUSA elections. “We’re going to try to find out what we can about what happened, clear up any misunderstandings and figure out how to prevent this in the future,” Bridges said.

“It is particularly disturbing that first year students should be involved in such behavior,” Director of Student Organizations and Associate Director of Student Programs Martha Swanson said in an e-mail to Unity Coalition members.

“[GUSA elections] are about students seeing how to get politically involved at Georgetown,” GUSA Chief of Staff Tom Donnelly (COL ’03) said. “Especially for freshmen, who don’t really know each other that well yet, to make blanket statements without knowing people is terrible. Elections shouldn’t take the sort of tone.”

“It’s part of politics, but I didn’t expect people to take this GUSA campaign that seriously,” Monico said.

“I tried not to get discouraged, but it really put a damper on the rest of the campaign,” Gonzalez said.

Eleven candidates ran in this year’s election, with two pairs running as one ticket.