“Ask me about the debate” and “Ask me about The Reflector,” read signs displayed by campaign workers for Student Association presidential candidate Juan McCullum. The campaign staff spread across the Drill Field ready to answer students’ questions Monday.
McCullum pulled out of Monday’s debate after learning that the format for the debate had been changed, he said.
Those asking questions at the March 30 debate were members of the election commission and the university administration.
“I felt like anybody who was a member on the panel and voted on Tuesday’s election could not have an unbiased approach to it,” McCullum said.
McCullum said vice elections commissioner, Hossein Razzaghi, had approached him Thursday with the new debate format, which allowed the panel to ask any type of question-whether personal or professional.
Razzaghi said made it clear he would not have allowed personal attacks on either candidate.
“My No. 1 goal for the debate was to make it a fair debate for both candidates and at the same time show the qualifications of the candidates to the student body,” Razzaghi said.
Razzaghi met separately with both camps Thursday to discuss the debate’s structure. Both McCullum’s and Telle’s camps voiced concern with the debate’s format.
McCullum said he met with SA adviser Eddie Keith at 10 a.m. Friday to express his concerns. McCullum said he told Keith he was 100 percent sure he would not participate in the debate.
“Obviously, the SA elections committee wanted to have a debate. From what I understood from Juan was that he was not happy with the way the debate was set up and he did not want to participate,” Keith said. “I conveyed that to (Razzaghi).”
Keith said all parties involved had a right to their opinions.
“I think they went back to negotiate and try to get something that would work for both candidates. Juan did what was perfectly in his right to do, and the commission did what was perfectly in its right to do,” Keith said.
Razzaghi said the impression he got from Keith was that McCullum did not want to participate, but was still willing to consider it. Razzaghi decided to create new format for the debate to accommodate McCullum’s concerns.
He said he contacted the Telle and McCullum campaigns to discuss format changes that would make both candidates comfortable.
Razzaghi said he tried to contact McCullum Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but did not hear from anyone in his campaign stating McCullum’s final decision to withdraw from the debate until 5 p.m. Sunday.
To cancel the debate, would have been unfair to Telle, Razzaghi said.
“I’m not endorsing either candidate,” Razzaghi said at the debate Monday at noon. “All I’m doing is telling the student body exactly what happened. If Juan McCullum decided not to participate, that is his right. But, he didn’t tell me he wasn’t going to participate until Sunday night.”
Razzaghi reiterated that it was McCullum’s right not to participate in the debate.
McCullum stood by his decision not to participate. He said he felt the panel would be biased regardless because it would be student-led, so he decided not to participate.
McCullum said the “same standards should have been used” for the second debate, especially during such intense campaign efforts. He said that the president works directly with the administration so the administrators make a good panel without having the possibility of bias.
“Students should be able to determine who has the best platform and best experience,” McCullum said.
Students’ potential participation in the voting process would cause bias, McCullum said.
Adam Telle, also a presidential candidate, said he thought the debate would be fair. The panelists’ names were kept secret, so even until the time of the debate, he did not know their identities.
“I told Hossein from the very start that as long as the debate was fair, I’d be up for it,” Telle said. “I thought it was best for the students if the debate was a little more detail-oriented than last time.”
McCullum also said an SA member contacted him and informed him of the panel’s members.
“We were assured integrity, as far as ‘nobody knows who they (the panel of three) are.’ I know who they are,” McCullum said.
Patti Reiss said the panel consisted of herself, Wilson Boyd and Shawnboda Johnson.
“It was called to our attention moments before noon that Shawnboda had chosen not to participate in the panel,” Reiss said.
Reiss, who served as executive assistant to former SA President Parker Wiseman, is listed on former presidential candidate Thomas Gregory’s Web site as a supporter. Gregory has endorsed Adam Telle.
Johnson is listed as a supporter of McCullum on his campaign Web site.
Boyd, editor in chief of The Reflector, wrote several articles about the campaign, including two in Friday’s paper which dealt with the passage of an add/drop policy in SA Senate and McCullum’s SA Cabinet attendance record as vice president.
McCullum and his campaign workers spent the day on the Drill Field ready to answer students concerns. He said he was not opposed to answering questions at the debate, but felt those questions would be biased since they would be tailored to the candidates.
McCullum campaign spokeswoman Quentella Henderson said McCullum’s decision not to attend the debate was an “issue of not answering negativity.”
“Us not being in this debate is not an issue of Juan not addressing what’s going on and the allegations against him,” said Henderson in reference to articles in Friday’s edition of The Reflector.
The article questioned whether the SA had passed McCullum’s proposed add/drop policy legislation as he said it did.
“I thought they’d give each candidate the same amount of unbiased coverage,” McCullum said. “If you read the paper Friday, it seemed very one-sided. Anytime there’s something negative like that, people have questions. Our main thing is to be out here and address those questions and comments,” McCullum said.
The McCullum campaign submitted a letter to the editor to address concerns. The letter is published on Page 4 of today’s Reflector.
McCullum and his campaign staff reiterated their desire to run a positive campaign.
“We decided not to do this because we are running a clean-cut race,” Henderson said.